A green wedding?

Once a week, I put out some time catching up on my favorite's blogs. I do not have a big list of blogs, only about 5 blogs, so within an hour I can be up-to-date with all of them. In Anne Ruthmann's blog she described an idea of Green Wedding photo services, in which it reduces or eliminates possible wastes. For example, do not print a photo unless it's going to be framed. Do not send out photo products, but create photo slide show or put up high resolution photos online instead. It sounds unreasonable at first, but the more I think about it, it makes sense. However, this would not work for my mom. The computer mouse was not design to compensate for her trembling hands. So, how could I convince her to use the online album instead of stack and stack of photos bound by rubber bands?

My mother still favors prints of the grandson's wedding over the online slide show I made. She also has her own system of organizing those 4x6s, so she does not need standard photo albums. For past time, my mom performs her own artistic cropping of pictures. No need of the Photoshop's aid, just a pair of scissor will do. She can put together a 11x20 photos collage, with each picture carefully trimmed out by hand just to show the interested subject. Together one by one, she has photos of the whole family root to cover the wall.

Each time I visit my mom, I always want to check out her photo products. And each time, I notice a bit of new thing. Whether it's a face of a grandson or nephew, she cut it out of its own print and paste it on a larger print. So, I think, just for my mom, I continue to make prints and feed her the raw materials to keep our family photo root tree up-to-date.

A morning in Nags Head

We were in Nags Head, North Carolina for the 2008 Thanksgiving. It is getaway kind of vacation. None of us has ever been there during the cold winter months, so we just want to try it. For being a famous summer vacation spot, we knew that the town is going to be empty in November. Another reason is that we definitely want to relax, go with the flow, do whatever we feel like, and don't have to cook the bird if can help it. Isn't that what holidays supposed to be? It took us around 5 hours to get there, but as soon as we stepped in the rented condo, we realized that it's worth the trip. We got there around 8pm, the sun already went down for couple hours now. Opened the sliding door to the big balcony facing the ocean, I was looking for the ocean but it was too dark; though I can hear the wave crashing on the beach. Leaning against the balcony I was enjoying the ocean sound, the gentle breeze, the salt water smell and quickly realized ... "What stress? I long left it behind and did not even miss it."

Woke up early in the morning the next day, ran out to my favorite spot: the balcony, to see the ocean, the wave, the sand and the sun rise. It was just a beautiful sight. Went in and made coffee. Anh Linh was still sleeping on the couch in the living room. The kids were sleeping in their room. Hương was already up, but did not want to get out of that toasty, comfortable king bed. Chị Lan was still sleeping in her room. I don't blame her for her flight came in pretty late on Monday. The place was quiet except for the waves. Nothing beats early morning drinking coffee, looking out the ocean, watching sun rise, and see dolphins swim.

A quiet storm

Photojournalism is very attractive to me. Just the idea of being able to tell story through a single image makes my head spin. A powerful image can change the outcome of a war, and Vietname War is the case in point. However, it becomes less attractive nowadays when video and multimedia are dominating. Newspapers would survive only if it has a website to show additional video clips. People spend more time watching news on TV and on the net more than to read. Magazines and newspapers days are numbered. Still images, journalistic images are less and less as time passes.

So, it's quite rare to see an impact from a still image would contribute to the outcome of a historic election at these days in age. I still remember that day, it was the 19th of October, 2008. In a small hotel, of a remote town Lancaster of Pennsylvania. I was there for a wedding photo job the day before. Watching Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama interview. In the interview, Colin Powell cited to an image, a journalistic image, of a mother having her head rested on the tombstone of her son in Arlington Cemetery. It's very moving image, the whole story reveals. It's calm mood, low key picture, but to me it's quite an impact which the picture had made. It touches the viewers, Colin Powell, and vast number of people. It causes the people to take revolutionize action, to be very vocal, to make important decision. It's a quiet storm.

The picture is one in documentary series of pictures taken by Platon, published on The New Yorker.

Words

I grew up in a family of words. In special occasions, like national holidays or ancestor memorial days, my father would talked and recited literature, poems, and cultures. My mother is also very verbal. If a short answer would be suffice, she will give 10 times more. When I was only 11, one of my three sisters threw me a thick book. "Read!", she said. That was to stop me from pestering her. And of course, we have a big book cases on the second floor, full of books. The book case is quite big, "how would I ever able to finish reading all of them?", at the young age I thought. In 1975, when we left VN, I've read most of the books in our book case.

Words sooth me. They have the capability of calm me down even in the most stressful situations. Fiction or non-fiction, it does not matter to me. Sure, I would like to read pieces which are of interested to me; but I do not hesitate to start reading whether it's a academic text book, an editorial, or a novel.

It has been drizzling since last night, and my mind was not into writing code or fixing bugs; I went on the net and read.

Details

I like to photograph objects, small objects. Object which shows details. It can be an ordinary object that people may ignore or may not pay much attention. But to me, it's an object which someone had created with great care. Because someone had care enough to put that much of details into it, and I take on the mission to elevate it to my eyes' level. I would photograph it with natural light, just the way it appears to the world. To me, even if it's small in size, but it's deserved to be noticed, to be recognized just as much as other much bigger objects. Since the one who created them, they put just as much love & care into making that little thing; and the quality shows if we look closely. Click on the photo and I hope you will see what I mean.

This photographed object is a wedding favor, which belongs to Quang Huy & Thanh Tâm wedding, two weeks ago in Lancaster, PA.

Expense report form

Using the Google's document, I create this expense report form to track my expenses.

Voice activated light stand

6-year-old Melanie Wells helps putting out prop flames with Arnab Sinha, an EMT/Recruit Firefighter at McLean Volunteer Fire Department fire station.(Sun Gazette)

Again, Thuỵ helped me to light up the firefighter in this shot. It was at 11 in the morning, and the sun is almost directly above us. Under the big helmet, the EMT/recruit firefighter Arnab Sinha face was at almost 4 stops under. For this shot, I asked Thuỵ to hold the flash stick near the ground and point directly into Arnab face to give me a beautifully balanced exposure. When I have time, I will share with you more about my flash stick.

At the firehouses

David Cheng, 3, is trying out fire fighter bunker rubber boots for size at the Ballston Fire Station in Arlington.(Sun Gazette)

I and Thuỵ, we were at the firehouses today to take pictures for the Sun Gazette. Thuỵ was my "voice activated light stand" and he did a wonderful job. Without him, I could not take these pictures, and the lighting came out great. In the picture above, David Chen, a 3-yrs, Arlington resident is trying out the firefighter boots for size. The light inside the fire house is just not enough to light up the subject and the quality is that dreadful green neon lights. So, I quickly set my camera to expose 1 under for the background and Thuỵ was at my four-o'clock position with the flash set at 1/4 power. I love the expression of David, pulling on the boot.

Been awhile

Vienna Chamber Celebrates First Oktoberfest (Sun Gazette)

Schools started about a month ago, and the hectic life are settling in. Thuỵ reminded me last night about the blog, which I did not put in an entry for two long months. My bad.

Huân started the Linda Mood Bell program, and so far, very small - un-noticeable - changes. But we have plenty more time to go to draw the conclusion. I certainly hope that the program brings positive results, and this is not because the tuition but because Huân definitely deserves it. It's a long overdue for him.

Even though the school has started, Bảo continues to work at the Orchids For You store, one day a week. I can see a bit more mature, responsible, and confident in him. We went to the picnic about a week ago, and he was quite happy & energetic around his friends. His happiness permeates to me and other family members as well. We had a wonderful time.

Thuỵ is such a pleasure to be with. He helped me with the photo assignment shooting last week, and made the time 10 times more enjoyable. I really looking forward to have him at every photo shoot and I hope that he enjoys the time we're together as well.

I started to take pictures for the Sun Gazette. The photos of first assignment didn't come out as good as I want, even though the photo editor complimented them. Oh well, I'll try harder and apply new techniques on the next assignments. One thought keeps circle in my head: "telling the story, telling the story", it's tough to translate that into a two dimension 4x5 picture. I was looking for emotion, expression, dramatic moments; but along with that I have to worry about the lighting, the dreadful sun light at noon, the angle, the quality of light and in a crowded place. I need to train my eyes to be able to spot the moment, and work with all the difficult light conditions. Only practices and not afraid of try new things will help. This weekend, I need to produce images of kids & fire-trucks, at two different fire stations. I have been forming the images, describing the images over & over again in my head. I have been going through different light scenarios, and how the flash should be setup to overcome the difficult lighting condition. I hope those thought would help me this weekend.

You have mail!

It's wonderful to receive Bảo email today. I did not expect that he has internet access in Kyoto, so it was a pleasant surprise this morning. In the email, he said that he visit Nijō Castle and I quickly went online to check it out. It's beautiful! Wish that we could be there. Someday we will, the whole family.

Looking at the picture of the Nijō Castle, it reminds me of the Japanese TV show that I watched with my Japanese friend a long time ago. Richard Takahashi, that's my colleague & friend name back when we were working for TRW in Torrance, California. We usually watch this show during dinner on an old dinky B&W TV, which has aluminum foil wrapped on the rabbit-ears antenna. This is the only show which was visible enough for us to watch. The TV show does not have subtitle. Richard is 2nd generation, borne & raised in California, so he does not speak Japanese well. However, he can recognize few words, so he's the translator. He translates few key conversation, and my mind would fill in the rest. It's a Japanese Shogun TV drama, about the Tokugawa shoguns. Now, looking at this Nijō Castle, I bet the TV show was filmed there. Well, difficult to tell, because Japanese architecture at that time is pretty much the same, hard to tell one from the other if you do not have the whole layout of the castle. Quite interesting though, that is the first time that I know about Japanese culture. After watching enough of the show & living with Richard, I went to Little Tokyo in LA & bought myself a futon set at $200, which was very expensive for me ~20 years ago. I still have the pillow, the comforter, and the pad. I could not figure out how to take the pillow cover off to wash, so it had not washed for 20 years. But it's still hold up very well, and I use it to prop up my head at night watching TV.