Last day of 2008

We are at University of Virginia to pick up Thuỵ at the end of his summer camp

Today is the last day for year 2008, and I spent few minutes browsing through all pictures that I've took in the year, trying to find one which I can sum it up for a year coming to end. This year must had been a year that we've been travel, going to places the most. Many of these are just short trips, places that we went and stayed for only one or two days. Sometimes, they are just a day trip. Most noticeable is that we spent with the whole family, which is a good thing. Family quality time, to me is always good, does not matter much where we visit, as long as time we can spent with the ones we love.

Nags Head Sand dunes, North Carolina, Thanksgiving 2008. - Now, who did that?

Browsing through the pictures, good memories are gushing back, a wonderful warm feeling for a cold blustering day like today. Here is another one, when we spent a short vacation in North Carolina during Thanksgiving holidays. We were on the sand dunes, enjoying the sun and cool sand under our feet. I can still recall the cool sensation of sand under our bare feet. Having a good laugh when we could not figure out who just broke-the-wind! We all suspected Huân, but in fact that was a stranger, out of frame, to the left of us. He apparently did not realize that we all heard the noise he made.

National Arboretum, Washington DC, May 2008

Here is another one, when I took my brother & sisters to visit the National Arboretum in Washington DC. We recognize plants which we were familiar when we were kids or when we growing up in Vietnam. Seeing the plants, also bought back memories, the place where we grew up, and time when we were living in Vietnam. Just a wonderful feeling to recognize the quality time we had in such a short moment inside that beautiful giant glass house.

Looking back at those time, I feel so fortunate that I had those time; for I know those are the treasures for me to keep forever. For 2009, I wish you all have a wonderful new year; more time to spend with your love ones, and enjoy every moment of it. For me, I just wish to have another year full of quality time with family and friends, just like the one I had in 2008 and more.

Family portrait

Family portrait on December 24th, 2008

Every year now, we try to take family portraits; pictures which give us sense of time and family. Pictures bring us back in time as well as pull back the curtain to show the packed emotional, well hidden inside the subjects. I like those pictures. The emotional portraits, the ones which do not focus on the beauty, shape of the jaw bone, flattering lighting, skin tone, or long curve eye lash; but the ones which reveal the feelings. It's really fun to watch the viewer looking at an emotional photograph; you can see that sentiment leaps from the picture on to the viewer's face. If I can see that little smile, ever so slightly, when a viewer looking at my picture. That's when, I feel that I have successfully taking an emotional picture.

When I showed my wife this picture, I can see that little smile on her lips; even though when selecting a favorite one, she went with a different picture, the one which shows her in more dignify position, serious expression. Oh well, as long as I have other pictures for her to choose, I am happy. As for me, I keep the picture that she is laughing, both inside & out.

Shooting Ice Hockey Games

Arlington's Cool Cats vs Montgomery's Cheetahs at Rockville Ice Rink

Taking picture of ice hockey games is all about equipments and knowledge of the game. For the equipment, it's no mystery here. The lighting condition in the ice rink arena is just so dreadfully dim. Adding on top of that is the fast action pace sport. So, to freeze the action of a slap-shot or a wrist-shot, you need to set the shutter speed to 1/250th of a second or faster. I like to set it at 1/500th second on my D70. Which by the way is not the best camera for sports shooting, due to the level of noise at high ISO. Fast shutter speed demands fast lens, that means: do not bother with anything slower than 2.8f lens. On my first attempt, I went with 80-210mm, 4.5-5.6 Sigma lens, and got terrible result. That's when I discover the level of noise my D70 makes. Here is the forewarn: setting ISO level more than 800 is just not worth shooting. The noise is just too much, even with noise reduction software could not make the picture any better. (Please Nikon, can you just be nice to a brand-faithful photographers and do not sell something like this next time?). On the second shooting opportunity, I went out and rent a Nikkor 70-200mm, constant 2.8f, AF-S VR-ED at Penn Camera for $35 a weekend. What a beautiful lens. The lens is fast focus, and evenly sharpness at all range. Few things that learn from taking pictures of ice hockey game:

• Get there early, get the permission from the arena's manager & stroll out to the player's box.
  
• If you have a mono-pod, use it.
• Shoot with 2.8f or better lens.
• Shoot at 1/250 shutter speed or faster if light condition permits.
• For D70 camera, set 800 ISO or lower if light condition permits.
  
• If shooting individual player, fill the whole frame.
• Shoot with the puck in the frame, to get the feel of game.
  
• Shoot action pictures, much more interesting.
• Wear something warm, because you are going to be there for whole duration of the game.

For the next game, I want to try with 105mm, 2.5 prime lens, which I have since the film day. Will see how my manual focusing skill vs. camera's auto focus mechanism pans out.

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.