Check out the Basic Photography Workshop page for more details.

BASIC PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP is a post from: blog by eulee

Taken from Dave Hill's website

I don’t really know how much of it is photography and how much of it is imaging work, but I’m guessing he’s an awesome photographer all the same. Any photographer who can shoot those awesome images in his backyard with an Audi in the background is indeed an awesome photographer! Check out the behind the scenes videos, especially the one of Girl on an Adventure, where he’s shooting underwater in a pool, with strobes firing above the water. That’s pretty cool! I can spend the whole day looking at all his videos.

And I gotta learn how to process my pictures like these!

His portfolio is up at www.davehillphoto.com.

WOW! is a post from: blog by eulee

The session was casual, very much the way I like it. More of sharing my experience and pointers to embrace and pitfalls to avoid. I love the enthusiasm and interest shown by the students, which made for a very interactive session.

Explaining how I would get close to the people for a portrait shot

Shooting with live view while engaging the people

I notice many photographers are not used to engaging their subjects and often get posed pictures in return. It’s either a posed shot with an uncomfortable smile or a subject trying to avoid the camera totally. I often tell people that the key is to be genuinely interested in what they’re doing and ask questions. More often than not, they wold love to talk to you. Even if there’s a language barrier. The fact that you’re a foreigner and you show interest is enough to get them to talk.

If you shoot from this distance you're not engaging your subject!

Less is more. My mantra for the day. No point packing everything you have on your back and let it slow you down or get stuck in narrow places. Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, you wouldn’t want to rearrange furniture when you start turning around. The more you don’t attract attention the more people are more comfortable with you. I’ve seen people on the streets in Singapore with a HUGE backpack, tripod sticking out trying to shoot street photography. No wonder everyone’s trying to avoid him. Stick a huge camera and lens in front of people’s face, and that’s it, the shoot’s over.

The group was very interesting with a mix of photographers and writers. So I shared my experience working in a photographer-writer team. My best experience was during my days shooting for Silkwinds. I really enjoyed shooting with travel writers then. In the end, the students had a better understanding of how to do research for a story and work with each other to develop it, and later publish their work.

A very enjoyable morning it was for me.

AT REPUBLIC POLYTECHNIC is a post from: blog by eulee

To learn more about the workshop, please visit the Studio Photography Workshop page.

STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP is a post from: blog by eulee

Here we are, Ming, James and I. James is the one in the middle in case you’re wondering.

Got him to sign my pineapple uke and shot it with my 100mm f2.8L Macro. I like.

ABSORBING TALENT BY PROXIMITY is a post from: blog by eulee

The url for the campaign is: http://store.apple.com/sg/browse/campaigns/back_to_school.

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH AN APPLE OR TWO is a post from: blog by eulee

Ming and I covered the performance shooting video with 4 5D Mk2s, 2 for backup. I was shooting fixed on a tripod, framing medium shots while he was moving around to get the detailed shots. Here are some images before the performance, during sound check.

The stage and my viewpoint

From James' viewpoint

Ming surveying angles

Sound check

Testing out the techno sounds from his uke with a chopstick!

James up close

Hearing what the audience is hearing

My favourite was the Billie Jean piece. Without witnessing his playing one might think he had accompaniment. You gotta see him play to believe it. He was pretty much a one man band! Here’s what i got from youtube. Be mesmerised, be amazed!

Tonight, I’ll exchange my camera for my ukulele and will join James for a jam session. Yah. Like real the way I said it. Will try get a few more pics if I can of the workshop…..that is if I can put my uke down.

UKULELE GENIUS is a post from: blog by eulee

The exhibition is at Level 3 of the Convention Center and will finally be opened to the public tomorrow. Just in time for the start of the Games.

I dropped by earlier to get a few shots of the final work in progress. And again, the images displayed were breathtakingly huge! Kinda fun looking at how big the pictures can go. Especially the 2-story high banners.

The display will only be up throughout the duration of the Games so quick, you only have 2 weeks to have a look!

Credits time! These were the great people who made all this possible:

Curator – Singapore Philatelic Museum
Exhibition Design – Claire and Barbara, Intuitive Studios
Graphic Design – Kelley and her team, The Press Room
Imaging – Yau Digital Imaging
AV Presentaton – Dany and his team, Intuitive Films
Builder – Desmond and his team, City Neon

and of course,

Photography – Eulee, assisted by Joel and Liz, Photography By Eulee

[View with PicLens]

SINGAPORE YOUTH OLYMPIC GAMES! is a post from: blog by eulee

There are a few more slots available so sign up fast! You can get more information here. Thanks!

AUGUST PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP – HARI RAYA LIGHT UP is a post from: blog by eulee

The Haven

These images were taken at the shoot in The Haven, a Home for abandoned, abused and neglected kids.

Reviewing images during a shoot is very important so how do I get the images into the notebook as fast as possible and how can people select quickly? I use both tethered shooting and the old fashion downloading via card reader. Why? Because I use 2 cameras. Why do I use 2 cameras? I’m too lazy to change lenses. So for tethered shooting, I use EOS Utility, shooting straight into a designated folder and Expression Media to update from that folder. EM is an amazingly fast software to go through tons of images. The card reader also is connected to the same folder and EM updates the folder automatically. So EM is the core that pulls images from the tethered shooting and card reader.

Quick review of images on LCD

Reviewing images using EM

Everyone looks so serious…

…but seriously?

This is actually quite unposed. Thanks to Liz's quick fingers to catch us clowning around

Kev was kinda like my test model for this shot

Shooting the kids in action.

Shooting kids in action

More reviewing

Child Care Center

Varying the angles can yield interesting results

Shooting at the Child Care

Shooting at the Child Care

We met people whose lives have been changed and testimonies that can move you to tears. Like the teenager who was assaulted and left to die but is now a drummer in the church worship team and is under training to be a hairstylist. Many of them have found God and that made their difficult situation bearable and more than that, have became victorious over their circumstances. Salvation Army provided them that opportunity to cope and some of the recipients return to serve.

Reminds me of the love poem I read this morning from Paul to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

All these people need is a bit of your love.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE SALVATION ARMY SHOOT 2 is a post from: blog by eulee

These were the behind the scenes images taken by Liz and of her as the lighting model as I make adjustments to my settings, together with some commentary and my thoughts on the shoot. Have fun reading!

The Crest

Salvation Army Crest at the lobby of The Changi Corps

And here’s the picture taken by Liz on her iPhone of me trying to get a vertical as possible shot of the crest. We tried to get images unique to each center and I was so taken back by this crest as we entered Peacehaven Nursing Home. I had this thought of blasting a light outside and have a nurse with an elderly walking and casting shadows across this crest. Unfortunately we could not find the time and this image may not fit our portrait series. Well, I’ll shelve the idea for another time.

Image by Liz as I take the picture of the crest

Tchoukball

I thought I know every game ever played in Singapore but Tchoukball completely floored me. Not understanding the game is one thing…knowing how people move and capturing the image is another thing. So Jason and I watched them as they played and got them to try do something that’ll look good on the pics. Not easy! If you see images available now, you’ll realise how difficult it is to shoot this well. You have one person jumping really high to bounce a ball of a net and a few people crouching really low in one corner facing the net trying to catch the ball. And how do you put them all in one frame??

Jason and I trying to figure out how to shoot tchoukball

Here I am trying to tell the player how to make the shot work

Take 1 out of the many takes

The Thrift Store

This is where most people would associate the Salvation Army with. So we wanted to take portraits of the staff and also the variety of items for sale in the store. For the staff shot, Liz took the place of the staff as I tested the lights. The ‘customer’ was also another staff. I used one light with umbrella on camera left and another light with just a reflector on camera right. Both were gelled with 3 stop ND filter to mix the light level with ambient. Seeing the background was important to me to establish context.

At the Thrift Store

Family Service Center

The Salvation Army distributes food packs to needy and deserving families and we wanted to capture this act. I did a similar shoot for the Comm Chest but with a much simpler setup. In this shoot, I had one light with umbrella in the corridor on camera left and another inside the house mimicking daylight. The corridor was really dark and relying just on ambient to light up the house inside would require insanely long shutter speeds.

So test models Liz and Kevin posed for this, with Kev giving away his shoe. Besides being the boss of Yellow Octopus, Kev is a very effective lighting model too. The final lighting setup had the back light toned down a bit and the key light upped a bit to get a better balance.

Test models Liz and Kevin

We headed back to the center for another portrait shoot. What made the center different from others is the food packing facility. It was like a large storeroom so I decided to use the store as the setting. We played with a few angles and light settings. Essentially, one light with umbrella on camera left and the other also on camera left but behind subject, to light the food items.

Setup 1: Strong backlight = I like

Setup 2: Subdued backlight and angle changed

More behind the scenes stuff to come….

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE SALVATION ARMY SHOOT is a post from: blog by eulee

You’ll be able to see more when the exhibit at Suntec is opened to the public in a few weeks’ time.

Entrance to the YOG exhibit

Entrance to the YOG Exhibition

The YOG exhibit

The YOG exhibit

The images I took on top of each column

The images I took on top of each column

One of the many torches on display

The Olympic Spirit

And the people behind the scenes:

Claire

Barbara

And Joel who assisted me a few times, including this modeling shot

For more information on the images at the entrance of the exhibit, see this post.

YOG: THE OLYMPIC VILLAGE EXHIBIT is a post from: blog by eulee

Visitors to the display will be greeted by fencers and taekwondo exponents at the entrance. The raw images from the fencing and taekwondo shoots are below.

Fencers in mid-action

Taekwondo exponents

For both sports, there was absolutely no way to pose them as we needed the action sequence. So we let them do the thing, and let the camera and lights rip! Now here’s the catch, we needed the highest resolution we can get from a DSLR as the images will be life-size, hence the 5D Mk2. But we also needed the speed of the 1D Mk2. Also, we couldn’t use too much strobe power as we needed the fast recycling time. So all the while I was timing my shots, using all the experience I can muster to anticipate action and pray! Why did we need strobes? Well for obvious reasons, light levels were way too low to freeze motion indoors. But the important things was, we wanted it to feel like a studio shot, with good lighting. It’s not enough to have grainy, blurry and flat pics. Of course continuous lights would be great and I used modeling lights on some of the sports but fences and taekwondo need a lot of space to move hence a lot of lighting power. And I don’t have 600W hotlights at my disposal at that time.

So in the end, what would visitors to the exhibition see?

Entrance to the YOG Exhibition

Entrance to the YOG Exhibition

And to show it’s a full size image…

Me and the display

Unfortunately the public will not be able to see the display at the Olympic Village but do watch out for the one in Suntec and let me know what you think of the images! For more images of the exhibit at the Village, click here.

YOG: STORY BEHIND THE IMAGES is a post from: blog by eulee

We decided on bringing in the M3, M6 and X6M. The cars will eventually be laid out parallel to each other but I didn’t think that would photograph well. The star to me was definitely the M6. With a hefty price tag of above half a million bucks, the car was both a beauty and a monster. The roar of the twin turbo V8 of the M6 is a head turner indeed! Especially in the enclosed showroom. We couldn’t resist molesting the matt grey paintwork, frozen grey it’s called. The M3 was in matt black. Great news for me! Matt means less worries about reflections. So I only had to worry about the X6M but the portrait with that car was tight and with proper positioning of the lights and car, reflection was minimised.

Preparing the frozen grey M6 for shoot at M Showroom Singapore

The back of M6 with X6M in background

After the shoot, portrait by Elizabeth in the VIP Room

The showroom will open to the public in August. Here’s more information and images of the launch event on 25 July 2010 – photography not by me though. I had my fun way before that!

THE M SHOWROOM is a post from: blog by eulee

We all believe it’s a matter of time before an app appears to do it seamlessly. I don’t need wifi shooting for now but maybe a USB to the iPad can do. They have the Photokit available but it’s for downloading and not tethered shooting. What I’d like to see? Shoot tethered with jpgs sent to the iPad and RAW saved onto card. Perfect! I don’t need to have the RAW files in iPad neither do I want to do any editing on it. Just want to use it to view the shots and discuss with art directors while shooting.

Can someone please write an app for this?

iPAD is a post from: blog by eulee