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As a general rule, the wedding slide shows I produce include a few earlier engagement pictures with the bride and groom dressed in their street clothes. You’ll notice in this piece, however, that the engagement sequence actually tells a story. And this is where I get to have fun sharing the experience of a best-laid-plan proposal that nearly got “flushed down the toilet.” Too many metaphors? Here’s the story.

Ronald had a choice to make: a motorcycle or an engagement ring. Of course, he chose the ring. He purchased it, hid it in a drawer, and began drawing up his plans for the perfect proposal. The theme was going to be “Of all the fishes in the sea, I choose you.” He would fill the room with fish, retrieve his ring from hiding, invite Stella over, drop to his knee in front of all his finned decorations, and ask her the BIG question.

Well, Stella pushed up the timetable by accidentally discovering the ring. Not easily deterred, Ronald was determined to stick to his plan. He sent Stella away, and in about an hour, he bought up the fish, tossed them into bowls, scattered them around the room, and Ronald – as we now know – was a success.

 
Poor timing seemed to follow Ronald’s planning. To those of us trying to get to the ceremony, it felt as if the entire Bay Area was there, too. And they were. The streets were crowded with revelers going to the Academy of Sciences’ grand reopening at the same time! Luckily for Ronald, other than that, his plans went smoothly. The wedding, at Zion Lutheran Church on Anza and 9th Avenue in San Francisco, was beautiful. A photography technique I used for this couple with their large family was, rather than backing down the aisle and out the door with my camera trying to fit everyone into the frame, I went upwards instead, using the choir loft—which, as you see, worked out very well.

The reception was at a wonderful Chinese restaurant, Zen Peninsula on El Camino Real in Millbrae. A fantastic part of Stella and Ronald’s reception was a traditional Chinese Lion Dance. The fantastic motion and colors provided an opportunity for me to use a unique camera technique to capture this. I set the flash to high, focused on the nearby subject, then literally tossed the camera while it took the picture. This is NOT a trick to try at home!! However, when done correctly, the foreground is in focus and the background has a blurred quality. Here’s the picture for you to enjoy.

View Stella & Ronald’s Wedding Album

Zion Lutheran Church, San Francisco

September 27, 2008

My best wishes that all of Stella and Ronald’s future plans always turn out perfectly!

—Michael Soo

P.S.: Now that Ronald has his fish of choice, I wonder what he did with all those OTHER fish?

View Lacee & Tejas’ Wedding Album

It was shot two weeks ago for a bakery in Burlingame that sells wedding cakes. I figure I’ll proudly post this image that represents warmth, texture, sweetness and class. It’s definitely a beautiful cake.

Trader Vic’s is a wonderful Polynesian-themed restaurant that has locations worldwide. The founder of the chain, Victor Bergeron Jr, is reputed to have invented the notorious Mai Tai around the time of World War II (yes, this restaurant chain has been around a LONG time).

As you’ll see from this collection of photographs, what the restaurant needed from me, a food photographer, was pictorial representation of a number of its menu items for use at international locations to standardize the look of their food. And with restaurants in locations ranging from Palo Alto to Los Angeles to Atlanta to Abu Dhabi to Beirut to Berlin to Tokyo…and the list goes on, you can see how the customary local cuisine presentations might vary and would benefit from these photos!

(Click on an image, then use your RIGHT and LEFT arrow keys to go through all of them)

As we all know, kids and animals are the traditional bugaboos for photographers. At Trader Vic’s in Palo Alto, I discovered a third problem model: the lowly sterno. As I mentally prepared my blog before this shoot, the titles “Mai Tai, Oh, My” or “Oh, My, Mai Tai” were rolling around in my head. However, this next picture—which took nearly FOUR HOURS to shoot—changed all that.

This photograph contains many elements that are typically a challenge to get right. Reflective containers dare not reflect the camera gear, for one. The beverage ice cubes in the Mai Tai at the front had to be frozen and the mint had to look refreshing to the eye. Minutiae required attention…burning faux grill marks on the skewers, for example. Food stylist, Randy Mon and I had our hands and eyes full indeed.

But I’ll cut to the chase. The dancing flame over the little silver kettle took the most time of all, and it became a head game between us and the can of sterno. Everything would be set: lighting, ice cubes, Blue Hawaiian, skewers…and the sterno would die down. Reset. Sterno wouldn’t flame well. Reset.

I think you get the idea. It was either the sterno, or us. And a picture tells a thousand words. Michael+team: 1; Sterno: 0!!

— Michael Soo

 
It’s always humbling when I’m chosen as the photographer for people whose professional careers depend on my pictures. So Cal model Elizabeth is a special case.

For years she has used photographs from her modeling gigs as her portfolio. But recently she decided to create a collection of pictures specifically for her. After canvassing websites of many, many photographers, Elizabeth found me; and she chose to drive eight hours all the way from Los Angeles to come here to Cupertino…TWICE!

We worked both days and had some fun setting up different categories of shots to create a complete portfolio: headshot, commercial, athletic, and business-style photos.

The collaboration brought us from the studio, to San Francisco downtown, to the garden in my backyard, to a local park. We really covered her comp card in more ways than one. Tiffany Chiang did the makeup wonderfully.

Being a model is about versatility and acting. By creating photographic situation for the model to act out her role will dramatically increase her chances of being cast into a role.

My best wishes follow Elizabeth back to Los Angeles, and I hope my photos will bring her great luck with her modeling career.

- Michael Soo

View Kirsten & Marcos’ Wedding Album

A recent photo shoot didn’t get off to a very auspicious start. I overslept. How COULD I do that, with my reputation as punctual and efficient? Working until 3:00 am shooting the real nifty laptop from HP and trying to be an hour from home by 8:00 am the next morning did me in.

But this isn’t the best part of the story…my day got better!

I got an education and some great pictures with a fantastic San Francisco business, Brilliant Earth. Did you know that Canada is the world’s third largest diamond producer after Botswana and Russia?

No risk of blood diamonds here! Brilliant Earth only uses Canadian diamonds and renewed metals (gold, platinum) for their jewelry. They also ensure that all other precious stones they use are certified from conflict-free sources. And as if this weren’t green enough, Brilliant Earth donates 5% of its profits to African communities suffering because of the diamond industry! Boy, is that some best practice or what?!

The customers of Brilliant Earth are double winners, proud to wear beautiful jewelry and proud to support the environment, as well as survivors of war-torn places.

In keeping with “green,” a VERY green location was chosen to photograph the jewelry: the Strybing Arboretum (San Francisco Botanical Garden) in Golden Gate Park. For all of the jokes about never working with kids or animals, or if you think it’s tough to get a model to smile perfectly…try coaching plants!

One would think that plants stay perfectly still. The truth is, not really. The wind (even the slightest breeze) can cause severe havoc to close-up macro photography. Shooting at a small aperture means that every bit of light needs to be coaxed into the camera. My portable Profoto 600R provided a lot of light for what I needed.

Shooting a shiny and translucent product in the studio is hard enough. Shooting outdoors in the park means that I would need to juggle light control, wind management, artistic direction, placement and replacement (thank goodness we have a stylist on board!) of the pieces.

I helped balance rings on very fragile blossoms. I inserted gemstones into very private places of VERY old trees. And I made a quiet succulent Queen for a Day…and the jewels look pretty good, too!

- Michael Soo

If you remember back in April, a local Vietnamese hairstylist, Allan Ngo of Allan’s Salon, approached me to photograph his work for a huge competition, namely, Goldwell’s Trend Zoom 2008 Color Challenge. This is very much akin to the Grammy award for hairstyling. (The blog can be found here)

Allan has previously entered in the annually held competition, to no success. For him, it’s really about the exposure and not much else. A month ago Allan called me, “I made it into the semi finals!!!” he exclaimed. He was elated.

Then a week ago he called again, “I WON !!!”

He went on to explain that the image I created for him showed the proper shape, texture, color, depth and lighting of the hair that is crucial to become a winning image. On top of that, makeup artist Aimée Lam really brought home the matching colors of the eyes and accentuated the look with her tedious 1-hour makeup work on Danijella, the model.

It just pleases me tremendously that I am able to help Allan “uplevel” his business and reputation a big notch. What used to be an underdog local hairstylist is now a big name. A true “American Dream” success story.

Allan is now sponsored to compete internationally in October. This time, in Spain. Congratulations, Allan!!! I’m rooting for you! We all are!
(The winning image is on the right.)

- Michael Soo