Trash the Dress with a Wedding Photographer

Your flowers have died. The cake has been consumed. All the alcohol bottles, emptied. You are left with hundreds, if not, thousands of dollars worth of fabric and lace.

What to do with your used wedding dress?

That has been the ultimate question for brides for decades! Some decide to donate it to a charity. Some go the eBay route. Others pack it away in hopes that their daughter will one day wear it, although you know your daughter will politely decline as she secretly cringes. Why not take that dress out before it begins its asphyxiation process in its bag. And then, have some fun with it?

So, there you have it, the fine art of trashing the wedding dress. I have shot high fashion, glamour and have taught a large variety of photography and photoshop workshops but this one, is by far the funnest photoshoot.

Download and view the HD version. (30 MB)

All the images can be found in the Trash the Dress Gallery.

- MS

一山還有一山高 - There'll always be someone better

一山還有一山高，强中自有强中手。is a Chinese proverb that my dad would preach to me over and over again throughout my childhood. The direct translation speaks of mountains that will always be dwarved by taller mountains. No matter how strong, smart or how successful you are, there will always be someone stronger, smarter or more successful.

The lesson here, really, is about humility. It's about how we should never let material success overwhelm our ability to think and to improve. The idea of success is not the ability to climb to the top. Rather, it is about getting there and staying there.

While I'm not trying to teach philosophy here, it sprouted from being around really tall folks in the NBA team, cheerleaders, tall models and basketball players (not so much the latter) that I've been shooting this past weekend. Here, Alicia is the coordinator of the Golden State Warriors. She is a whooping 6' 6" in height and boy, I've never felt shorter in my life standing next to her.

However, when it comes to creating an amazing portfolio for her, I always have a chin-high, stand tall attitude, for I know what was needed to be done. Here's Alicia on the left, during the golden hour where the sun and my bare bulb strobes shines upon her eyes, bringing out much beauty and colors in her eyes that entices the hearts.

This brings me to my new company slogan, Touch the heart, via the eyes. In this case, it works both ways, the eyes of the model and/or the eyes of the viewers.

- MS

Kid's Comp Card, cropping one's age, Atherton, California

Most people I talked to would not believe me that a single photograph, cropped just slightly differently can make a person look younger or older.

Case in point, Mittie of Atherton, a beautiful 10 year old girl with hair that glows gold in sun and a with a charm that will turn the saddest frown to laughter.

Mittie's modeling energy level easily surpass most hardened 20 year old models that I have worked with. At 10 years old, I never imagined her to work in front of my camera for 6 straight hours with few mini 10 minutes breaks in between, while I tweak the lights or change the set. And even then, she would be slipping from one set of clothings to the next. Most kids would have lost interest after an hour or two.

In the 6 hours, we shot in over 10 sets. That's quite unheard of in this industry. Most modeling portfolio shoot of this proportion usually takes longer. One set per hour is the norm. We managed to shoot at light speed (pun intended) due to a phenomenal collaborative effort between Rex (dad), Charlene (mom) and myself.

Rex created a list of possible shotlist that would put most photographers' comp card planning to shame. Charlene was the hair stylist and coordinator extraordinaire. She put her possible combination of clothes together before I got there.

The most important shot has to be taken care of first. It's the headshot, shown right above. Mittie looks young, innocent and cute! Perfect headshot for Art Directors looking for young models to sell Barbie dolls, fashion wear for little girls and what not.

Now, look at this new crop from the same shoot. No lights were moved and neither was the model moved from her spot. Removing her child bearing look by cropping off the hair band, her straight styled hair, her cropped look now focuses on her eyes and lips. Her neck lengthened and somehow, her face now ages to a maturity level that matches a junior high school girl. Her ability to hold a serious look and to follow posing instructions is definitely a boon.

She has now opened her look to two different age audience and market! How can she use that to her advantage? ;-) Mittie's comp card can now be customized like how one would customized a résumé for the specific company she applies into. Go Mittie!

- MS

Home Depot, my prop shop

My latest editorial article for Popular Photography & Imaging, the largest photography magazine in the world, involves scouting out props in Home Depot and taking pictures of them.

The article was just published in the November 2007 issue of Popular Photography magazine worldwide. I took a total of 6-12 images. There isn't enough room for all of them and hence, only a handful got published.

Here, I will take you behind the scenes and show you some images that was not published as well as, in one case, what the props really look like before they were lighted!

Before you venture further, please cllick on the images above and to the left to read the article. They will give you a fundamental basis of the story, which I will not get into here, in my blog. Well, what are we waiting for, let the fun begin!!!

The image of the tiled flower was shot in natural lighting, to showcase what the props look like.

The idea is to use only ONE light source to make the image stand out like no other.

The tiles are purchased from the tiles department and it has an imagery of the same flower shown. So, the match of the tile and flower is uncanny. I previsualized this image before scurrying away to craft it.

The image on the left, also taken in natural light doesn't seem to show off anything other than these highly expensive paint chips, available in the paint department. Ok, they are free and if you can get as many as you like but please do try to save some for the next Home Depot customer.

The beauty and secret of this shot is the idea of utilizing light to bounce off the white backing of these paint chips to create the glow you see in the image (click on the left image to see the final photograph). To top it off, the paint chip really had the name, "Fireglow".

This was possibly, one of my best shot of the day, and it took me all of 10 minutes to previsualize, prep, light and shoot! 8 minutes were spent prepping the chips.

The next two images are motion triggered. The image on the right, Spiraled Splash is a screw splashing into orange soda. My hands got all orangy looking after an hour of dipping into the soda. I can't believe I used to love drinking these and how my kidney must have worked overtime to cleanse the color out. Yuck!

Now, these splash images are the harder images to create as it's really by chance, despite having the advantage of an IR trigger. If you don't have an IR trigger, you'll most definitely be left frustrated.

And here's the cliche shot of strawberry splashing into milk. I ran through a nice case of strawberry before getting it the way I wanted. It was fun. My lens hood had a bad case of pox on it after the whole shoot was completed. Also, another set of PIA setups to shoot due to how random the images may turn out.

Last, but not least is the image below, also unpublished. I named it, Favourite Son. Yeah yea, it's the Royal British spelling of favorite. :)

- MS

My Billboard in Stanford Shopping Center

The picture I shot for La Baguette finally showed up as a huge 10 feet x 5 feet billboard in the walkway of Stanford Shopping Center.

I was taking picture of this billboard when the Stanford security started questioning my intentions of taking the secret layout of the shopping center. They were then on their radio for a while looking really serious. I think they called Homeland Security or the Director in Pentagon to check my name against their list of top 100 most dangerous terrorists.

I don't think it'll ever get old to see my work in magazines and on the walls of a super high end shopping center.

- MS

Unplanned Fashion Photography in San Francisco

I had a spontaneous fashion photography photoshoot in de Young Museum this past Monday (during a work week, yeah baby!). Nope, I did not plan where I was shooting nor what exact time the shoot should begin.

For those of you who knew me well since 10+ years ago, you must be gasping with horror. No planning??? Imagine the horror of Michael Soo doing something without planning for it thoroughly.

"My name is Michael Soo and I was an avid planner. An obsessive compulsive I_got_hit_this_spot_by_2pm and_do_that_at_3pm planner." I used to strive to be impeccable in my timing and mind you, my timing was accurate to the minute and I was the perfect manager in corporate America. But that has changed over the course of the last 10 years. I won't be going through my life story here but as a libra, I have been moving into my subconcious center to find that balance.

Sarah Abramson was my guinea pig...I mean beautiful model. She was amazing in every way. Very responsive in email, phone calls and texting; professional, and of course, tall and gorgeous. I gave her some directions on the type of poses I was looking for and she snapped into them like peas into their pods. I just wished we had time to run through more looks before the sun went down but that's nothing I can or want to control. Erica Carr did the makeup and a bit of hair work. I really like her positive attitude, very easy going and does wonderfully clean makeup work that made my job easier in post.

Timing was unpredictable. We started late, Sarah lost her way. She was probably making a U-turn from the Mexico border. ;-) Erica, on the other hand, didn't even know where we were meeting. The sun droop down the horizon fast. Going back 10 years, I woulda flipped. LOL.

But no! I did not even flinch! No brah. I was relaxed with my grande soy latte in hand, planning my week. It's all good. ;)

That said, the past 5 years have been a wildest ride that few has the stomach to swing through.

The Good

I was promoted twice in Sun Microsystems, Inc.

I was awarded the highest possible title in the photography world, Photographer of the Year 2005 by the largest photography magazine in the world.

I pulled together a local photography forum that has grew from a total of 10-20 members to what now appears to one of the largest photography forum in California.

I started Soo Photography, specializing in wedding photography, commercial photography, food photography and modeling photography.

Today, I found myself standing at a crossroad. I no longer have the full support of full-time engineering jobs in large corporations, i.e. America Online, Sun Microsystems, amongst them. What will the future hold? I wish I knew. Then again, if I did, it would suck the fun out of it and I'd be left a dull man.

Bring it on!!!

- Michael Soo

The Mythical Photographer

Before meeting with a client, they sometimes wonder who's the mystery man behind the camera. So, I figured that if I should enhance the mythical nature of my existence, I'll hype it further using imagery, smoke and mirrors. Ok, there's no mirror involved, just one flashlight, is all it took. The smoke you see is actually humid sea breeze, mixed with fine sand in the cave.

Folks in my forum then got really creative and started doing the Sprint commercial thing writing out the name of my personal website/forum, i.e. the SooCool in the soocool.com/forum. SooCool Photography Forum of the San Francisco Bay Area, California is the largest local photography forum in California with over a thousand members who post/read/browse the forum on a daily basis. I found plenty of great photographers/friends in the forum than I thought I would. Fantastic guys/gals who love photography with a passion.

In my last pose, I made full use of the floating dust to create a lightsaber look. I call it, The Explorer

- Michael Soo