Behind the scenes in the NBA Warrior Girls Calendar shoot

Behind the scenes footage of the NBA Warrior Girls' swimsuit calendar shoot. Photographed in Napa Valley's own The Meritage Resort. If you have not seen the Trinitas Wine Tasting Cellar of Napa, you have to check it out, it's a cave, a wine tasting bar, a cellar, a spa and a huge traditional banquet hall, all in one.

(View in HD)

Some shots from the calendar:

Photographer for the Napa Wineries

I love good wine, so maybe I sent out a telepathic message to Dominus Estate, the Yountville-based maker of exquisite, velvety Bordeaux-style wines made in the "terroir" style. For those who don’t know, and I certainly didn’t, this traditional mode of wine-making works magic with climate and soil to produce wonderful vintages.

Anyway, Dominus found me, and we quickly agreed to work together. They gave me three bottles-two to photograph and one to pour from—and a beautiful etched decanter to use in the shots. I loved the decanter, because it does such a great job of showing off the lovely deep purple of the wine.

You’ve probably read it in this blog before...bottles, mirrors, anything glass is tricky to photograph. Glass reflects everything around it and can really wash out detail. That’s a big deal because you need to use at least four different light sources and modifiers to properly light just one bottle. That’s if your goal is to make the bottle look smooth and sleek and ready to leap off the wine merchant’s shelf into the buyer’s arms.

At my studio, we carefully lit the wine and took lots of pictures to arrive at the few Dominus had agreed to purchase. They were so happy with the results, though, that they walked away with double the number of images instead. And I ended up with all three bottles of $120/bottle wines as gifts. Whee!!!

Jewelry Product Photography - Catalog Style

Catalog photography can get time-consuming to shoot, if nothing, repetitive. That's one of the biggest reason why we are the perfect creative drones for companies who want great catalog photography done. What they don't realize is that, we have a ball when we photograph catalog imagery. Nothing is more fun than working on product photoshoot with a hand model and lots and lots of diamonds and precious stones. Ever tried swimming in a pool of emeralds or bite a eight carat diamond between your teeth? ;-)

After we did some photography for Brilliant Earth's lifestyle photographs that spans throughout their website, we were commissioned to photograph hundreds of their ring shots in their inventory of creative designs. Of course, we were more than thrilled!!! Assistant, pass me my green colored swimming trunk to match the emeralds.

(watch the HD version)

- Michael Soo

Bride and groom's wedding first dance

You have rehearsed your first dance for the twentieth time. You want it to be elegant, beautiful, perfect. Your veil and wedding dress will drift about you in a whirly waltz. Not any different than the father-daughter dance or the mother-son dance, your expression and emotion changes from second to second. As you reminisce your life that lies behind you and look forward to your amazing future, an emotional modulation from happiness to sadness; flow and ebb, flux within your soul.

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

This is possibly one of the most beautiful and elegant sliver in weddings that I adore. Yet, this is possibly one of the hardest part in a wedding to photograph (other than the kiss in the church, which is all about timing). You see, lighting for photographers is akin to water to fish. Dance images are always a challenge to shoot, due to how badly lighted the dance floor is, the continual movements of bodies in motion, shifting dance lights and video lights (that the videographers uses-can cause the brightness to veer from too bright-to too dark), the different angles to capture, and most of all, all that to be photographed within 2-3 minutes.

If lady luck smiles upon you, at the end of most weddings, your photographer will hopefully end up with a good 1 to 2 decent but underexposed (aka dark or badly lighted) images. They will most likely processed it into black & white, and claim it as art, or make it into a brownish sepia and chalk it off as creative. The pictures are usually very grainy and if you danced slow enough, the images will just be a little blurred.

My recommendation? One of the biggest question to ask your photographer is to have him/her show you A DOZEN of their dance images from A SINGLE wedding. That's possibly one of the best indicator on his creativity, lighting skills and how well he can tango! To start off with the challenge, here are my dozen, shot a mere few days ago, last Saturday, for Jenn and Matt in Maggiano's Little Italy's lovely banquet room.

- Michael Soo

NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders 2009/2010 Swimsuit Calendar released!

After the long wait, the 2009/2010 swimsuit calendar that we photographed about 3 months ago for the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers has been released during Training Camp! It's definitely a hit as the calendar was sold out during the first week of release!!!! Woozah!!

Well, what are you waiting for? Order the calendar NOW! It makes a great gift! I'm getting 50-60 of them, one way or another. ;-)

- Michael Soo