Wedding album design isn’t a chore for us. It’s an exhilarating part of our wedding package and photography process. It gives us a lot to look forward to.

Ever tried to buy a special gift for someone close to you, carefully wrap it and place it under the christmas tree? Despite Christmas being a week away, you can’t wait to see the expression of that special someone when they open that present, right? THAT’s exactly how we feel when we design wedding album.

This particular album is done for Christine and Ben. We were so excited about showing them the album that we photographed the albums and email them these teasers,

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(Ben wrote me an email within minutes saying, “We’re on our way over”)

Now, what makes the Queensberry line of albums from New Zealand, our selected album maker is beyond their scrumptious leather, suedes, silks, buckram and bengalines. It’s their hand crafted treasures, an extension of style, design and absolute exquisite photographic albums that retain memories. Their albums are the absolute best out there and we are glad that we are a selected few in the country that carry these albums. Don’t take our word for it, check out the guest album and engagement album that we created for Christine and Ben for their May 15th Wedding in The Ahwahnee Hotel located within the Yosemite National Park. Wedding photography in Yosemite and the Ahwahnee will be absolutely fun and exciting. I can’t wait to photograph there again!

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So we are truly blessed to be blogged by Profoto. They are possibly the highest end and one of the largest lighting company for commercial and advertising photographers around the world. Their reach is quite phenomenal. We were working in Intel Developer’s Forum in Shanghai, trying to rent light for an on-stage demonstration to 10,000-20,000 attendees. We searched high and low in the metropolitan city for dependable lighting packs. The only ones that we are the Profotos.

We used to use monoblocks; however, our work on fashion, product, commercial and advertising means that the light source’s color rendition needs to be highly accurate. You really don’t want your blue dress to look magenta, do you?

Good Lighting is….definitely Priceless!

Remember the slashdot days, where a website gets completely overwhelmed when it was linked from slashdot.org. That’s where the term Slashdot Effect comes from.

This happened to our website today. Fortunately, there was no direct links to speak of. However, people still have a way of finding us via the photographs we took. Is it our style? They were, taken from the colorful shoot we did, just last week! Well, all the images from that shoot has been used in both highly publicized site, i.e. Gizmodo AND Engadget, on the same day!!!

Check out the articles itself by clicking the articles below in the Gizmodo site,

and the Engadget site,

How exciting can it be to be a product photographer, shooting say, 100 pair of shoes on a light table all day. Ok, if you have an assistant, you get to say, “Next!”. Otherwise, you’re fumbling opening boxes, taking a new pair of shoes out, propping it, stick them in a pose, take some shots, change the angles, adjust the lights, photograph some more, wrap the shoes back, stack the boxes properly, then repeat….times one hundred. Ugh! The thought of that makes me cringe!

What about photographing batteries?!? *groan* What could be worse?!

Well, what has batteries and fashion, colors, beauty have in common? Leave it to the owner of HyperMac to seed that idea, a mere 2 weeks ago. Did I go, “that sounds silly!”? No, we flew a rocket with it!!

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Too bad we only had one day. The idea _will_ continue with the next shoot, I guarantee it!! These were done using the Profoto D4 power pack, 5-6 light heads and the Canon 1Ds Mark III camera.

About photography lighting… my next class, Lighting for Photographers is on March 21st, 2010 and will be held in Maggiano’s in Santana Row. Both our classes, in the last 2 weeks, “Photography Made Simple” and “Model Photography Workshop” were filled to the brim. We expect this one will be as well. So, do sign up before it is filled up. Early bird (before Feb 15th) pays $20 less.

What a super fun weekend!! Over 100+ photographers attended our Photography Made Simple workshop in Maggiano’s Little Italy in Santana Row, San Jose.

Everyone loved the breakfast and lunch!

We got some great comments and emails from the attendees. Here are some great ones,

1. “Michael, the workshop exceeded my expectations. In addition to being very informative, it was also most enjoyable. From the first minute to the very end I was captivated. Thank you” – Trevor Ngo
2. “I especially liked Michael’s philosophy that to make pictures stand out, they have to be taken from the heart, and it shows in his work”…read more – Michelle Ma
3. “It was like 10 years of professional skills of composition, lighting, creative view, crop, portrait demo, to some photoshop retouching techniques packed into an injection. Voila!” …read more… – Dee Lee
4. “I want to give a huge recommendation for Michael’s photography workshops. I took Michael’s portrait and lighting workshop a few weeks ago and it was great! Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced photographer, there is much to be learned from him…”read more… – John Harrison

Here’s a shot of the back of my head, facing my class in Maggiano’s Little Italy, Santana Row, San Jose.

Now, doesn’t it reminds you of this product?

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!!!

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

The HyperMac is a cool-looking external battery pack designed to make the iPhone and MacBook products even more mobile. I wanted to get that message across in the pictures I took, and to me, the key to getting great product shots is great lighting.

On the day of the shoot, Daniel from HyperMac, showed up with product in hand, and we got going. As we talked, I began to light the HyperMac to show off how sleek and small it is, and how good it looks side-by-side with Mac products.

Expert lighting does the job that some photographers depend on Photoshop to do. No doubt, Photoshop can help out with minor enhancements after a picture has been taken, but the trick is to get the lighting right from the very start. It’s always great to see the satisfaction on a client’s face when the images appear immediately on the monitor to show how the finished photos will look.

- Michael Soo

We’ve been asked by a few prospects to show them sample images that we took of reflective objects. We figure that we’ll just post a shot we took for a fellow friend, owner of Vintagio winery, which he promptly used for his business card.

The biggest challenge for 99% of product photographers out there are photographing reflective products such as bottles, glasses and especially spheric items. It’s really because with these surfaces, you’ll see the reflection of anything and everything around the object, the sky, windows and even the photographer and his/her camera! The worst thing to do is to use the on-camera flash that creats a hotspot on the reflective objects.

The distractions are avoidable by surrounding the glass object with a surface that you want to see, such as white board or plastic. It’ll help tremendously to create the perfect glass or bottle imagery you want.

- Michael Soo

A beautiful day, 72 degrees Farenheit in San Francisco and we spent the whole day in Sintak photography studio. All is not lost! We have a team of fun and talented individuals to party with indoors! We’re shooting bridal gowns today!

Dresses are designed and tailored by none other than Jinza Bridal Couture. There are many bridal shops out there but if you are looking for custom-tailored dresses, using exceptional materials, look no further. Jinza uses only top quality fabrics, pure French silk, organza, crepe, chiffon for a smooth flowing look. Jinza is both down-to-earth and pleasant. Story has it that Kelly (the model and bride-to-be below, YES! She’s a real bride to be married in a few months!) tried over 65+ wedding gowns at Jinza’s with no pressure from Jinza. Now THAT is what I call “excellent customer service”!

Why let me tell you about it rather than checking out the shots…

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As with all weddings, I will only recommend the best makeup artists and hair stylists. Take a closer look (click on the image on the right) at the flawless makeup by Beauty Expert Tiffany and extraordinary hair styling by Mikel Sessions. You’ll now have a few phenomenal vendors at your disposal.

Many thanks to Margarita and Kelly for being such amazing models.

- Michael Soo