Tucked away in Rome, a little piazza designed by Piranesi in 1765 is a gate, leading to the gardens of the Knights of Malta (one of the last surviving orders of knights left over from the Crusades). Peering into the tiny keyhole and you’ll see this stunning view of the St Peter Basilica.

Rome is truly a wondrous city filled with architecture that is one of a kind in the world. Every street is filled with cobblestone pathway and building that bounces the light from the sun in magical ways.

Tired of the city and architecture in Italy? Even stepping out from Florence to an outlet shopping mall filled with name brands such as Prada, Chanel, etc. a few footsteps away from the very outlet presented Tuscany landscape that makes one wonder, why are there so few landscape photographers in Italy?

San Francisco Bay Area is one of the city that is saturated with demands for lifestyle work (as oppose to Los Angeles or New York that draws demands on fashion)

So, what exactly is lifestyle?

It really is one of those variable word that means something entirely different to everyone you inquire. Some will affirm that it’s about the softness of the images. Some claim a peek of the environment where the shot took place. Others note that it’s the matter of less makeup, real-world scenario played out, a soft blend of photojournalism and commercial. Yet more will point that it’s displaying people doing their thing.

It really is all of the above!

Lifestyle images helps the advertiser with a few aspect of their marketing:

1. It provides the setting, ambience and styling of the product & services.

2. Gives a snippet of the demographic of the users (oh, that teenage cute girl looks just my age and she is using the sexy looking iPod, I bet it’ll look cool on me too)
3. Creates an attitude and continuity in marketing. Nike, for example would always showcase top athletes in peak action. (they associate their products to provide the last 1% of excellence, in this fragile world of diminishing returns)
4. Demonstrates the usage, how it fits, its scale or size.
5. Showcases the benefits and features of the product in the real world.
6. Differentiate the product in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Lifestyle photos excel when the images are placed on catalogs that are used as a support vehicle to upscale retails (i.e. Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom).

There are potential pitfalls, however.

1. The product in a lifestyle photograph can disappear from view as the image gets busier. Some of the interesting props in the image can steal the attention away from the product.
2. If the product is new and has yet to penetrate the market, you may be better off photographing a large image of the product instead of lifestyle.
3. Lifestyle shoots can cost more and require a bit of planning compared to a straight product shoot.

Many catalogs use a balanced mix of product and lifestyle shots to retain a fashionable look to their catalogs. Whichever type of photography that is used should support the brand and is consistent with the marketing message.

- Michael Soo

The 2008 Warrior Girls Swimsuit Calendar was unveiled last night at the Oakland Coliseum with thousands of fans watching the huge 20+ feet TV atop the court and plasma TV all over the entire coliseum. What was it playing?

Oh boy, this footage below played, over… and over… and over… again. Even a burly security guard walked to me to shook my hand like he knew me since I was a little boy. LOL. T’was quite an interesting… rather, exciting time.

The management team did an amazing job showcasing the calendar. The line to purchase a calendar, to be signed by the cheerleaders were…. extremely long. The poor celebrity girls must have signed hundreds of calendars in the first 30 mins alone. Hey, anything for the fans!

View the high resolution video (38 MB) of the shoot.

Video is copyright © 2007 Golden State Warriors. All Rights Reserved.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIB6fG-NZ5M]

Embarrassed to say, this is the first NBA game that I’ve been to. It’s quite an eye opener to breathe in the energy of the fans and learning the etiquette. The Warriors did amazing that night, defeating the Rockets 113-94, with Baron Davis taming Yao Ming utilizing skills over physique. GO WARRIORS!!!

Check out the imagery in my gallery. Hey, you may even find some hidden jewels, i.e. images that are not in the calendar, a la Photographer’s Cut!

The 2008 Warrior Girl Swimsuit Calendar is now available!!
Get yours today online at warriorsteamstore.com.

- Michael Soo

So, I got a bit bored of shooting straight product shots this week. Although they are pretty, nothing conveys the feeling of “if I buy that diamond ring, I’ll look as gorgeous as the model in the poster” better than a lifestyle photography of model(s) wearing or using the product in an ad campaign.

This genre of commercial photography takes a lot of work and can cost a bit more. Think about it. Instead of only hiring just a product photographer and his/her assistant; you’ll be paying a crew of talents that range from great model(s), a makeup artist, a hair stylist, photography assistants, coordinators, security guards, location rentals, equipment rentals, etc, a la Annie Leibovitz le grandeur style. And of course, don’t forget about the knowledgeable photographer who needs to project manage this team of artistic and talented players in the studio or on location.

It’s no wonder that only the large jewelry companies are the only ones that can afford the types of ad campaigns that slap enticing images into several pages of popular magazines. These larger scale expenses can chew into the profit margins of large corporations with a tight budget. For the smaller guys, these types of campaigns are near unreachable.

I don’t think it needs to stay that way. Amazing lifestyle imagery with products can be achieved without breaking the bank.

So, how can we increase efficiency in a photoshoot? Here are some suggestions.

1. Substitute some of the less important roles with freelance models. Your photographer has probably worked with plenty that they think have high potential. Ask him/her for suggestions! Do note that, a risk involved is the ability of how the model to performs. Professional models are a bit more in-tuned with their poses, look and style that will match your creative needs.
2. How about getting a good photographer who has the know-how in lighting and can work his/her own lights without hiring 5-10 assistants that he/she can bark out orders to. Yes, of course, project size varies and there are times where a large crew is necessary. What I’m merely recommending is to increase productivity without creating waste or cutting corners.
3. A photographer who owns his/her lighting equipment means that he/she won’t have to rent them and that can be a great cost savings too! Equipment rentals can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars!
4. Also, getting a good coordinator to manage the time is absolutely critical and can save you money overall. Bottlenecks in production can halt the entire process and increase cost!

On another note, last week was an amazing week. I am proud to say that my photographs (both comp cards and beauty shots) help propel two more fantastic models to get recognized and interviewed by huge international status agencies; i.e. Ford Models and Marla Dell. These are the agencies that supply models to ads and campaigns such as Elizabeth Arden, Cosmopolitan, Glamour magazines and Abercrombie catalogs.

Suffice to say, there are phenomenal opportunities that can open up to them and I’m truly happy to be a big part of this turning point of their lives and careers!

- Michael Soo

Many a times, we use a single image to sell a product or to show beauty. For whatever purpose that image portrays, it needs to convey its story. That one image will also need to stand on its own unadulterated territory, emitting glory and charm to seduce its audience. However, like a fragile twig, that single image is an uninsurable agent that can’t please the world.

In comes the collective. You have most definitely seen them. They are a collection of artifacts in a museum like the King Tut’s tomb or an art gallery displaying the sum of the work from a single artist.

You certainly may or may not get Wow-ed by one of the pieces. However, the collection of coherently simple work can conglomerate to become a powerful set of art that ascend your mind to new heights.

The trick to successfully use a collection of images is actually to avoid the ultimate pitfall of treating each image as a single piece.

Am I confusing you? Think the classic example of a football team where the coach would kick a great player off the team due to his/her inability to work as part of the team. It’s all about teamwork.

Suppose you have a series of 10 beautiful photographs you took in Yosemite. All eight of them looks fabulous in black & white while two, look resplendent in color. By submitting to the temptation of processing 8 into B&W; and 2 into color, you have essentially destroyed the series or collection. Now, each piece will have to stand on their own.

Do note that the application of this knowledge isn’t solely on art but on marketing, branding and even engineering (consistency and change management)!

- Michael Soo

????????????????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

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

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

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

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