I have not photographed landscape images in a long, long time. Well, engagement sessions come close but not close enough. Here’s one, photographed just last week at Cinque Terra, Italy. The city of Vernazza. Their seafood is fresh, olive oil, top notched and the temperature in the ocean, perfect for a pristine swim. If you do go, be sure to hike between the five cities. The view is perfect for anyone with a camera. Bellissimo!!!

Weddings in San Francisco City Hall showcase beautiful architecture. Many a weddings have we photographed there. However, when it comes to video / cinema, it’s an extremely noisy location with echos and is difficult to shoot.

With only ONE cinematographer in under 2 hours of prep + ceremony, it’s a miracle how this beautiful cinema was pieced together. Thanks to Paul and congratulations to this absolutely beautiful couple, Brenda & Ben!

When we decided to renovate the studio, we wanted to create a cozy, inviting space with lots of natural light and elegant furnishings. But we weren’t just thinking about the inside environment; we wanted to do something good for the outside environment, too.

That’s why on top of all the other renovations we made to our studio—literally—are 28 SunPower solar panels. They are the most efficient panels in the business, and will help us save money and cut way down on greenhouse gas emissions.

I don’t want to bore you with too many numbers, but this is pretty impressive: the panels will offset our power costs by $300 a month. Over the next twenty-five years, we’ll save a whopping $92,000.

But the environmental benefits are even more amazing. By installing those 28 solar panels, we’re saving the equivalent of driving a car 354,000 miles. We’re saving the amount of CO² produced by 3,400 trees. Imagine if a family that never recycled anything started recycling all their cans and bottles and paper. Twenty-five years later, they have saved 98,400 pounds of solid waste from ending up in landfills. That’s the equivalent of how much energy we’re saving!

With all the lights and equipment we need to use, photography shoots can suck up a lot of energy. But we believe creating a beautiful photograph shouldn’t come at the expense of the natural environment. The new solar panels help us give back to the planet while bringing our power bill down—a real win-win!

We decided to go with SunPower because they have been around for over 25 years and offer the most efficient solar panels on the planet. They’re so efficient that they even generate power on cloudy days! The panels sit low over the roof, and their sleek design makes them barely noticeable. We don’t have to put in any extra effort at all. And whenever I want to see something that will make me smile, I can just pull up the SunPower app on my iPad to see how much energy we’re saving.

Come visit our newly renovated studio to see all the improvements we’ve made, inside and out!

As mentioned in posts below about our Unique Selling Points, we are really proud to say that we deliver. Yes, we deliver! Every single wedding couple we photograph can expect to receive their highly customized album designs within TWO weeks. No kidding! So, you fly off to your honeymoon and by the time you return, you’ll be invited to see your wonderous album.

Take our wonderful wedding shot on March 28, 2009, Roya and Todd was invited on April 7th to view their album!

Check out their album!

- Michael Soo

Willie works mere minutes away from me in the big Apple HQ in Cupertino. This will give you a preequisite knowledge of where I shot Willie & Pattry’s rings… But that’s not what I’m going to write about.

Rather, it comes as a great pleasure to have Willie & Pattry be the first wedding clients to grace my new website, Wedding Impress. From now forth, all my clients will have their space for their friends and families to view their Engagement images, Wedding Album, provide Testimonials, etc. Ok, Ok, enough of my shameless plugs.

I do have to say that Willie is a heckavu cool guy. I had a load of fun shooting their engagement shoot at the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco. The fun part isn’t just taking shots where every single one of the usual photographers has burrowed their tripods. Rather, the fun arises where we took numerous shots that no other photographers has ventured to take. That, in my opinion is the fun.

BTW Willie, despite protests from beautiful Pattry, I do think you look hellavu cool in your shades.

- Michael Soo

Everyone meets someone unique every once in a while… Meeting someone who perservere through life’s trials of fire and rise again from the ashes, that’s definitely inner strength unseen.

Stacy and Harold are two such persons.

Wife of two months to Army Sgt Adam W. Estep, Stacy went through the worst type of pain that I can only claim to fathom. But time heals and despite not seeing Stacy going through the pain she went through for the past years (and will probably continue to face), it is my greatest honor and privilege to see her rise from the ashes.

Her new mate, almost a common man, but one that possesses healing energy of a water dragon of sorts. Definitely one of the biggest heart a creature could claim to own, a kind soul and a being of true love; he managed to coax and soothe her from her burning cinders. Wings torn, golden feathers in soot, she rise again, slowly but surely.

I watched in tears, my heart trembled. I am sadden by their circumstance but I envy their bond.

These two mythical beings join into a harmonious cry. Such roaring silence of rebirth. For this is truly, life’s greatest trials.

Stacy and Harold, you both have opened my heart. My warmest wishes to you both. May life open doors in every direction as you move into your new life together.

Wedding Album shot at Hakone Garden in Saratoga and Maggiano’s in Santana Row

- Michael Soo

Making food photography look better than before using natural AND artificial lighting!

I hope you didn’t blink. This is the last shot of the day where the baker made an amazingly beautiful wedding cake in less than 2 hours!!!

We were using the stone background when the setting sun started shining it’s warm golden light onto the wall (top right), casting the shadow of the structure 50 feet above. It lasted mere minutes.

I whipped out my 35mm lens to include more background in the shot, change the 5 lights setup in 2 minutes (if you’ve done wedding or engagement photography, that’ll improve your reflexes and thinking speed. Anything “wedding” has to be done in lightning speed, both physically and mentally.

The lighting on the cake itself was controlled to show the depth of a white cake that still has texture within itself.

The light behind the cake was carefully metered to be subtle and to accent the background, lighting what was supposed to be dark. Its dual purpose is to light up the “La” in “La Baguette” as well. Now, it glows a halo around the cake. Nice! Just what I needed. Within 2 minutes, all the lights were setup to show the white cake on white tablecloth nicely while the composition is surrounded by darker shadows (except the La Baguette paint). Perfect.

I took 4-5 shots and the light that hit the wall was there no more.

Could I recreate it? Of course!

How much would it cost me to recreate a cookied shot like that using the best equipment?
$10,000. (A high end Fresnel light + powerpack + a nice tall lightstand + a cookie board)

Uh, any cheaper way?
$3000. (A fresnel light modifier, the light of course, a tall light stand and a cardboard)

Still expensive?
$300. (Two really tall light stand, a cardboard and a light source but you need to do it at night.

How much would it cost to do it with nature’s help?
Priceless!

- MS

Commercial and Advertising Photoshoots projects with models is my favourite photography work.

I really enjoy organizing the whole package. From contacting models, working with the client, to pulling the whole project together. This isn’t easy especially if the client is on a budget and the models are freelancers. The reason is because they tend to either lack experience, can’t pose or are not as professional. However, once in a while, you do get some models who are good.

I’ve shot Ashton (shown here on the right) a few times before and she is very professional, beautiful and poses well. Here, she is backlighted with a blue-green gel that enhances the imagery with a beautiful aura of “intelligence” if you will.

Lighting is very important. When the space for the shoot is large, the lights will need to be ultra powerful. You’ll need at least a 1200 True Ws lights, preferably, something even more powerful, such as a 2400 True Ws lights. This is due to the inverse square law for light where the light falloff is rapid. If you are using medium or large format, your light usage will be even worse. Just be sure not to break the circuits too often.

On top of that, your lighting pack needs to be flexible enough to go into low power without changing its light temperature as much. I know for a fact (Yep, I personally tested them) that just about all monoblocks lights have a horrible shift of color temperature (300 to over 1,000 Kelvins) between max and min power. You probably don’t care about such shifts if you are doing casual fun photography but it can be incredibly frustrating if you care a lot about the colors, for fashion or product photography. Imagine shooting a white product on white background and you see a yellow-orange tint on one side of the product and bluish cast on the other. Yuck!

Back to the point, lower power is needed to enable shots such as those on the left where the screen of the monitor’s glow is important to be captured while you still want some lights to illuminate the background and fill the shadows.

- MS

I’ve been desperately shopping for a new beauty dish (that comes with a better semi-opaque center) for a while now. You see, the beauty dish that I have been using for a while (made by Paul Buff = $120) has a opaque center that causes light to not pass through very well. So, the reflections from it looks like a donut. Ok, you must think I’m a madman to spend hundreds, just to show a non-donut shape light on the reflections of my models’ eyes? Unfortunately, the laws of diminishing returns has caught up to me.

Granted, I can spare my wallet a lot of money to construct a round center that is semi opaque and slap it onto my beauty dish. But I guess time is money and hence, I don’t have the time to do that type of construction. Plus, I’m lazy. Go figure.

My final excuse is that I’m slowly converting my gears to Profoto, it’s a good idea to start swapping out the previous products. Ok, also, you can get a nice grid to go with this one. Which is fantastic. Just what I need, really.

I was looking intently at the 33″ Euro Mola. They are really, really nice but are ultra big, heavy and it costs a lot of moolas. Maybe when I have more moolahs, I’ll buy that mola.

In the middle of the shoot, Jade stopped by to pick up my still_wonderful_beauty_dish and got a bit disgusted with how I sell a perfectly good equipment and got a new one that look just about the same. Damn you, Jade. I still got your extra $3!!! Buahahaha!

I invited the whole football team to my residence for this shoot. Since a beauty shoot doesn’t take that much space, I had everyone occupy my dining and kitchen area and have the shoot done in the living room. it was heckavu fun.

The usual suspects arrived, Janice and Mikel. We even have Van from Ocean Blue Videography of San Jose to help with with my idea of videotaping the shoot for a possible instructional video!

The gorgeous and amazing models are none other than Tiffany, Sharin, Brittany and Mary. Test my stamina, baby!

I used 5 lights for this shoot instead of my usual 1-2 lights. LOL. Some people think that more lights = better pictures. Is it true? No comment from me on this subject. So, let’s move on.

Janice did makeup, Mikel did hair, I focused on the shoot. It was like a production line but we were just happily chatting along. It was casual, smooth and I had a blast.

I gotto tell ya. The models _really_ worked it. Tiffany got her hair in her eyes the whole time while Mikel had too much fun with the blower. Sharin’s skin is omfg, flawless. Brittany pull amazing poses out of thin air while using a toothpick to keep her eyelids open due to the ultra heavy makeup. Mary, she shot with us more than we shot her! It’s a complete teamwork that would not have worked if one of us are missing. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

For dinner, I got a large spinach artichoke, a large BBQ Chicken & a small sweet pig pizzas from BJ’s Brewery for dinner and we’re at it again non-stop till midnight.

We managed to stay alert enough to capture this shot of Mary looking disgusted at us while we prop her. Hahaha! I love it!!! Love it!!!!

The most fun in any photoshoot is when you get to collaborate with the best talents the industry has to offer. Here, in this shoot, we have:

1. two absolutely stunning models, Charisse and Milena
2. our gracious host, Jinza Jin who owns the amazing couture bridal line at 2040 Union Street in San Francisco
3. our lovely Janice Daoud whom I can’t have enough praise of
4. the most talented hair stylist, Mikel with a fantastic personality!
5. Of course, our Paul Ferradas who is always there to help

What’s this shoot for? How about for all our portfolios? Is that a good enough reason? WE ALL THINK SO!.

While I am at it, I got the chance to try out my new toy, the latest little photo gear from Profoto. The tiny little, Profoto Acute-B 600R battery and of course, its equivalent Profoto Acute-B 600 w/s lamp head. I’m not even counting the modifiers and this tiny light bulb made me bleed $3k. Ouch! And I’m actually thinking of buying 3 more
sets of these? Hahaha. Michael Soo’s lofty goals.

Talk about finances, I’m leaking … gushing money this month. My credit card bill came yesterday and even though I expected it, I still fainted for a few minutes before I ran and played with the lights again. I think I need help. Know a good therapist, anyone?

This is probably one of the main reason why a photographer charges a few pennies extra for their services.

On the bright side, this little sucker is an amazing pack. Possibly the lightest gear available in the market! 10 measly pounds!!! I could see myself pocketing the long term medical savings when I turn 70! That’s where the savings will roll in by the millions!!! Oh yeah!

I really enjoy commercial, high fashion couture shoots for a few damn good reasons. I can’t do the statistical type of shoot where I take 1000 shots, hoping for 1 great shot. I’m the type of guy who wants to take 10 shots, expecting 5 phenomenal shots! That made me really suitting for commercial since most companies only want 1 to 10 great shots and use it for anything from advertising, packaging to websites, etc.

I think we got enough out from this shoot to last us a while. Then again, we’re doing a beauty shoot the day after tomorrow. I guess I just can’t sit around long enough without fidgeting.

- Michael Soo