It is harder than what we’d imagined; coming up with the color theme is more difficult than the html coding. Please pardon our appearance as we make updates. As soon as we finalize our customizations; we will debut our new template.

The 888 date is a wedding on August 8, 2008. The number 8 has always been an important and lucky number in Chinese culture. The Chinese for eight in Mandarin sounds similar to the word which means “prosper” or “wealth”. In Cantonese the words for “eight” and “fortune” are synonymous and homophonous.

With such an unforgettable wedding anniversary and date; husbands will have no excuses for forgetting their wedding anniversary.

“That’s my commercial!”, I screamed out to my friends.

About two years ago, I was approached by Kim Wang of Digital Art Video to submit a concept sales pitch for a Chase commercial. To my surprise it was selected and made into a commercial.

If you have dined in a Chinese restaurant or attended a Chinese wedding, you have probably seen the double happiness symbol. This Chinese character “Double Happiness” is a very important symbol in Chinese culture.  Since the commercial is to target the Chinese community, I kept to theme of Double Happiness.

The commercial shows a young couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. The wife gives her husband a handbook for first time fathers, letting him know she is pregnant. He gives her a set of keys to their new home — financed with a mortgage from Chase.

Digital Art Video did a phenomenal job with the filming and editing of the commercial. Just imagine what they can do for your wedding, birthday party and other celebrations.

I was told that the commercial debuted last year on the Chinese cable channels of New York and Los Angeles. Maybe it is time that I get a TV and subscribe to cable.

Moms, aunts, sisters and cousins with little girls (preteens) in their family are familiar with American Girl.  American Girl is a premiere lifestyle brand that offers a variety of age-appropriate, high-quality dolls, books, clothing, and accessories.

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl opens nation wide on July 2.

Lesson No. 2 - - - Focus 1.0

No matter how good an image looks on the camera’s LCD monitor; do not trust it to be focused. This is a lesson tha I’ll never forget. From now on I’ll remember to check the image to make sure it is sharp and focused by zooming in on the image while previewing it on the camera’s LCD monitor.

Look at the image that I took below, and then click on it to enlarge it and you’ll understand. 

We have to make many decisions in our life daily, obviously we have preference; making a left or a right turn can get you to the right place or away from it. The preference we talk about are the emotional ones; the ones that shape our beliefs and our character – it’s our absolute. It’s the way things should be or life should be. Since we are individuals with different backgrounds, we have different belief systems. So which one is the right system

That’s when we get into trouble because we prefer our own system of beliefs or thinking. And when our system becomes the absolute system, the rest of the world is wrong. It’s ego. Let go and step back. The world does not have to be wrong for you to be right. Shakespeare once wrote, “There’s no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.”Now what does this have to do with photography? Well, are you a human being? Then there are situations we have no control of. I can give you a few from my own wedding experience. Here’s a partial list:

1. It rains on the wedding day.
2. The sun is blasting on the wedding day.
3. The priest comes over and curses you out right before the ceremony.
4. The eager friends of the bride and groom push you aside or get right in front of you just as the bride is coming down the isle.
5. The caterer refuses to serve you water or food at the reception after you have already been working for 8 hours.
6. Your car broke down on the highway.
7. You have a tooth ache the size of Manhattan on the wedding day.
8. The bride is late for two hours because the hair dresser is trying to fix one strand of hair from her forehead.

You get the idea. Things happen outside of our control and challenge our belief system. On a wedding day when I am photographing one of the most important days of a bride and a groom’s life I try to use the concept of no preference for things outside of my control. For me there is no absolute how someone should act towards me or how the weather should be. My only absolute is that I am entrusted with the mission to document one of the most important days of two people’s life and I will do that with no preference to what’s outside of my control.

It has helped me relaxed and keeps me focus on my most important goal of the day without aggravation. Our expectation of how people, things, or situations should be stops us from seeing things the way they are, and we miss the opportunity of capturing the most natural and candid moment. Photographing children are the best training for our ego. If we try to control the situation and force our will on children, the photos will come out unnatural. Only when we let go of our ego and let things flow then the images come out beautifully.

By practicing the no preference attitude, I am also getting a better sleep at night in the increasingly loud neighborhood of Lower East Side.

I am only human and I lose my cool once in a while, but it’s easy for me to forgive myself. I just use the no preference technique to forgive myself. Right, I wish it is that easy, but if we do not expect people or things to fit our rules we will be more relaxed and able to capture images naturally.

-the Storyteller

one strawberry…

two strawberries…

three strawberries…

who’s that?

“A photograph should not only capture the soul of the subject, but also the soul of the photographer.”

- the Storyteller

Japan Day 2008 is held in a green oasis in New York City, Central Park’s East Meadow. It will feature the best of traditional and contemporary Japan with a wide range of family-friendly activities and powerful stage performances throughout the day.

It will be a great opportunity for me to practice my photography skills. Hope to see you all there.

To learn more about Japan Day and to see a list if activities and festivities please visit: http://japandaynyc.org/main/

This picture was taken from our studio window. That’s the Manhattan Bridge in the background. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Last night as I was blogging; I heard a loud bang. I looked out the window and was surprised to see beautiful lights. Wow, fireworks! What’s going on? After a quick Google search; I found out that last night was the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you still don’t have any plans for this Memorial Day weekend, why not head over to the Brooklyn Bridge and enjoy the festivities. Please visit nycvisit.com for a complete schedule.

Be sure to check out the New York Times slide show Brooklyn Bridge Turns 125.

Finding the right first dance song may be a difficult task for some brides and grooms to be. When we decided to have music on our website we had to face the same difficulties.

I tackled the task as if I was planning for my own wedding. I wanted it to reflect my style as well as my culture. We ended up with a mix of pop, jazz and classical; with songs in English, French and Mandarin.

My favorite song so far is “In Love With You” a duet by Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau and Regine Velasque. It is a pop song in English sung by two very well known Asian singers; Jacky Cheung is a Hong Kong singer and is one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop and Regine Velasquez is a Filipino singer and actress.