JPP Daily Photo

Here are a couple edited photos from my good friends' Emil & Barb's 50th Wedding Anniversary from last Saturday.

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JPP Daily Photo

Here's some photos of my cousin's new puppy, Ziggy. He's a 4 month old mix Jack Russell and something else. I guess that makes him a mutt!

Photo Settings/Tip: Since it was a very sunny day and I was a bit too lazy to play around with my camera settings, it was set to P Mode with fill flash in the shade.

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Facebook Ad

So I decided that I can't ignore Facebook's marketing and sales potential. I've spent a goodly amount of this morning creating a Facebook ad banner. Now I need to work on a page for my website that contains the senior photos special I'm advertising on Facebook. Wish me luck, I can use the extra business!

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JPP Daily Photo

As promised, I'm uploading more photos from Ashley's Urban shoot. I made these especiale por Ashley!

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P.S. My favorite is image 105. It really shows Ashley's beautiful eyes...!

JPP Daily Photo

So here's the daily photos. I took these family portrait of Jennifer and her cute baby daughter, Nikia. She was cute as a button and very easy to take photos of. Quite the opposite of my niece, Miley, who can't stand still long enough to take any photos of her!

Photo Settings/Tip: Most of the photos were taken using manual mode on my D200 and 18-50mm f/2.8. More than half were processed in Lightroom as RAW files. The later headshots were in JPEG.

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JPP Daily Photo

First day of the first week after quiting printroom. Had a couple errands to run this morning. Afterwards I met up with my friend, Young, for lunch. Young is also a photographer. We caught up on the latest going ons in my world as well as his. Plus I can always ask him advice on photography since he has a good working knowledge of the technical side. After lunch, I headed to REI to get some bike gear. I need to polish and clean up my mountain bike so I can start biking again. So I really didn't have time to take any photos today but I will try to remedy that for the rest of the week.

In the meantime, I experimented on some of Ashley's urban photos from Sunday. In Lightroom 2.0, I played around with the Saved Preset settings in the Library section. I'm still trying to capture that bold, magazine style look. Here's what I got just from using Lightroom. I am going to edit more in Photoshop until I feel its 100% what I want it to look like.

You can compare these with the first image I posted last night. That version I used high pass filtering to get that look. These are quite different. Let me know which look you prefer!

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Memorial Day Remembrance

On this Memorial Day, I just wanted to say Thanks to all those veterans who sacrificed their lives and their tomorrows for the present and future American generations! Here's a photo I think that somes up the sentiments.

P.S. I am thankful because my father was fortunate to survive his tours during the Vietnam war. I know there are over 57,000 of his fellow serviceman who gave up their lives in that conflict.....

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JPP Daily Photo

Ashley and I were supposed to shoot an urban theme photo session today in Downtown San Jose. She had a great outfit with an awesome hat and cool tie too. Well we found a really nice spot near the old Greyhound station and Tiki Lounge. Here's one of the photos that I was playing around with after the shoot. I'm going to also be doing some black & white and 50's style photos with the rest of them. This is just a teaser. Ashley knows I always work on a few of the photos right after the shoot!

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JPP Daily Photo

This should have been posted yesterday but as I just finished taking the photo in the evening, I only had the chance to post it now. I had the pleasure to be the official photographer for my dear friends, Emil & Barb, for their 50th Anniversary. It was a small, intimate affair that had about 50 of the closest friends and relatives. It was a distint honor for me to be able to share and take the photos of their special event. Here's a photo of Emma, one of the grandchildren, practicing in the hall for her solo guitar performance later that night. I'll post some more of the best photos later this week.

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P.S. She played absolutely beautifully. I only wish I had the chance to record her performance on video for everyone to hear. =)

Thoughts

As I wrap up my last day at Printroom, I'm contemplating the next step for my photography business and career. I'm looking forward to spending more time developing my camera and photoshop skills. Admitedly in the last several months its been a juggling act working full time in the weekday and trying to take photos on the week nights and week-ends. Quite a few of my friends know that I've been lamenting about working til the wee hours on the weekdays while processing and editing files. Now I can really put 100% of my time and efforts into my photo endeavors. Also I will be doing marketing for a friend's startup that is also in the photography market. So I am looking with full, open eyes on the prize. Ultimately I want to take good photos which will bring an emotional tear to the people who view it. Its all about capturing the "moment" as I tell every new client!

I'll close this passage with one of my favorite photo quotes,

"Amateurs worry about sharpness
Professionals worry about sales
Photographers worry about light"
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JPP Daily Photo

Here's one of my favorite black & white Yosemite photos from 2007. Don't think I've posted this before. It reminds of Ansel Adams work. It also gives me the itch to go to Yosemite to take some photos!

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JPP Daily Photo

Here's another photo I took this past weekend of my younger niece. I've been doing a lot of senior photo headshots. So much that I'm really feeling comfortable with the new technique.

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JPP Daily Photo

Wow. One of the best things about living in California is the gorgeous sunsets in the summertime. Yesterday while driving to my sister's place after work, I saw clouds covering the sun as it was going down to the horizon. It created this very dramatic scene. So busting out with my ever present D-SLR, I drove with one hand and took a bunch of photos with my camera in the other hand [Don't recommend you do this yourselves, kids! As it does take a lot of experience and a bit of risk]. Here's the results...!

Photo settings/tip: Nikon D1x with 18-55mm VR lens set to P mode at 18mm focal length. Convert in Lightroom. Played with curves and cropped it in Photoshop CS3. Added my logo and a custom border. Ta-daa! Instant gallery print. =)

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JPP Daily Photo

On Saturday I took these 2 photos of a young child and his dad. It was scorching hot (98 degrees) that day. It looks like the son had a good idea for cooling off but Dad thought otherwise!

Photo Setting/Tip: D200 with 55-200mm VR lens set to Sunny F16 rule at 200mm focal length.

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JPP Daily Photo

I took this photo last Saturday night. The moon was rising on the horizon. It look bigger than normal (a visual trick due to the moon being closer to the horizon). I tried getting some foreground objects to give it perspective but it was way too dark. Still an interesting image I think.

Photo Settings/Tip: On a tripod in Shutter Priority for 1 sec using self-timer at 200mm.

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Thoughts for the Day

As I am going through the first half of this week which translates into 1 1/2 more weeks before my last day, I'm amazed that I can still find something new in the office. The highlights for this week are (1) I've been twiddling around with the prospect of adding photo editing as a product and service to my photography business. Tuesday's update is the official launch of this feature (2) Talking with Jim one of our account managers at Printroom, he not surprisingly gave me some great ideas for my photography business. Specifically with the wedding photography market. I was so sincerely touched by his earnest, helpful advice that I asked Jim if he could be my account manager at Printroom. My official AM was Eddie Tran who left Printroom in Fall '09. I truly believe that Jim's account management advice will help me grow, succeed in my photography business (3) Lastly I've been working hard in the last several months establishing my "own" style of photography, Admittedly I am inspired by great photographers whose work blows me away. To name a few: Kevin Major Howard, Jeremy Clay and, a recent discovery today, Audrey Dubois. Trying to incorporate there work in my style, I've had the awesome help of Ariana whom I've mentioned in my blog. As grad from the prestigious Brooks Institute, she has both the great background in photography and graphics design as well a her natural talent as an artist. Ari has been very kind in showing me in Photoshop how to move my photography style to the next level in terms of post processing. Today I really feel I have a grasp on how to do the magazine publication style, or as I call it, the "Calvin Klein" ad look in my photos. I think I've scratched the surface but I feel like I can only get better as I keep taking good photos. And keep practicing and working photoshop. In any case, here's a couple photos that I put together today that will fall under one of my new John Paul Photography's 5 Photographic Styles. Namely the "Bold".

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JPP Daily Photo

Here are the group shots from that senior photo shoot from last Saturday.

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JPP Daily Photo

I saw this horse and carriage while taking some senior photos this last Saturday. Very classy looking.

Photo Settings/Tip: I think I set it to P mode but I didnt use fill flash cause I didn't want to spook the horse!

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New Annoucement: John Paul Photography is now offering photo editing and touch-up services!

Ex #1: Advanced Photo Editing.

Ex: #2 Sample above shows list of Basic Photo Editing.

Yup. You heard right. As I've already been doing photo editing and touch-ups at Printroom for the last year, I've decided to launch that service formally on my website. I've also inquires in the last year from people whom I've taken their photos. A common request is to restore old photos which I offer with my Advanced editing. Basic editing is for the most simplest of photo editing (exposure, color balance, minor blemishes, etc). This is more geared towards those customers' who need help "fixing" photos they took or need printed for a special occaison. Right now the service is being offered thru my regular website but I am working on better website or own domain. Please tell any of your friends or family that might be interested in this service.

http://johnpaulphotography.com/

Thanks,

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Can you believe it??

So I was on the phone at work today. I got a call from someone who needed help with his printroom order for Fenway parkway. Now being a total non-baseball person (the only one in my family expect maybe my sister), I don't know Fenway from Dodger stadium to Green Monster. So I ask the guy who sounds like he has an eastcoast accent, if this is for the Yankees team? His reaction is, "Are you kidding me?" And I reply, "I'm not a baseball person so please tell me which team is for Fenway." And he says, "I don't want to talk to you to you right now." And he proceeds to hang up! Can you believe this happened? I mean talk about a very loyal baseball (Boston Redsox as I found out later) fan.

My only reaction to that this guy is relax and get a life. lol

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JPP Daily Photo

Here are some senior photos I took this past weekend. I must say that I first thought it was going to be not so good since we were shooting in the middle of the afternoon (12:30pm). However I found a great backdrop and stuck them in the shade and used fill flash for the faces. Not too bad!

Photo Tip/Settings:
Nikon D200 with 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. Used back of brick wall and my SB800 flash as a slave (Nikon's CLS wireless system) set to TTL. Lightroom to convert raw files to jpeg but only adjusting WB and exposure as usual. No photoshop this time, right out of the camera! Can you believe how good they look with no post processing??

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JPP Daily Photo

Some samples of executive portraits and headshots of my friend, Bobby.

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