sai kung town, hong kong

following charlie's (ms. p. in disguise) suggestion, i finally got to visit sai kung town.  well i'm sure i've visited 20 or so years ago when i lived in hong kong the first time, but during that time all towns' names sounded the same to me so i can't remember any of it.  this time around, dick, an old friend (in this picture, my nephews, two of whom are now married, were actually watching him do silly things to amuse them), came along.  photo, above, shows a fishing boat selling fresh seafood at the pier.  dick was amused when one of them got indignant when a customer offered her own bag to put her purchased fish in, saying (dick's translation): "oh please, i provide special plastic boxes for these".

the town center has narrow passages and seafood restaurants similar to those in lamma island's fishing villages, but this one, being in the main island, also has the usual chains of groceries and shops as anywhere else in hong kong.  being favored by expats, it also has some of the shops they frequent in central/soho.   

as this was just a stop before going to the beach, we didn't spend much time here.

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shoot and then focus?

in case you haven't read about this, there's supposedly a new camera called lytro that lets you focus the photo after taking it (in the example above, from their website, click anywhere on the photo to see how focus shifts). i said supposedly because they're keeping mum on the details. there isn't even a physical description or photo of the camera (surely if they're just protecting the technology, it's not something that can be stolen from showing what the camera looks like?).

what do you think? i'm doing the wait-and-see.

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one shoot down

finally finished processing all the photos from this shoot (october 2009, lifestyle, indoor and outdoor) in san francisco. there's a couple of unprocessed videos from this shoot but those would have to wait. 

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citi ad

eric seems to have a knack of spotting in newspapers random photos i've taken.  last time he spotted a photo i took of jorma (in a new york daily),  this time it's an ad for citi, in philippine daily inquirer.

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manly beach on a cloudy day

just in case you're wondering, the photos i've been posting are not current (taken a few weeks ago) and not in order. i just post them as i see them while organizing my files. this one's taken in manly beach in sydney.

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little pockets of happiness

***

i was apologetic for having fallen asleep because well, in fact it wasn't my bed. it wasn't even my house. why are all these people here discussing business ideas while i was sleeping?  i got out as soon as i could, put my outdoor clothes on, and started running.  only my spirit was running faster than my body so i decided to walk instead.  after walking for some time i came into, with college students behind me (they don't look american, i must be in europe), an open but empty chapel, sun setting on the opposite direction of where i came from stuffing every corner of the wooden structure with golden light. someone behind me said that the rhythm of the interior is like that of a carpark, with communal tables instead of pews. any other day i would've reached for my camera and start clicking away. but not today. i climbed on top of a  table and jumped from one to another. a band started playing a song that could've been a keane song. we all sat down to listen. at the end of the song the lead said it was entitled "cathartic", and i smiled because i knew the song. then he did the tongue thing that the band "kiss" does. as an encore, he lifted his t-shirt and showed the very big tongue on his belly button do the same. he then went around with a very small pouch, collecting donations.  he said they're trying to save up for a trip to new york. i gave him all the coins i could fish from my pockets, some of which fell on the ground (the pouch got smaller) and i had to help him pick them up.  the student next to me didn't have any coins, when the singer stood in front of him with his money pouch open, the student lifted his hand and used his pointer finger to pet the singer's chin, just below his right jaw. i was thinking - i am so banking this in my little pockets of happiness.

***

this is what i get from taking cough medicine before going to bed.  even in my dreams the medicine-induced euphoria is pretty tame (and lame). 


photo above is of kleber from a shoot in beijing late last year


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g'day for a walkabout

am still sunburnt from this trip - mainly because i spent most of my time just walking around (the sun was almost always out) - and eating, basically following marco's restaurant recommendations. i didn't get to try the food from this (supposedly) historic pie stall. am just showing it here because it looks pretty.

harry's cafe de wheels
sydney, australia

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here's the plan...

© Joselito Briones
this is one of the photos i took more than a year ago in new york - with mae and carol's granny.  when i did the shoot i was planning on putting them up as RM stocks, but now i think there's plenty of them in the series that it's quite a waste trimming them down to 3 or 4, so maybe they'll end up RF after all.

i'm just starting to pick up interest in taking photos again, but meanwhile i have all this photos just gathering dust in my hard drive so now i just plan to unload all of them.



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full circle

 © Joselito Brionesi spotted this, my very first stock photo (bowls, on the right), used to cover up a shop for lease in staunton street, a few blocks from where i took the photo 6-7 years ago, with a pentax 67II.  made me smile.  

it also feels strange, because i don't really have any more drive to do stock photography.  it got me wondering if all the hard work i've put in it over the past 3 1/2 years will just be reduced to this - occasionally spotting them in use until they've all become obsolete and useless. sad. i still don't know what to do with all the stock photos that i've taken but never put up for sale.

anyway, i was walking around because i bought a new lens today and i wanted to try it out.  it's a canon EF 35mm f1.4L. nice. why i bought it, i don't know.  maybe i just want to go back to taking useless photos that are of interest to nobody but me.

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simple doesn't mean easy

lol a friend told me that he didn't understand a single thing that i wrote with the photo design thingy, so here's another after/before comparison (a simple-looking one this time) and i won't even bother explaining it - enough to say that it was just as complicated to do, masking and all.

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experiment in photo design (last part)

(continued from previous entry)
this is the finished product of this experiment, and for comparison, here is the original:



am not sure if i achieved anything in the final version, but i sure learned a lot.

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experiment in photo design (part 3)

(continued from previous entry)
details. after seeing that the general light composition is as i wanted it, i added them back in, still proportional to the lighting designed. i started with the couple farthest to the sitting girl and their immediate surrounding, and made sure i didn't add more than 30% of the details of the originally cleaned up file. the idea was to create a diagonal visual link between the girl and the heart painting without letting the couple distract this link even tho they're positioned along this link.



next was adding details to the middle couple - i decided this was enough detail for the entire background so i added it to the rest of the image except for the first couple. i know there isn't a very pronounced difference, especially at this size of the photo, but it's there. i also added a general brightness to the whole thing as it was getting a bit too gloomy.



next was the couple closest to the camera - making sure to make them not too dark as to grab too much focus on them. i then added details to the girls, a little bit more clean-up (removed throw pillows behind the sitting girl, on the far couch), adjusted levels, then the finished product.

(to be continued)


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experiment in photo design (part 2)

(continued from previous entry)
fun part starts with a blank canvas. i added a simple circular gradient as a lighting guide, roughly following the thirds rule, to better bring attention to the main subject (the girl sitting by herself)



i then added partial luminosity of the cleaned up image in amounts following the lighting guide (20% of the couple closest to the subject, 35% of the middle couple, 50% of foreground couple, etc.)



a slight addition of the colors to check that they don't radically change the desired lighting.

(to be continued)


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experiment in photo design (part 1)

here's a bit of an experiment, brought on by a hastily taken photo - my excuse being that it was taken in a photo event where one is given about 15 minutes to compose, light and execute the photo. i guess you can say it's more a photo rescue job than anything, but i thought, what if i take it a bit further? after all by doing an experiment - you achieve something just by going thru the process - so no effort lost.

what i wanted to do was to see what it would be like if you approach a photo like you would a painting, i.e. do an additive process thereby ensuring control over the elements that go in the photo and the lighting relationships between them.



as per usual, i began by doing my typical clean-up edit. corrected perspective, toned it so that colors are not all over the place, replaced copyrighted content (painting on the wall), removed distracting elements (bit of balcony, upper right corner, and sloping window frame on the other side), etc.



right after "correcting" (there was nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't the perspective i wanted) the perspective tho, and before cleaning up, i had to do the masking. it's just one of those things that one has to do when working extensively on a photo. better have it done with as early on as possible to make full use of it. everything else after masking is child's play.

(to be continued)

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denise on a storefront display

© Joselito Briones

We were shopping in San Francisco today when I spotted this photo I took of Denise on a store front of a fragrance shop :).


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vetta

screen capture of istockphoto's vetta page

one of the photos i took of dan got featured in istockphoto's vetta splash page. makes it worth all the trouble :)


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an outsider in the inside

© Joselito Briones

as i'm sure you know by now, i'm back. and what time to be here, this place is just full of happenings. on international scale there's the u.s. open (isn't del potro just so cute?), on a more local level there's broadway-on-broadway, and of course there's fashion week in bryant park.

i was difficult to miss the massive tents in the park when i came out of the 7 subway station so i checked it out. at the entrance was a crowd of fashion fans and wannabe's and photographers. i climbed and stood on a podium on the side, but i didn't even bother taking out my own camera as there didn't seem to be anything interesting happening. what did catch my eye was an old man in a blue jacket who was just taking pictures in the perimeter of the crowd, generally ignored. i watched him for a while and saw how smoothly he navigated the crowd, his quick scan of everything around him, taking pictures of what seemed to be nothing in particular (he was in general looking below eye level, so it was obvious he was not interested in taking photos of faces). when i saw him load and reload his camera with an old-fashioned film roll, i took out my camera, took photos of him (circled, above) climbed down the podium, and followed him :)



© Joselito Briones

it was just amazing how fast he looked at things, decisively taking pictures of the few things that interested him, but quickly dismissing everything else. it was clear that the man has been doing this forever. i pictured myself doing the same when i get older :) there's this man who clearly could be someplace comfortable taking it easy and yet his passion brought him here.



© Joselito Briones

the more i followed him tho, it became clear that "becoming like him" is something one can only dream of. the man went up the stairs, was greeted and waved through by the event guards, and entered the tents. without showing an i.d., or badge, or an invitation that was required of everybody else. when he came out it was with people who seemed to be v.i.p.'s of the event (points to you if you can identify whom he's being chummy with in the photo above).

having taken numerous photos of him, i asked one of the guards who he is, and was told that he's a new york times photographer who regularly does a fashion feature. when i got back to jane's here in jackson heights the first thing i did was google him.

BILL CUNNINGHAM.


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markus pimping his watch

screenshot of madetobeunique's design

a photo i did of markus was used in this online bling store.


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yashica in veronica

katja was sooo kind to alert me on this use of one of my photos, in the popular dutch tv magazine "veronica". this one was taken in brooklyn late last year, the model is yashica.


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new shoot

© Joselito Briones

i did a shoot today with joel and (mostly) a friend of his, dan (photo, above), a language teacher from L.A. so far i've been lucky this summer to work with nice guys. and so far they all fit in my clothes that no expensive purchase of wardrobe for the shoots has been necessary.

today's shoot was also a challenge. i've pretty much covered the dress-up kind (for now) so i thought i'd do something more stocky. guys at work, working and doing other stuff. that's not the challenging part tho, they both did well and were very professional - it's the dressing up of the set that killed me. it's a short-notice shoot, so there was no time to scout for a real office location (and it's not like i can afford to rent one right now), so i made one up at home. the home office we have is kinda all over the place and not very photogenic (because it's a real working office - ha!) so i decided to dress up the dining area to make it look like an office. it took me all day yesterday, until the wee hours of the morning, to redress the space and i think it did look like a genuine office in the end. i haven't got the energy anymore to put it back to how it was after the shoot, so i'm spending all day tomorrow to do just that (sooo not looking forward to it).

is it worth it? that i saw it was possible (i knew it was possible, of course - just had to actually see it) was good. photography/stock wise probably not. i spent way too much time arranging the set that by the time it was time to shoot i was exhausted and with very little sleep. i ended up shooting only a small variety of set-ups, and in most cases my eyes were too tired to be sharply focusing on what i was doing. i think i'm too old to be doing the one-man-kick-all (to borrow a chinese expression) kind of thing. i don't really have any choice tho. it's not like i'm getting enough from stock photography to afford hiring a team. i did that a few months ago in miami and, well, my projection based on my average sales for those photos is that it's gonna take me at least a year to recover the money i spent on the shoots - hopefully they'll get downloaded beyond their first year so i can get something for my time and effort. it's always been comforting to think that i'm enjoying the challenge and getting whatever fun i get out of it, but to think of it in practical terms (as stock photographers were advised, soundly, at one point - to think of it as a business decision) - it really is downright depressing.


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