Friday, October 30, 2009

Pacific Of The Aquarium

Pacific of the Aquarium is located in Long Beach, CA. I went there two weeks ago as I got a free admission for being a participant at a half marathon in Long Beach that I did on October 10, 2009. This aquarium is a great place to visit if you love all animals, particularly if you are very interested in marine life, oceanography and anything related to this subject. This was my first time visiting this aqaurium, so I had a nice time and I learned a bit about some of the marine animals.


I love looking at jellyfishes!


Hmm, I'm having trouble "Finding Nemo".

More photos can be seen at: http://tinyurl.com/ye8cuu5

A few years ago, I visited the Shark Reef Aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. At the time, I only had a point and shoot digital camera. The camera wasn't really good at taking photographs in low light such as in an aquarium because the maximum ISO was 400, so trying to photograph anything in the aquarium wasn't fun and a lot of the photos came out blurry. Now that I have a DSLR camera and the maximum ISO is 3200 (including a feature called "image stablization"), making it great at photographing in low light, I was thrilled that I got to take photos of jellyfishes! I'm very fascinated with jellyfishes because they are beautiful creatures to look at.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Children's Halloween Portraits

I attended a chidren's Halloween photo session in Eagle Rock, CA for the Los Angeles Photograpy meetup group yesterday. While it was fun to photograph children, there were about 15 or so kids ranging in ages from six months to five years old (with only five or so photographers!). I only managed to photograph about eleven children. Some of them are siblings. Oh my gosh, there were so many children there that it was difficult to photograph them all. Most of them liked to run away and play or they were camera shy or just shy around strangers. I think I can handle photographing families if the family had two small children under six years old. They can have older kids, but one or two younger kids is a lot to handle since they like to run around instead of listening/cooperating.


Sister and Brother, Chloe and Sean:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p803339714



Baby girl, Eiza, didn't have a costume but was just as cute!
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p541500406



Ginger:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p728813398



Gracie:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p609259182



Brothers, Luca and Jaiden:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p666679583



Merrick didn't have his costume either:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p754366444


otis:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p1073485739



Brother and Sister, Phillip and Scarlette:
http://anastasia.zenfolio.com/p751421792


While it was difficult and somewhat frustrating to photograph ALL the children that were there, it was still fun.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Engagement Sessions

I went to a photography event over the weekend for the Los Angeles Photog Group from facebook. The theme was "engagement sessions". While there were six models there, only two of them were a real couple. Everyone was so nice and it was a fun event!

Mel and Carolina are a real couple and they are getting married at the end of next month. The other models were "pretend" couples, but they were also great to work with too.




Monday, October 5, 2009

Bridal Shoot

I attended another wedding photography workshop over the weekend. I always have fun in any kind of photography workshops and I'm always learning something new. The photographers who lead and host the workshops are always fun.

Anyway,
Henry Wang and Doug McNamee were the photographers who led the workshop. They were awesome as always, and the models were also fabulous and beautiful! There were three models and two of them are a real couple - Amanda and Josh - even though they are not getting married anytime soon. Rie, who was the third model, was just stunning and an exceptionally talented model!

The workshop started at Henry's studio in Temple City and we took photos of the models in the studio and outdoors near the studio. Then we moved on to the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale to finish off the rest of the workshop. Here are a few photos from the workshop with the rest of the photo session(s) on my zenfolio website.

After the workshop, we went to dinner to a Chinese restaurant called "Indian". What an interesting name! We talked a little bit about photography, but mostly of everything else and we just hung out. The food and company were great!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Miki

I went to the Los Angeles Photography group meetup for a high school senior portraits/photoshoot at the USC (University of Southern California) campus today. Only one model out of three made an appearance. Miki was the model. She had already been out of high school, but she could pass as a high school senior because she looked very young. I enjoyed working with her.


Someone asked me if I would do high school senior portraits awhile ago. At the time, I didn't know how this worked. I just thought that high school(s) hired a photography company and not so much the individual/independant/freelance photographers because the schools needed photos for the yearbook. I wouldn't mind doing high school senior portraits so long as I don't have to go through a photography company or have anything to do with the yearbooks and I can do the more casual, non-traditional/standard photos for the seniors.