The day is almost upon us… when we toss aside thoughts of sleep, rest or relaxation and drown ourselves in a sea of fellow photographers who want to soak in everything they can from the multitudes that surround them.

People attend WPPI for such a variety of reasons. From the practical: “I come to see the exhibits and learn at the classes” to the hippie: “I want to make friends and love each other” to the brutally honest: “I wanna get wasted on free booze!”

This year we’re doing a few new things and a few old things… and we thought we’d take this opportunity to let everyone know some of the cool projects we’ll be up to.

New Media Lounge

Last year we teamed up with WPPI and Dane Sanders to bring the photography industry’s first WPPI Blogger’s Lounge. It was a comfortable space for you to come and sit in plush LoveSacs and use free WiFi… which having access to people who could help you with your questions about blogging, Twitter and other social media platforms. It was quite a success and stayed pretty much packed the entire duration of the tradeshow.

This year we’re taking it one step further. Pictage took the helm this year by sponsoring the booth and brought both The Bui Brothers and Dane Sanders back in for what is now called the New Media Lounge. We’ll still have super comfy furniture supplied by LoveSac and free WiFi… but this year we’re also focusing on bringing WPPI to those who can’t actually attend. Dane will be doing live streaming videos from the booth… while Lan and I will be shooting a live photo stream at all times from the tradeshow floor, the various booths, and even the parties at night. Thanks to Whrrl, EyeFi and Olympus, we’ll be shooting photos that will be uploaded wirelessly within seconds no matter where we are in the city to the special page we’ll have set up specifically for this stream. If you see us any time, Sunday night through Thursday, strike a pose noteworthy enough to make it to the live stream! More details are to follow about this awesome project.

One on One With a Bui

A few people have asked and we know others are doing this so we’re going to have a signup sheet at the booth where you can reserve a time to speak one on one with us about anything you want. Each session is 20 minutes long, and we’ll be available for 1 hour a day. Visit the booth for more details on this.

Smug Mug Booth

We’ll also be speaking at the SmugMug booth at 11:30am on Tuesday the 9th for 20 minutes, then again at 2:00pm on Wednesday. We’ll be taking questions and talking about how merging video with photos doing behind-the-scenes videos has worked for us. There are going to be great speakers there all day long so make sure you check it out!

P-P-P-Parties!

Yes, we’ll be attending parties. As many as possible. It’s part of our live photo streaming project to attend as many things as we can, but I can’t deny that attending these functions is just plain fun. Visiting with industry friends you only see a couple times a year is a blast… and standing shoulder to shoulder in a hotel room while laughing your ass of at the crazy things the more rowdy attendees are up to is always enjoyable.

We’re particularly excited about the Pictage/KISS party at Studio 54 where we’ll be shooting THE party video of WPPI, but there are lots more to attend every single night of the show!

Stalk Us With Ease

You can find out what we’re doing at any time by following our twitter feeds, @lanbui and @vubui. We’ll be geotagging our tweets wherever we are!

What will YOU be up to at WPPI? Comment below and let us know.

- Vu

We’ve been contacted by a few people in the past few days asking if we’d be doing a lighting workshop at WPPI. Our answer for the first two people was a quick no, but after the third we started to reconsider.

We are giving a 4-hour outdoor on-location lighting workshop for Sunday afternoon (the 7th) from 1:30pm to 5:30pm. We’ll have 2 models and you’ll each get to photograph each lighting setup, so yes, bring your cameras.

We’ve made the price an absolute no-brainer $75 (so we don’t take away too much of your gambling funds). We’re only taking 20 people max, so seats may sell out. Book now to reserve yours.

UPDATE:

Sold Out

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The workshop will cover:
- the perfect headshot
- shooting headshots/portraits with natural light
- small flash off-camera dramatic lighting
- small flash off-camera fill lighting

We’ll obviously be in an urban setting and will do a number of fashion-style shots. We’ll also explain the reasoning behind each light placement choice and camera setting, so you’ll be able to not only replicate the scenes but use the knowledge to create your own.

Special workflow and editing add-on $45 :

(I’ve been meaning to write about photographers and SXSW for a while when suddenly yesterday I received a message from Jasmine Star asking the exact question I wanted to answer… Thanks Jasmine for motivating me to actually write this)

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First, for those that know what SXSW is and do not want to read this post… Yes, you should go. It will change your life.

Second, for those of you that don’t know what SXSW is… South By Shouthwest (or SXSX) is a music, film and interactive media festival held in Austin, Texas each year. That description does it no justice though so I’ll elaborate. SXSW attracts 29,000 registrants each year to teach, party and mix with each other. Of the three parts of SXSW I’ll mostly talk about SXSWi (or South By Southwest Interactive) because that is where it all happened for me. I have participated in some of the music festivities; I love to walk down Sixth Street and stop in and listed to a random band that makes me wonder why they are not signed to some major label (and making it in the top ten on iTunes). I’ve also been to a few films at SXSW; many are independent films that you may never hear of again but they are gems, and you can also see early releases of what will become major independent films months later.

So… SXSW Interactive…

SXSWi… Is where I first really started using Twitter… Three years ago… Yep, three years ago, way before Oprah and Miley Cyrus and likely even you had even heard of it. I feel lucky that when I started using Twitter, we didn’t even know what it was really going to become. It was just the best way for groups of friends to follow each other and keep in touch. That, again, was three years ago… I can’t wait to find out what is new this year at SXSWi that will change my life.

SXSWi… Is where you will really learn what New Media is. I’ve been able to sit down and have dinner with major players at Facebook, DIGG, Myspace and been able to sit and talk face to face with the people that are changing the world.

SXSWi… Is where I’ve sat in a session and learned mind-blowing things. The speakers don’t get chosen because of how cool they are or how popular they are… They are chosen because of how they have changed the world… or because they truly are the one person in the world that should be speaking on that subject.

SXSWi… Is where I’ve built business relationships that are lasting years. Photography industry trade shows are great for learning how a rockstar photographer built their business. They even will teach you the perfect lighting setup or the perfect workflow… but it won’t introduce you to your clients. It won’t let you sit down with, hang out, listen to live music, have a good time, get to know… and most importantly… bond with the people that just might pay your salary for the next few years.

That is where it is totally worth going. If not to find out what is cool, if not to learn about New Media, if not to hear someone speak about something mind blowing… Go to SXSW because the other attendees, speakers, trade show vendors and businesses need your services. You just need to be there to meet them.

—–
Oh, and one last thing… Vu and I are speaking this year… if you come you have to attend to our session, read the details here now.

-Lan

Vu and I were so happy to be hired to shoot The Guild Season Three DVD cover!!! We were fortunate enough to have done a photo shoot of Felicia Day before and when we got the call to shoot the DVD for The Guild Season 3 we got very excited. (Thank you so much Kim and Felicia!!!)

I wish the video clip above had more of the shoot in it, everyone from The Guild cast was so nice. We didn’t end up shooting much behind the scenes video because were were busy working… That reminds me… while taking photos at the Streamy Awards we were able to take a photo of the entire cast of The Guild.

The photos for The Guild Season Three DVD cover were all taken as individuals by Vu and I on green-screen and then the final design was done by New Video Group, Inc. (used with permission)

I’m very happy with the way everything turned out for the Season 3 DVD cover.

One other thing we shot, were some images for Greg Aronowitz to use to make scuptures… here is a sweet blog post detailing the Vork Unbreakable Bank sculpture featured in “The Guild Sells Out”.

If you are looking to buy The Guild Season Three on DVD, get it from Amazon here now. You can also get all three seasons of The Guild on DVD:

The Guild Season 1 DVD :

The Guild Season 2 DVD :

The Guild Season 3 DVD :

The amazon links on this page are affiliate links

It has been quite a while since we shot this promo video for Furious Photographers… I think the result is still pretty awesome.

Furious Photographers hired us to go with them to Cancun and Isla Mujeres to shoot two weddings back to back. Well… we were there to shoot a promo of them and not really the weddings. We did end up shooting a Cancun wedding video as well, but that was just for fun.

Many of you may be interested in how we shot the photography promo video, what equipment was used and how it was edited. Here are tome technical details about the promo video:

Cameras used: Canon 5D Mark II and Canon HV20
Camera Stabalizers: Stedicam Merlin and monopod
Software used: iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Motion, PFhoe, photoshop and compressor.
Music used with permission by: Paul Dateh and Ken Belcher

Some of my favorite shots are when we took two boats out to sea off the coast of Tulum. It was pretty amazing to be shooting out there on the water, the Canon 5D Mark II even got a little wet.

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This page is the home of the Canon 7D Film Challenge (or we can call it a deathmatch, some of you OG people remember…)

We will update you here as things advance and ideas grow… but for now here is the idea:

1. Shoot on a Canon 7D
2. Take only 7 hours to complete EVERYTHING
3. Final video is exactly 70 seconds
4. Challenge Date TBD

Sign up below to get email notifications of all up to date information:

Canon 7D Slow Motion

We took the Canon 7D out and shot some fun footage at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval. The parts with audio were shot in 24p with the Canon 7D and the slow motion parts were shot in 60p. We used cinema tools to conform the 60p videos to 24p, we could have slowed the 60p video down to 30p but wanted to shoot in 24p for coolness.

The Canon 7D slowmo shots came out really good. Since we were just out to have fun, all of the 7D footage was done handheld. It actually looks great handheld because once you slow the 60p videos down to 24p you don’t see how shaky the clips it.

So, if you have a Canon 7d, I would recommend you go out and shoot some stuff in 60p to make some good Canon 7d slow motion movies.

I think this is a great 7D slow motion test video or Canon 7D slowmo example.

We have been fortunate enough to have photographed some amazing talent (and great people) in the past year… and two of our clients and now-friends (Veronica Belmont and Brigitte Dale) have been featured on G4 Television’s Attack of the Show – Women of the Web, with our photographs being showcased on their television program.

This lead up to G4 approaching us about being the photographers for their Women of the Web contest, which is going on right now. Basically the contest is open to women (sorry, dudes) who submit up to a 1-minute video of themselves expressing why they should be chosen as the next “Woman of the Web”. 20 will be chosen by Attack of the Show and posted to their website, where viewers will vote for their favorite. The top 5 will be aired on the show… and the most highly rated girl wins a trip for 2 to Los Angeles and a photo shoot with The Bui Brothers which will be filmed and aired on television.

Neat, huh?

All the details can be found on the official contest page, where you can also upload your video submission. So check it out and enter! Deadline is November 2nd!

A few weeks ago Vu and I shot Paul Dateh and Ken Bencher’s first music video. Here is a quick behind the scenes look into what we did while shooting the video for 99 dollar music videos.

Well, what I’m posting today is from Brad Nielson (a great guy that works with Jack)… he is basically a grand master digital tech guy. He just sent me an email with a photo which I think will be classified as The Bui Brothers first “Fan Art” piece: