After seeing everyone else do it… I thought I’d go ahead and try Tweetcloud, which makes a word cloud of your most used words through your Twitter posts. I have no idea how accurate this is… “going”, “know”, “think” and “vegan” are supposedly my most used words (minus the stop list, which removes the most common English words like “the” and “and”, etc.

Try it!

Eddie Grey is an awesome personal trainer out of Studio 1 on 1 in Venice. Keats, Lan and I shot promotional photos of him on Thursday, and here are some of my favorites.

As it turns out, the body builder types we see gracing the covers of insecurity-inducing magazines at the checkout stand typically go through quite a bit for a couple weeks before a photo shoot… Eddie educated me a little bit on this. No amount of carb dropping or forced dehydration, however, can fake what’s not there… Eddie is the MAN and he is in SHAPE.

You can also see Lan’s images here.

We went to San Luis Obispo yesterday to help a friend and aspiring wedding photographer, Bonnie Tsang, who was shooting her second wedding. We went mostly as support and to do a little second shooting… but we also took the opportunity to shoot a little video that we’ll be putting out in the next few weeks.

I’ll probably post a few shots from the wedding one of these days, but here are a few shots that Lan and I did in another room during the reception when everyone was pretty much stuffing their faces… typically not the best time for photographs.

This one is good for all my non-photographer friends who just like to take photos and maybe do some simple edits to them. I assume most of the photographers I know actually own a copy of Photoshop…Adobe has just released a beta of Photoshop Express… which is basically a scaled down FREE version of Photoshop that you can actually use on the web. There are no layers or filters or complex brushes… but the truth is that for 99% of the photos that are posted on the web you really don’t need any of that. It’s more than enough to take your decent photos and make them look great.

That being said there’s still a pretty impressive list of adjustments and tools for an online application.

The Touchup feature works really simply… you choose the size of the spot you want, click the area in the image you want to touch up, then a red circle comes up which you can move to find the spot you want to use to blend into.

There are also liquify-type effects that you can use… for entertainment purposes only, of course.

I’m not going to do an in-depth feature review… but this is definitely a great tool for amateurs or those who just want to perform basic edits before posting their photos online or having them printed. Check it out.

Kate and I were surprised to receive a strange looking 5 dollar bill as change at Rite Aid today. I guess it isn’t taking long to get the new bills into circulation.

I understand the need for better and more technologically advanced anti-counterfeit measures… but it seems as though our paper currency is looking more and more like what I expect to see in Singapore or Vietnam. At least they are retaining the same size for now, but the big purplish 5 on the back is just weird.

Ok, so I’m not very good about keeping up with blogging. I have never been much of a blogger, I always figured that no one really cared much for what I had to say unless it was something really important. Considering, though, that I have very low readership here… I guess I might as well just start saying whatever the heck I want to, and maybe I’ll even start posting videos again. Maybe.

Anyhow, Lan and I have been working on a project with wedding photographer [b]ecker, we shoot daily videos for the [b]school blog, they teach new and experienced wedding photographers tips and tricks to help out their business. We actually had a great shoot yesterday, which included a visit from Jasmine Star. She’s very sweet, and if you check out her blog you’ll see she’s also a great photographer.

Working on the [b]school project has exposed me to lots of information and people in the photography world. It’s an invaluable experience. If you are interested in starting a photography business or even if you already have, you will love the free tips and info you can get on the video blog. The videos will be posted daily until WPPI in March, at which time we’ll be launching the main site. Check it out!

It’s been a while since I’ve really written anything here, just a few video and photo posts, but I’d like to record a little about The Winnies.

Irina Slutsky came up with the concept and started planning The Winnies, and she brought Lan, Bonny and I on as organizers to handle the logistics and website. Truthfully Lan handled almost ALL of the website and did an awesome job with it. Anyhow, between the four of us we organized what I believe to be a successful event. People had fun (the open bar didn’t hurt), they loved the red carpet photo booth we had set up, and the best part was that people actually showed up. By the hundreds.

Luis took the “official” photos… about 1,500 of them… and they’re all available here on Flickr. Here are just a few of my MANY favorites…

The Organizers:

Team Noodle Scar:

Jumping With Annie:

WTF?

Na was my favorite fruit during my stay in Vietnam in 2006. Friggin’ delicious.If only I could have some Na during the next two months, veganism wouldn’t seem so daunting.

Lan, Bonny, Paul Dateh and I went to see Battlestar Gallactica Razor last night… and while waiting Paul and I walked over to the New Zealand Naturals ice cream store, where they take regular ice cream and put it through a machine that sorta turns it into soft-serve.

Jay and Ryanne are East Coast transplants documenting the green and geek communities in the SF Bay Area. Both are ex-television producers and editors who were born anew into the videoblogging world in 2004. Ryanne is the Co-Author of Secrets of Videoblogging; Jay is the Co-Author of Extreme Tech: Videoblogging. Both are the Co-Founders of NODE101 an open source collaborative effort to teach videoblogging around the world.

They are, to me, a representation of what is great about new media. They met through videoblogging, and are two of the biggest new media evangelists I know. They contacted Lan and I, wanting photos that can capture their personalities… taken by someone who they can be comfortable around. Here is a preview… just a few selections I made while browsing through them. I’ll be posting the rest to flickr when they’re done.

See Lan’s previews HERE.

I have a bunch of video from my Vietnam trip in 2006 that I have still not gotten through, but here is the first of what will end up being maybe 12 or so videos.Here’s how they eat avocado in Vietnam… or at least one of the ways. Avocado is so cheap in the area that my grandfather lives that we get them for free from other people’s trees, most of them actually go rotten. Not quite the same as California, that’s for sure.

I visited White Castle in Queens, NY with Action Girl… it was not good.

This is a song, by Bui Sauce, to everyone in the world except the 15 people who watched us film Noodle Scar live… which includes everyone we know except Rox and Shane.Noodle Scar

It is what it is…

Paul Dateh is an amazingly talented musician and vocalist. I had the pleasure of meeting him at Pixelodeon where he played a great set, similar to the main video on his site. Awesome stuff. I can honestly say I’d never heard hip-hop violin before… and if someone were to mention it to me I’d be confused… but after hearing him play… and live nonetheless… I can say it’s awesome.

Paul contacted me not long ago to do some portraits of him for promotional materials… and here are a few of them:

And if you didn’t get to go to the event, check out the keynotes by some really awesome people, including Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, Fred Seibert, Kent Nichols and Goug Sarine. (keynote videos also done by The Bui Brothers, though we didn’t really have to do much except set up the cameras!)

I am seriously looking forward to next year’s event. It was amazing how well this one turned out, the execution was nearly flawless, which is honestly rare for this type of thing. Next year will prove to be even better, I’m completely confident they’ll pull it off.

Lan, Bonny and I took a trip down to Chick-fil-A, dressed like cows… to get us some chicken.

This is a parody of “When Jamie Smiles” from the movie Just Friends. In order to change from Jamie to Kate I had to play the verses myself but used the original chorus, even though the transitions end up weird.It was made specifically for Kate, and honestly only she will get it, as it’s mostly just inside jokes. If after that disclaimer you still decide to watch it… then… enjoy.

I had a great day of shooting with Annie Tsai of Annieisms in the studio and then in the mean streets of Orange.

This shot took some time to get. Coordinating all the necessary elements was tough… we needed the fist to be in the right place in the frame, her hair to have a good amount of movement to it, her expression to be something fitting and her other hand to look like it belonged where it was. I did almost no post processing outside of cleaning up and adjusting curves, and I think the shot came out great.

Thanks to Annie for being such an awesome model! She had the patience and determination to pull this shot off. More shots of her on the way…

This photo goes to show that you can sometimes get really lucky with location right near home, you just need to look around a bit. The piano just happened to be sitting next to a dumpster under the private property sign… in the Orange Circle right down the street.

Some work was done to get the wall and piano to look really gritty… to match Casey’s pose and expression.

Lan did a photo shoot of Rudy and Casey, the geniuses behind Galacticast. It went quite well, and though I wanted to leave it to Lan since it was his shoot, I did sneak in some shots here and there. This is one of them, it wasn’t posed, but was actually more of a brief real moment.

Upon seeing the shot at home, it struck me as being very romantic and dreamy… so I did my best to replicate that feeling in the final look of the photograph.

 Lan did a photo shoot of Casey today, and I snuck in a few shots here and there. Here’s a rough image (pre-edit) that I enjoy. More from the shoot to come.