my first fathers day

If you have been reading this blog long enough you have already seen this video...but you haven't.  Three years ago, a coworker and I created this film, this last week we updated the narration and re-shot the ending. Other than the fact that i really like our improvements this also falls on my first fathers day...so I see this with entirely new eyes.



Father's Day (2013) from David Hui on Vimeo.

good to get out - parfrey's glen

After 6 months of winter; getting out is glorious.  Growing up in California I never understood what Cabin Fever was.  Today I was appreciating green trees, waiving leaves, and running water as if I was seeing it for the first time. A member of the Photo Group I am part of suggested Parfery's Glen, a ravine I have visited before but was very intrigued to see it again in different weather. I found myself running up the ravine, jumping from rock to rock, as if I was 18 again.  But, once we reached the end, it did start snowing on us...which felt weird since it was sunny and 50 degrees.

balcony garden

Sometimes, you just have to get out and shoot...with or without an excuse.  I found myself "itching" to shoot this weekend so I took the opportunity to try out a new toy tool by shooting Sarah planting her balcony garden, one of two she is working on this year.

"The hard part about gardens, is that you never know if they will turn out." - Sarah

Photo lesson: I kept trying to remind myself not to chase moments. Something I have been teaching others this past year, but still needed to practice.  If you are not going to direct every movement your subject makes, you have to be ready before they do the action that you want to capture. For example; if I wanted to get Sarah pouring dirt into the pot I would need to be at the pot (focused and have my composition) before she got there.  This sounds easy but the temptation is to chase the action: while I was getting ready for my shot she was doing something else interesting (gathering soil) and if I would have been distracted by that I would not have been getting ready for the next shot.  If you find yourself saying, "Wait, wait, do that again" they you are chasing moments.

the first shot

The past 3 times I have gone for photo walks, my favorite images has been the first (or second) shot I take.  (Disclosure: I mean subject really, because I will "work a subject" with many photos to get the right shot.)  Not sure why my favorite has been so early because usually it is later when I get into a grove, but I find it interesting.

This was just supposed to be an example of compression to the people that were with me:

This was found in the parking lot as I waited for others to arrive.

Second shot (or second subject) and the reason I pulled over and parked here anyway.

the fog I wanted

Yesterday (see that post here) I ventured out with a photo group to try B&W photography in the dreary and rainy weather.  I was hoping for fog and didn't get it.  But this morning was amazing! It even decided to hang around until after church for me to play in.  So I tried the same thing we did yesterday, only a different area of the UW Arboretum.

Fog is lovely because it shows depth.  The farther elements are from your camera, the softer they seam.  In B&W you can't rely on color to separate elements in your photo because there similar tones blend together, but here fog is doing that for me by creating different tones.

B&W on a grey day

To be honest, I have been shooting a lot of photos recently...just all of my 8 month old daughter, so it was good to get out with the Black Hawk Church Photo Group and make some images.  (Granted as soon as I got home I took more photos of her, I just can't help myself.)  Our challenge was to create some B&W's on this dreary and slightly rainy day.  I was hoping for more rain actually, the more drastic the weather, the more dramatic the photos.  Oh well, still fun.

The UW Arboretum (where we want to hike) can feel a little messy....visually messy.  There are a lot of branches going all over the place that can cause photos to look very disorganized.  I tried to focus on shape, form, lines, and contrast.  With black and white you need to rely on the shape of your subject (pattern or form too) and not color to know what you are looking at, and having a good black and white point will contain your subject.  Too much of any of these elements and you get to disorganized.  Having too much was easy with so many branches and trees (all the same tone in B&W by the way) going in all different directions.  So I tried to simplify, and look for simple contrast.

Urbana 12 Photography - when not shooting video

I was able to shoot some photos this Urbana.  Even though my main role was to follow some students through the conference (when that video is available, I will post it here too) but there were some times I was able to shoot photos instead.

I had hoped to do both photography and video at Urbana...but I am slowly realizing why I can't do this successfully the way I want.  The way I shoot both photography and video is about capturing moments to tell a story. I focus intently on creating photos and video sequences that doesn't let me take a step back to do both at the same time.  You would think that they are similar enough to just do both, but that is not the case.  Most of the time, I make it work by consciously shooting video for a while, then switching camera systems and shoot stills for a bit.  Or, in the case of Swaziland,  when I am the director of a video shoot, where someone else is running camera I can focus on stills.

Being a photographer also allows me to engage a little more with what I am shooting, maybe it is because with photography I am working at one frame, but with video it is a series of frames to tell the story.


mk