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.

I am deathly ill.

Ok that might be a slight exaggeration… but it does feel that way. I haven’t felt this sick since I had malaria… and that’s saying a lot.

Anyhow… besides the sickness it led to, WPPI was awesome. Shootsac did very well (which was the only true goal I had for the trip) and I met lots of great people. Ally Stepp was one of our volunteers and she turned out to be very cool. Lee was of course fun and great. Hanging out with Orbie Pullen, Rebecca Meredith and Aaron Dieppa was one of the highlights of the trip (oh and thanks to Orbie for teaching me to play craps). I met some great people at Becker’s party and tons more at the booth itself. Too bad I can’t remember half of them, but luckily I got business cards!

The craziest thing from the trip besides the blackout was that it was snowing on the drive to Vegas. Actually… snowing is an understatement… it was practically a mini-blizzard. I haven’t seen snow come down like that since I was but a wee lad in upstate New York. Crazy.

I didn’t really have much time to shoot anything while we were in Vegas outside of the video we did at Becker’s party… but I did snap off a few stills while we were testing the the new Arri fresnels I bought (they were brand new and I had only turned them on once) while we were still in our room the night before the big event (see below). I love these lights! I chose a 650W and two 300W. I got barndoors for each of them, a couple scrims and filters… and a really nice softbox that works perfectly with the 650W. You’ll get to see some examples of our final lighting setup on the B School Blog soon.

Lee Keller, Ally Stepp, Bonny Pierzina:

Ally Stepp and Lan Bui:

The drive home was uneventful and a little sad… there has been months of buildup to this event… I literally did nothing more than prepare for it for the week and a half preceding it… and then suddenly it was over. Keats had warned me it would be this way, but I didn’t believe her. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do… there’s lots to do with Shootsac, there’s lots to do on The Bui Brothers side of things… and I even have some Vu Bui photo shoots coming up. But I feel a bit lethargic despite all that… then again being deathly ill may have something to do with it.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.