A few weeks back, my little niece turned three.  She had a huge party with tons of gifts.  Here’s some pictures from the party.  Lily had a Disney themed cake with Minnie and Daisy on top.  For a three year old, she had enough presents to open over a whole year.

This is my favorite image from the party: the three cousins: Lily, Jordan and Jett.  I was finally able to take a portrait of the three together.  They all get along pretty very.

Sincerely,

Kien – contact me if you need a portrait or wedding photographer in Orange County, Los Angeles, Inland Empire or other areas  in Southern California.

As clients of a photographer, whether it would be a portrait photographer, an engagement photographer or wedding photographer, you need to understand the different types of images that are delivered to you at different stages of the delivery process. The three types of images are:

• SOOC
• Proof
• Final

The first type of image that your photographer may never let you see is the picture that comes straight-out-of-the-camera otherwise known as SOOC.  The SOOC images are untouched and they are not in their final form. The second type of image is the Proof.  Proof images are the ones that as a client of a wedding photographer, you will get to see and review.  You get to select from these images to go into your wedding album(s).  Proofs are often color corrected, have contrast boosted, cropped and/or sharpened.  Final images are those that are fully touched-up and are of higher quality.  These images may go into your wedding albums, signature album or blown up onto a canvas print.

The image below was taken with my backup camera, Canon 30D with the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 lens while we were at Legoland in Carlsbad.

The left image below is the SOOC image.  It came straight out of the camera with no corrections.  The image to the right of it is the Proof.  The SOOC image is darker than the proof.  Although it doesn’t look bad, it could use a little work.  The Proof was lightened, had contrast boosted and sharpened.

The image below is the Final version.  It is ready for professional printing.  This image took a bit of time to process.  Blemishes and dark circles were removed, skin was smoothen, the face and shoulder was lightened, flare from sun was enhanced, image was then converted to black and white, then whole image was sharpened and finally the eyes, nose and lips were enhanced.

I had a fun time at Legoland over the Labor Day weekend and hope you now have a better understanding of the different type of images available.

Sincerely,

Kien – contact me if you need a wedding photographer in Orange County, Los Angeles, Inland Empire or other areas  in Southern California.

Today is Jordan’s second birthday.  Jordan is an extremely energenic and happy guy.  Last weekend we took the family to the Griffith Observatory.  It was a very cloudy evening, but we were able to see Saturn from the telescope.  The light from Saturn traveled almost two hours to get to our planet.  We’ll have to go back and enjoy it another day since it was pretty hard with Jordan running around.  Here are some pictures taken from the observatory.

This year we decided to take Paul to Disneyland for his birthday.  Only problem is that his birthday  was back in early March.  With all of the family being pick for most of the winter (I got sick three times) and with scheduling conflicts, our trip got delayed until this past Sunday.  Has anyone look at how much it costs to spend a day at Disneyland lately?  We purchased 2-Day Park Hopper Tickets for Southern California residents for the four of us plus free admission for the toddler.  Face value was a whopping $266 just for admission.  Don’t forget about the $12 parking fee.  Lucky we saved a couple dollars on the price of admission.  We packed a bunch of water bottles in the baby stroller and thus saved ourselves another $2.50 a bottle!  None of this includes food and merchandise we purchased!

Looking back at the first three plus months of this year, it’s been a crazy year so far with everyone getting sick and tons of doctor visits for the kids and me.  Luckily, we are all in pretty good shape right now.  We have a lot of to be thankful for.  The state of economy has been pretty dreadful, but we are still marching forward.  Every week of the year has gone by so quickly; we are all guilty of not taking the time to enjoy our family and kids.  Starting with this visit to Disneyland, we are trying really hard to make more time for ourselves and the kids.

Today, the wife and I visited a friend in the evening.  We haven’t seen here for more than six months now.  She has gone through a whole lot the past 5 months.  In a span of less than two months, she lost her brother, an uncle and then her father.  Losing a family member is really tough, but when you start losing them at a rate of one every other week, it just drains on you.  How she survived through this ordeal is beyond belief.  She is a real strong trooper.  It has been rough, but seeing her back to normalcy just makes our day and all our troubles go away.

And now… a picture of our little soon to be a terrible two at Disneyland…  You can find more pictures on my facebook page.  Click on the “Find us on facebook” icon at the top of this blog and I’ll add you as a friend.

Last weekend, I met up with my buddy Francis to take pictures of Harmony and her one month old puppies at the time.  Harmony’s mate and father of the puppies, Smokey dropped by to see his puppies for the first time.

The first time I saw the puppies they were between almost two weeks.  At the time, the puppies were learning to crawl, eyes still closed and very tiny.  At one-month old, these puppies are alert, up and about and just as cute as ever.

Here is the proud papa, Smokey.  If you rub under his chin, you better run to the sink and wash your hands.

Harmony and Smokey, side by side:

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to photography two members of the Hip Hop & R&B band, Tha Bliss in Irvine.  Lead singer, LK and Fran-CHIZE were kind enough to spend some time with me in Irvine snapping some portraits.