Field Trip in SF Contact Sheets

Here's most of the shots that I took on the field trip we took as a class to San Francisco.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! - SF Chinese New Year Parade 2009

I was going to go to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade so I brought my camera along. I started at the end of the parade so I got pictures of the floats and marchers before they left and then I went up the parade route and got pictures of the second half of the parade in action.

Oddly specific captions brought to you by the KTVU broadcast that I recorded.

Three children, including two members, stand in front of the San Francisco Police Department Lion Team's lion heads before the start of the parade.

Yau Kung Moon Kung Fu Lion Dancers get ready to start the parade.

A woman from the Thai Cultural Center of the San Francisco Bay Area performs the tealeaf-picking dance from the Northern hill tribes of Thailand. The youngest members of the troupe perform the dance.

Several young girls from San Jose's Orchard Asian Cultural Dance Troupe perform a ribbon dance.

Members of the Foster City Chinese Club perform the traditional fan dance combined with classical ballet dance moves in silk costumes.

Children reach out to touch a lion from the San Francisco Police Lion Dance Team.

A lion from San Francisco Police Lion Dance Team moves through the streets.

San Francisco Police Lion Dance Team energizes the crowd.

The 101ft long dragon from Mills High School Dragon team chases a new pearl. The head of the dragon weighs 21lbs and is made of cardboard and balsa wood. Two teams of thirty-five students power the dragon and the teams alternate every block of the route.

Yau Kung Moon Kung Fu Lion Dancer leads the grand finale dragon down the parade route.

The grand finalie float carring over 50,000 firecrackers starts down the parade route. The sanitation department is waiting just behind.

Rebecca's Birthday Party - Event Assignment

Rebecca gets her birthday treat as everyone claps for her.

Rebecca's Birthday - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 10pm-3am

I went to one of my friend's birthday parties. It was a loosely organized party at Dave and Buster's in San Jose

Rebecca worries about the bill as Brad, Dave, and Julie watch.

Rebecca tries the electronic jump rope

After wanting to play for weeks, Rebecca finally gets to play air hockey. It was a tough game against Brad.

Rebecca gets a goodbye hug after a long night of fun.

Beach

This isn't really documentary photography but I had some free time last week (and my power was out all day) so I took my dogs to the Beach. One of them kept dragging me through the surf so he could try to herd all of the birds. it would of been ok except it is FEBRUARY and I didn't have a change of clothes.



I also think I found a fossil when I was looking at rocks. What do you think?

Top 16 Event Pictures

For my event I went to my friend's 22nd birthday party at Dave and Buster's. I've been having some trouble narrowing it down to five so I'm going to post the top 15 first. They're in loose categories.

The birthday cake (you can see the candles)

She kinda got sick of me taking pictures of her but not being allowed to pose. Here are some of her reactions to seeing me take a picture. The one with the sword is after she found out I got a picture of her after she hurt herself.

Dinnertime pics

Having issues with the bill

Action Shots

Some portraits I took that night

Decisive Moment - Final Pick

I think I may have slightly preferred the picture of my cat, but with help from people in class I decided on the woman waiting for the BART train during rush hour. It has a nice understated beauty.

I do usually try to avoid picking cat pictures as my favorites because I know the subject matter is not as interesting if they are not your cats. Pictures on blogs are fair game though.

The following is some of the thought process that went into picking this shot over the others I took of her.

Some people in class were wondering where all the other people were since it was during rush hour. Most of the people were on different parts of the platform,but there was a girl standing near her. I just quickly decided that I preferred the lone woman so I cropped the teen out with my lens.

The first image was from my initial shooting before the girl came. It was hard to get the exposure exactly right, especially since I did not have a tri-pod and was originally alternating shots from diffent angles of the platform. I allways shoot in full manual so each new angle required some tinkering. It's intresting how the shot I picked (the 4th one) has a very diffrent feel than the frame that followed even though she only moved slightly. That's part of what makes documentary photography so hard; you have little or no controll of what happens and the setting, but even a slight astetic change can make or break a shot.

I would have picked one of these shots as my favorite except the frames with the best action and shape were blurry. I set up the shot in anticipation of the action and held down the shutter taking a series of frames. The only problem was I apparenly moved slightly fowards or backwords because some are out of foucs.

Clicker Training Round 2

I was lacking in the frame department so I decided to take some more pictures of cats doing clicker training. It's kinda like sports, which I love taking pictures of, in that there is action and if you understand what is going on you can usually predict where the moving objects will go only clicker training is more boring.


I wanted to play around shutter drag. I had already experimented a little at my friend's birthday (you'll see those next), but I wanted to try it in a more controlled setting. Here's Tuxi doing what he does best: doing whatever it takes for food. It's kinda cook how his black parts disappear against the couch. I never really got a good picture showing him spinning on his hind legs like I wanted, but the results are still interesting.









































I also got my favorite portraits ever form my other cat Fluffy. Usually he looks very handsome and nice with the exact same look on his face. These pictures show him as the greedy little bastard he is in real life. They also captured some cool effects with the shutter drag.