Photoshoot - Dating 101

My friend Tyson is thinking of doing some freelance modeling. We decided to work together to pull out a portfolio for him to show his potential clients. Instead of starting off with fashion photographs we decided to do something fun/silly in our first shoot.

Tyson has this ultimate gorgeous Lexus IS 300 he got a while ago. When I first saw it I knew I have to somehow incorporate it in every single photo of this photo shoot. XD


Billy and I with the 3 awesome models (Leilany, Tyson, IS 300)

The best part of a casual shoot like this is we both got to play around with idea, props and location without worrying too much about brand images, wardrobe and styling. It is also a nice way to develop our teamwork.

Thanks a lot Leilany for being the "mystery date",  Tyson for being our awesome model and Billy for assisting with lighting! You can view all the 5-setups here: Dating 101

Fashion Brands by Mark Tungate

Awesome book by Mark Tungate

Picked up this book at a local bookstore a couple weeks ago. Author Mark Tungate did a wonderful job introducing us to the world of fashion. He first covered briefly on the history of fashion branding from Worth and Bobergh in 1858 to some of the top fashion brands nowadays including LV, Gucci and Chanels. Then he went ahead and talked about the business trend in the fashion industry, as well as discussing strategies some brands and designers used in selling their products. Being a "fashion outsider", Mark was able to cover all these topics in a way that is easy for everyone to understand.

I especially love how this book focused mainly on the business side of fashion. Fashion is a really tricky business. As Mark mentioned in this book "Fashion is based on creating a need where ,in reality, there is none" and because of that, marketing pretty much determine the success or failure of a brand. Media has always been the tool of choice in marketing fashion brands. Understanding the business side of fashion helps me understand fashion photography better. I highly recommend this book to my fellow photographers and anyone who is interested in the fashion industry :)

Mega64 Video

(img source: komica)

The above image is pretty much my impression on one of the funny videos from Mega64. The team from this well-known gaming blog/forum occasionally film themselves dressing up (and acting as) video game character in public places. Usually making people annoyed and sometimes getting themselves arrested. Other than just this group of (silly) gaming fans sometimes you might even see famous guests such as Hideo Kojima in their videos. From the couple of videos I saw it seems like San Diego is one of their favorite cities to film their video. ^^;;

While dressing up in costume and disturbing people in public is not what "cosplay" is about (no, not at all), you might still find some of their video funny if you are a gaming/costuming fan. I personally found these video a little disturbing because this is exactly the type of things that give ACG* fans a bad reputation. Oh well, maybe it's just me XDD
*Anime, Comic, Game


RE4 merchant is not quite a good career in San Diego (especially near Costco XD)


If you just want a laugh and/or just wanna see how crazy gaming fans can get I'd recommend checking out some of their videos. You can find some of their videos on their YouTube channel: here.

Photographer - the Sartorialist

(image source: http://morningcup.wordpress.com)

Couple names always come up when we talk about fashion photography - Nigel Barker, Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, etc... The wonderful works from these world famous fashion photographers defined the look of fashion photographs in our time. Teaming up with world-class models, makeup artists and fashion designers they portrayed an extremely glamorous world of fashion that is more a fantasy than reality. Their extremely creative take of fashion photography also gives some of us an impression that fashion photographs have to be "loud" in order to be noticed by the general public.

Truth is, fashion doesn't have to mean loud. Scott Schuman, aka. the Sartorialist, takes a totally different approach in fashion photography. Instead of following the big trend of creating an unreachable fashion fantasy he decided to shoot most of his fashion work on the street with "real people" he saw everyday. As a photographer who really know fashion, he knows what is "IN" and he captures what is really attractive to the viewers. His back-to-basic approach put *fashion and style* as the main focus of his image which is sometimes not the case in today's fashion photography.


The Sartorialist Book (image source: http://www.selectism.com)

Being listed as one of Time magazine's top 100 design influencers, Schuman is now a frequent contributor of GQ Magazine. This year he published a book with some of his favorite images. His signature street-style photo made this book a really great reference of today's fashion. If you are a fan of fashion I'm sure you'll find the images in this book very inspiring. ^___^)

The Sartorialist official site - http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/