This is going to be an interesting class

So I had an assignment this week where I had to either as a girl to jump on a bed and eat a sandwich or throw some fast food around. Since I didn't feel comfortable asking any of my friends to do such an awkward favor I decided to do the latter (I did ask one friend... but the timing didn't work out)

After thinking about what food to throw around I decided that the most interesting part about throwing food is the impact. If you just take a fast shutter speed of food in air it just looks like it's levitating, but smashing it on the ground makes it much more exciting.

I decided to throw an ice cream cone because (how I imagined it in my mind) it would break apart on impact. The results weren't as impressive as they were depressive. 

I had to drop it twice because my 5dm2 shoots at only 3.9 fps and I completely missed it the first time. 

I wasn't really happy with the first or second attempt, and I had enough money to buy another cone, but I decided to eat that one instead.

I had to go to 4 mcdonalds to get this shot because 3 of them had broken ice cream machines...

New Project

I recently did a project that allowed me to flex my creative muscles. It took a lot of time, planning and patience but I'm pretty pleased with the end result.

So it all started when my good friend Josh, who's also a very talented musician, asked me to do an album cover for him. He had a very specific vision in mind, and I was unsure of my ability to deliver on what he wanted.

As I got started, I hit a couple roadblocks, but eventually got by them through some clear communication with Josh. 9 hours and 10 mock ups later we had our final product and I'm going to show you steps that I took to make it possible.

This is the picture that I took. I didn't want to have to deal with stock photography so I just took the picture myself. This was taken handheld at like 1/25 of a second at 70mm so it's not the sharpest of pictures, it's also not that straight... But it gave me a starting point.

After that I isolated the part of the skyline I wanted to use. You can see I took out the bridge, some buildings on the left, and burned out a large portion of the front so I can get a good usable skyline.

After the 2nd picture I hit a brick wall. I emailed Josh what I had and asked him what he wanted. Josh wanted the city to be underwater. I had a couple ideas on how I wanted to accomplish this but I ended up going with the simplest way. It took a while to get the colors and lighting to match but eventually I got it. I sent this to Josh feeling proud of my work and feeling that I've gotten something close to a finished project. Then Josh shot back an email asking me to make it look "older" or something ridiculous...

This part of the process took the longest because I had no idea how to make a city look "aged" or "damaged" or "grungy". Figuring out what to do took a while and then what I ended up having to do was working within the picture I had and putting in all the individual details painstakingly by hand.

I can't remember how long this took, but when I started the sun was up, and when I finished the sun was down.

It's pretty crazy for me to see the original and the finished project. I look forward to starting my new company for creative visuals/independent film studio. I consider this project to be a step for the new company. I have a lot of ideas I want to see become reality.

Check out Josh's new EP available now for FREE!

www.cityrapture.bandcamp.com

Inspirational

After seeing so many different kinds of pictures and styles of photography I've come to a point where it's hard for me to see something and say "wow, I've never seen that before".

Every morning I get up, and then I read gizmodo, and I came across this guy who took beautiful black and white photographs and made them look like ink drawings.

http://gizmodo.com/5873682/these-beautiful-chinese-ink-drawings-are-really-amazing-photographs

With all the fog that always comes new years eve, I should have gotten some pictures like this...

I drew some of my friends facebook status'

Today I downloaded this thing for my ipad 2 called sketchbook pro. I was hesitant at first because I didn't think it would be that good, but gizmodo recommended it and so i downloaded it anyways.

I love drawing in an actual physical sketchbook with a variety of graphites and I don't think there can ever be a real digital alternative to pencil and paper, but this sketchbook app is actually really good.

I spent the entire day trying to get used to the app and trying to find things to sketch. After a while I got bored of sketching lamps and trashcans, so taking a page from Matthew Inman's playbook (theoatmeal) I decided to sketch some of my friends facebook status' using the new app.


My friend and apparently neighbor Elisha just cut her hair. I'm pretty sure she cut more than 1 but her status wasn't very clear..

My good friend Josh just watched girl with the dragon tattoo, apparently he fell in love, I hope someone can get him out..

My friend rachel has a poor phone, in light of the holidays I hope we can dig deep and help out.

Emily has a sweet little sister... or had  I mean...

Sindy is a friend I met at sfc last year and a talented photographer. I hope the smog leaves her alone..

This was surprisingly fun, I hope I can get better at this app soon and give you guys comics that look like they've been drawn by an adult and not a baby seal.

studio IX

I haven't told many people about this, because I planned on doing it later rather than sooner but this video changed my mind.

PROTEIGON from BURAYAN on Vimeo.

Studio IX is an independent movie studio that focuses on creative visuals. I plan on using it to make cool projects like these during the off months from Light and Love.

full circle

My friend grace came back from korea and brought me back a small journal and some fun pen and pencils to use with it.

to regular people that looks like a seal, but to the trained eye it's actually an otter.

I planned on using this new conveniently sized journal (i usually have a sketchbook with me but it's like 8.5x11) to write down everything, and to draw of course.

This journal has been a huge outlet of creativity for me. I've been using it to make huge progress on all the movie scripts  (there's now 6 in progress), i'm using it to plan my friends photoshoot (Josh Kim, very talented musical artist, I got a special sneak peak at what's coming and it sounds really good), and I even wrote down steps to a secret handshake, that i eventually want to share with someone who's cool enough.

Something unexpected happened yesterday though. I've been working on an art final project that's due next week and while writing some ideas in the journal it reminded me of my initial calling to art.

Not many people know this about me, but before I started making movies, before I ever picked up a camera, before I even started learning guitar, my first interest in anything creative came from poetry.

Back in the 3rd grade after watching the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I was so intrigued by the oompa loompa's songs that I wrote continuing lyrics to all the music. My teacher (formally Ms. Moy, now Mrs. Wong) eventually saw what I had written and was so impressed she showed all the other teachers.

My elementary school days was full of interests in poems and finding different ways to rhyme words, and even poetry contests here and there. Even up to high school I remember doing all of my friends poem packets for them, not because it was easy for me, but because I enjoyed doing it.

And then I took different creative turns, I eventually learned guitar, fashion, photography, film and now more hands on painting and drawing and poetry just took a backseat in a bus of full of other things I want to do.

So back to now. Thinking of my final art project I wanted to incorporate a story, and I ended up writing it in a poem form. I normally wouldn't share something like this online, but I figure if it's going to be shown in a class in front of my peers I might as well show it online to people who actually like me.

The Otter and the Wolf

The Wolf and the Otter
the deep friendship that's offered
of two unlikely characters
that put aside their matters
because one can't live without the other
this is the story of the Wolf and the Otter

The Wolf, cold and mean
Never low on self-esteem
He is smart and critical
considers everyone else pitiful
His observations are acute and keen
The Wolf; smart, cold, and mean

But the Otter is fun and genuine
Everyone that knows him, loves him
funny, sincere, polite,
friendly, gracious, and nice
If you needed a home he would let you in
The Otter is hospitable, and genuine.

Now you see, the Otter and Wolf are polar opposites
It's difficult to understand their relationship
But as one coin has two different sides
The Otter and Wolf are the same guy
If you still haven't figured out this mystery
The Otter and the Wolf are me.


I realize that this might cause some confusion, I didn't write this poem to show how great or smart or nice I am. I wrote this to show a struggle of clashing personality traits inside of me. Some days I wake up and I feel like being nice to everyone and other days I'll wake up being completely critical of everything, and mean. I think my closest friends probably know this about, they've probably seen me and my nicest and meanest.

being creative for creative sake

It's been a while since I've taken pictures just for the sake of taking pictures. I don't remember the last time I intentionally went out just to take a picture without it being obligatory (I think maybe when I took my camera out into the water in Cuba was the last time).

Anyways my very good friend and talented photographer friend Tuan let me borrow his macro lens and so I went out today to my backyard to see what I could do with the lens.

My dad enjoys gardening and I didn't realize how many different flowers we have in my backyard until today.

I don't really like this particularly as a photo, but I like the design elements inside it. I think the out of focus and in focus lines make for interesting negative shapes.

This picture gives me a headache if I look at it too long, which is why I like it.

Either the ground was muddy, or my dog needs to lose some weight...

I initially went out with the lens hood on, but I had to get so close to some of the flowers that the hood kept hitting them. I feel like we have a surprisingly amount of flowers out in my backyard for december.

This looks alien to me

alien flower...

I love the detail in the color and on the head and back of the wasp. It took a while to get this picture right because they kept moving and the depth of field is so shallow when you're shooting this close.

My babies.