Tonynet Explorer

I take a lot of photos and try to help pose my subjects once in a while. Here's a good article and video with simple tips on how to look better in photos.

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Photogenic

As you probably know, there are no fortune cookies after meals in restaurants in China; those are definitely an American innovation. However, there are lots of enigmatic expressions posted everywhere. Here are a few on big billboards near our house, advertising our villa district (neighborhood).

Note, they're no better in Chinese.

Based on these, I'm feeling pretty successful...

I saw these slabs of marble at a local market and got very hungry.

Last weekend, we took advantage of the boys' short spring break (two days off school -- shorter than normal this year because of the late start due after the Olympics) to take a quick jaunt down to Sanya, a city on the south coast of Hainan Island. Hainan is on the south coast of China in the South China Sea near Vietnam; it's often referred to as the "Hawaii of China." It's a popular resort destination for Chinese and expats, plus it's apparently a big draw for visitors from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. More interestingly, it's a huge favorite for Russian tourists. On our drive from the airport, we saw a lot of signs with Russian on them.

Contrary to my normal vacation mode where I want to see a lot things at our destination, this time we just wanted to sit around, soak up the warmth, and relax. To that end, we chose to stay at the Banyan Tree Resort in Sanya. The resort is away from the bustle of the more popular hotel areas, in a quiet section on Luhuitou Bay. We spent a lot of our time in and around the private pool in our two bedroom villa, going to the beach to play in the sand and warm water in the mornings when it was a bit cooler. The boys thought the midnight swims were especially cool.

(This is a Photosynth view of our villa. It's a composite image of a few hundred photos. You may need to install Photosynth first. BTW, Photosynth is a super cool technology by the big brain guys at Microsoft Live Labs. Worth checking out.)

I managed to sneak out to Luhuitou Golf Club for my first round in eighteen months. It turns out that not playing for a while doesn't help your game. Fortunately, I was playing alone save for my caddie, who was polite enough not to laugh, and the course was impeccably maintained with perfect greens (not that I could make a putt to save my life.)

The facilities were undeniably lovely and the service was very good (particularly by Chinese standards). The only real downer (and probably the thing that would encourage us to to try someplace else next time) was the food. It was very inconsistent, ranging from great to fair, and the menu was pretty limited. By the end of our fourth day, we were pretty bored with the selection. (Although I did have a pretty good Hainan Chicken Rice - always good to try a dish in the place of its origin.)

Still, it was great to get away from the dusty grey and brown air and ground of Beijing for warm, humid, clean air and lush tropical environs of Sanya. We all had a very enjoyable and relaxing time.

This is a picture of the gas station next to my office. Michelle pointed out the "fire equipment" at the station: three shovels and two buckets. I'm not sure how useful those shovels and buckets will be if that tanker truck goes up.

It's March 1 and spring is in the air (or is that just coal smoke?). One of the surprises for me about Beijing was how cold it really gets, especially since Beijing and San Francisco are roughly at the same latitude. Unlike in SF (or even Seattle), in Beijing, the lakes and rivers freeze over, and Beijingers head out onto the ice.

One popular place to play is Houhai, the lakes behind the Forbidden City. In addition to ice skating, the locals have other ways to enjoy the ice. One popular older form is to sit on ice chairs and propel themselves with sharp poles. According to our driver, they did this originally because many people couldn't afford skates.

A newer toy is the ice bike. I think the back wheel must have studs on it.

Nearby, vendors sold animals (usually ones from the Chinese zodiac) blown from blobs of sugary dough. (The art is called nie1 mian4 捏面 in Chinese, meaning "knead or pinch dough".) These were super cool, but they kind of sagged and melted when brought into the warm house. I've seen some people eat these, but I don't think that's advisable since the dude worked the dough with his hands and then blew into it the blob.

It was definitely a popular place and, like all fun things in Beijing, crowded. (The big tower in behind the lake is the Gulou or Drum Tower.)

We weren't dressed to play that day at Houhai, so I took the boys skating at a rink near our house. Well, Andrew (11) skated and Michael (8) ran around on the ice.

Eventually, Andrew dropped his skates and started ice bowling (with himself as the ball).

I can't remember the last time I skated or even walked on a frozen lake. It's definitely been 25-30 years (crap, I hate the way that sounds). Skating on the bumpy, grooved ice is definitely a different experience than smooth arena ice (go, Zamboni!) but we all had a great time.

While I'm looking forward to spring, I'm sad we didn't enjoy the ice more while we had it. We'll have to play more next winter.

I snapped this picture from our hotel room the other morning. It's not a great shot technically or even artistically, but I love it. There are so many little stories here: the happy couple and their friends, the old guys at the back chatting amongst themselves, the woman in the geisha just out of the top of the frame getting her photo taken, the ladies at the back of the crowd laughing.

I snapped this shot last week near Houhai (the old Beijing lakes area behind the Forbidden City.)

Captions anyone?

Last week, we went back to Beijing to finalize stuff for our move there. We also spent two days at the very lovely Commune by the Great Wall resort (more on that later). This resort is just downhill from an unrestored section of the Great Wall (the section is called Shuiguan). Andrew (10) and I made the quarter mile hike up to the wall and then walked along the quarter mile section that was open (a fence at the end prevented hikers from getting to the really dangerous collapsed sections.

The unrestored sections of the Wall are very different from the restored parts. These "wild" parts have trees and grass growing on top, the walls and towers are partially crumbled, and the walking surface is broken up. There are only a few places where they've installed safety measures like a hand rail on very steep sections. I actually quite like these parts of the Wall better.

Although the sky was hazy, it was still very picturesque given the mountainous terrain and the fall foliage. Andrew and I really enjoyed it.

Here are a few photos for your enjoyment.

 
Beautiful fall foliage and the Great Wall.

Trees, grass, and shrubs growing on top of the Great Wall.

Andrew on top of a guard tower with a collapsed roof.

 
Andrew about to climb a very steep section of the Great Wall.

Barbi, Kellie, and I decided to take advantage of our jet lag and go to the Tsukiji Fish Market early (5:30am) this morning (this isn't a great place for kids, so Michelle and the boys stayed at the hotel). This is the largest fish market in the world and an amazing scene of commerce and food. I had been to Tsukuji many years ago, but I was excited to come back.

In the intervening years, they have apparently had an influx of tourists getting in the way of operations. As a result, in the tuna auction area, they now have an area blocked off for tourists and rules about flash photography. I've read that they may be closing the whole thing off to tourists; while this makes perfect sense, it would be too bad.

Anyway, the big thing here is the tuna auction where they sell off huge frozen and fresh tuna. The buyers walk around inspecting the fish and then the auctioneer starts the sing-song bidding. In a few seconds, a huge tuna is sold. Click here for an idea of the prices. Beyond the auction area, the place is a maze of shops selling everything seafood related that you can imagine; the shops also cut down the big tuna they just bought for further sale. The auction area and shops are in a huge warehouse known as the inner market.

The outer market is a series of streets and alleys selling more food like pickles, spices, and such as well as cooking supplies like the big knives the guys in the inner market use. There are also crazy good food stalls and restaurants serving the freshest fish from the market. After our tour, we had a bowl of maguro donburi (fresh tuna slices on a bowl of sushi rice) at Kanno, a stall four booths from the corner of Shin Hashi Dori and Harumi Dori (the main intersection near the market). It was super good, with the super fresh tuna and lovely sushi rice. Click here for a good New York Times article on restaurants in the area.

We decided to check out the Omotesando and Harajuku area, starting with the lovely Meiji Shrine area. As explored this huge park, we discovered an extra bonus - the irises were blooming in the garden. While this was lovely, it did mean that the park was flooded with tour buses full of people checking out the flowers.

We then strolled around Takeshita Street (where the cool kids shop), Omotesando Street (where the rich people shop), had a great lunch at Jangara Ramen, took a long exploration of Kiddy Land - a huge toy store - where the boys loaded up on Bakugan,  then walked through Aoyoma to get to Shibuya where we saw the big crush at Shibuya crossing, and then went back to the hotel. Whew.

The whole area was pretty cool, even on a Wednesday. The contrasts between the Meiji Shrine, Takeshita, and Omotesando were really striking as we went from serene iris gardens to hip Tokyo youth culture to the elegant "Champs-Elysees" of Tokyo in a few blocks.

I've been shooting my venerable Canon 10D for 4.5 years now; it's been a great camera and honestly, it's still better than I am. In most ways, my photography is not limited by the camera. However, I'm a gear junkie as much as a photographer; it's been hard to resist all the exciting new cameras that have come out these past few years, so I finally gave in and bought the new 40D.

I haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces yet, but so far, I love it. One of the limitations I did run into with the 10D was the frame rate; when I'm shooting the kids or an event like a sailboat race, I often missed the "decisive moment" because the 10D was a just a little slow at 3.3 frames-per-second. The 40D's 6.5 fps feels like a machine gun by comparison. Perhaps more frustrating on the 10D was the relatively small buffer size. I'd be blazing away and all-of-a-sudden the camera would stop taking photos once the internal buffer filled up; I'd be sitting there fuming and waiting to get another shot just as the naked supermodels appeared with an honest politician, Bigfoot, and Osama Bin Laden dancing with them. By the time I was ready to shoot again, they'd all be gone. The 40D has a much bigger buffer, so with any luck, I'll be able to get a snap of the elusive Bin Laden...

I'm looking forward to really messing with it some more. Watch for more photos soon...

I flew down to San Francisco this morning, picked up my red Mustang convertible (may as well enjoy the sunshine), and drove up to my hotel in Santa Rosa before Foo Camp.

On the way up, I stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge on the Marin (northern) end. I have been to the bridge zillions of times, but not too often on the north end and certainly not recently. I really like the view from this side since you can see the bridge and the city behind it. Chooky and I once were on the top of a hill here on the 4th of July and saw a great show, with the fireworks over the bridge and the city behind.

I also checked out some of the old gun batteries; the area is littered with gun emplacements and an old Nike missle battery that were here to protect the bay. I've never really spent much time in this park and want to come back. I got a little lost on the way out of the park and wound up in the cute town of Sausalito. After driving through, I headed up to Santa Rosa, baking in the sun (oh well). I'm in my hotel room now finishing up a few things and then will head over to the O'Reilly campus.

Anyway, I got a few decent shots even though it was mid-day; I changed up the set of lenses I normally carry to force myself to try to shoot differently and to reduce the weight of my gear. I have my Lensbaby, a 24/1.8, and a 70-200/2.8L (yeah, still not light).

Last weekend, I shot the Opening Day of boating season. This is an century+ old tradition, put on by the Seattle Yacht Club (my club). It consists of an opening Commissioning Ceremony on the club grounds, the Windermere Cup crew races, and a big boat parade. There are also a bunch of activities and parties leading up to Opening Day and afterwards. It's an altogether big deal.

Despite having been a member for eight or nine years, I've never been to Opening Day. (I did hang out on a speed boat at the exit of the boat parade one year.) In something of a coincidence, Michelle and I were married on Opening Day a long time ago. It was nice to finally hang out at the club for Opening Day; being the "official" photographer gave me a little something extra to do while I was there.

I took over 1000 photos; a few even turned out OK. Unfortunately, I had smudged my camera's sensor the night before as I was cleaning it and didn't have the right tools to really fix it. It didn't affect most of my shots, but you can see the flecks in a few. Drat.

Easily my favorite boat in the parade was the Elvis boat from the Bremerton Yacht Club. The huge Elvis head looked great; the lips and eyebrows even moved with the music. The crew on board also looked like they were having a blast.

Anyway, I had fun. You can check out more photos here.

Last Friday evening, I got to shoot the Seattle Yacht Club/Anthony's Homeport sailboat race here in Kirkland, like I did two years ago. This time, I didn't have any committee boat responsibilies; I just had to shoot. Along with my colleage Cyra, who is another avid shooter, we got to run around the course in a chase boat taking photos and video of the boats. Sunava, another friend from work, helped on the committee boat. Hard to beat that.

After the race, we watched a little drama unfold at the dock as a huge Argosy tour boat tried to dock at the shallow end of the public dock. I guess they finally got it in, but it wasn't at all obvious that they were going to make it (check out the photo after the link.)

Once all that was done, the committee boat and chase boat folks enjoyed a nice dinner at Anthony's. I have to admit, I kind of poo poo them since they're a chain restaurant, but the food was pretty darn good. I should give them a chance more often.

It was another lovely evening on the water. Click here to see some of the better shots.

I had a chance today to do a time-lapse photo shoot of the load-in of the STOMP set at the Paramount Theater here in Seattle. The set is cool and goes together very quickly -- even faster through the magic of time-lapse photography.

In the video, you'll see them hang and focus the lights, assemble and put up their main set piece, and then install and paint the dance floor.

Some technical tidbits: I shot a frame every sixty seconds over a five hour period using my Canon 10D on a tripod connected to a laptop running Canon RemoteCapture. I imported all 301 photos into Windows MovieMaker, with each photo representing one second of video. I tossed in a fade transition between each photo (thanks, to Chris Hugill on the MovieMaker team for showing me how to do this automatically) and spit out the video.

Enjoy!

STOMP Load-In video 6.5MB WMV format 2 min 48 secs

This was not a good year for photography for me. While I have a lot of photos, they're mostly snapshots. The few somewhat artsy photos I took were virtually all on business trips I took. I didn't make time in 2005 to go and shoot, and it shows. I'll have to do better in 2006.

Anyway, here are my favorite photos of 2005 (that I shot).

My friend Richard clearly had a better year (as usual). Here is his 2005 collection.

(Note, as you may have noticed, I don't post photos of the kids here. Too many weirdos out there. Let me know if you want access to the family photos.)

I finally took my Lensbaby Christmas present out for a spin yesterday. (Briefly, the Lensbaby has a flexible body that allows you to push/pull/twist it to selectively focus the image.) The boys and I went to The Museum of Flight here in Seattle. While Michael (5) dreamed of blowing stuff up in a fighter plane and Andrew (8) snapped photos with his new digital camera, I messed around with the Lensbaby.

It's a bit tough getting anything to be in sharp focus and to really get the effects you're visualizing, but it was fun and a neat way to see the world. In addition to the weird focusing of the Lensbaby, it's fixed focal length. I normally shoot zoom lenses, so it was interesting to have to compose a different shot because I didn't have the flexibility to zoom in or out (sometimes I could move, but in a museum full of people, it's not always possible to get the right location). All of this meant I had to think a lot more than normal, which is good. I find it very helpful to force myself out of my normal shooting patterns to really start seeing images again. Good reminder for 2006.

Anyway, I got a few good shots. I like how the defocused areas create a sense of motion or of elapsed time -- both good for a museum with a lot of old planes. You can check out a few of my favorites here.

As an aside, the Museum of Flight is fantastic. They've added a new wing since I was there last. This new "Personal Courage" wing is dedicated to the warbirds and stories from WWI and WWII. I love World War II warbirds in particular (especially the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair, of which they have two -- actually the Goodyear FG-1 variant, but whatever). They also have a Concorde, Air Force One (the 707 version), and 747 and 737 prototypes outside for viewing and touring. It's a great time if you like history or planes; if you're in Seattle, I recommend it.

Lensbaby photos from the Museum of Flight

Two of my friends Chris Wilson and Charlotte Lowrie) have picked up the Lensbaby, and I have to admit, I'm really tempted. The Lensbaby is this funny lens with a plastic accordian-like body. You push, pull, and skew the body to focus the lens, but because the lens can move out parallel to the film/sensor plane, you can selectively focus on parts of the image, throwing the rest into a beautifully artistic blur.

It's a super fun way to shoot and forces you to really think about the composition. What's more, it's pretty cheap ($150). You can add macro lenses for another $30 or so.

It's on my Christmas list; who knows, I might even get one. If not, I'll probably pick one up for myself.

More:
Article/samples on Photoworkshop.
Gallery of photos from Lensbaby.com
Lensbaby photos on FlickR.

The IE Program Management team took a little break Friday and went to Kaspar's for a little cooking class. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen!

Anyway, I think everyone had a good time, and no one was hurt so I consider the event a success.

Photos here.

I took a ton of photos this year, mostly snaps of the kids. I did manage to produce a few shots that don't show Michael hitting Andrew with a stick though. Here are my favorite shots of 2004 (some have appeared here before.)

Enjoy.

Photo by Darren Dean

This site shows off the winners of the 59th College Photographer of the Year contest. There are tons of really amazing photos. The contest seems to emphasize photojournalism and documentary, so many of the shots and portfolios were very impactful and told great stories. It's worth spending some time here.

I finally got around to posting a few photos from my recent recruiting trip to Puerto Rico. This is a bit of a mismash of the shots I liked plus a few illustrating my interviewing office at the University of Puerto Rico.

See the photos

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Some of my esteemed colleagues and I stepped out Thursday night for Rockaraoke at the Fenix Underground. This is the karaoke that you know and love, but in front of a live band instead of the cheesy videos.

There were definitely some people who sang who were really outstanding and clearly went very often (they knew the band, the band knew them). There were also some singers with more courage than talent. We mostly fell in-between those two ends.

I've sung with live accompaniment before, but never in a nightclub/rock stage like this. It was pretty fun. I think I'd do it again. For the record, I sang Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places. Garth's job is secure, but I'm happy to report not everyone in the bar left to go to the bathroom during my song.

Anyway, check out the photos.

Well, once again my connection with MSN Photos comes through. I had a chance to pose for some photos for a stock photo shoot; my friend Charlotte (editor of MSN Photos) wrote a story about the shoot and included some photos of me in the article. She did a great job (especially with the other guys); it was fun being on the other side of the camera for a change.

Who knows? If her client picks up my photo for their ad campaign, you may even see me in ads all around Washington. Yeah, probably not...

Go for the Drama, by Charlotte Lowrie

I was out with the boys on the Seattle waterfront today and saw some cool shadowy stairs. I just had my little Canon S230 Elph with me, but the shots turned out pretty well.

I've finally written something that got published (besides on my own website)! OK, it was on a Microsoft site (MSN Photos). OK, I used to manage the team and the editor is a dear friend. Still, I got published! And, I got my somewhat suggestive title through with a somewhat phallic photo as the lead picture.

Anyway, a dozens of millions people just got exposed to pictures of my kids and my random musings.

Enjoy.

Size Matters by Tony Chor

I had the good fortune of working on the Seattle Yacht Club committee boat last Friday for the Anthony's Homeport/SYC sail race. (For those of you who don't race boats, the "committee boat" is the boat where the judges are. The committee sets up the course, handles the start, records the finish, etc.)

In addition to helping with the starting gun and taking down the finish times, I managed to get a few photos. The evening was absolutely stunning with a lovely sunset. The boats were simply beautiful in the evening light. I've posted the best ones here on my site. A larger number are available on my store on Event Pictures.

See the best photos.
Order prints/downloads.

Enjoy!

We recently went to the Arboretum here in Seattle with some good friends. The flowers are starting to bloom and the weather was really lovely. Of course, I got no good flower photos, but I did get a good shot of the boys. (It's hard to get one where Michael isn't whacking Andrew, about to whack Andrew, or just finishing whacking Andrew.)

I messed with the photo a bunch (obviously). I like it. Thoughts?

.

Last weekend was the Microsoft Windows Holiday Party. Lots of drunken merriment was had by all. Incriminating photos can be found on my friend Vinny's website -- Pasceri.com.

More details to come.