Brianna + Terry Wedding 12.27.2008

If you are living in Vancouver, you should know we had a bad snow storm during X'Mas period. We were trapped at home at least a day or two. Brianna and Terry's wedding was right after that. We drove about an hour to Brianna's home and then another hour to Terry's home. At the same time, our car couldn't move in snow for many times. We spent almost an hour in total to get our car out of the snow on the day. Jessie, Brian, and I were extremely exhausted after the shooting. Without Brian's help this time, I don't think we could have finished it smoothly when Plan-A didn't work. (Thanks again, Brian)

The shooting locations were at Maple Ridge and Aldergrove, BC. Because of the ice on river, Albian Ferry service was closed (main route between these 2 locations). We circled around from Maple Ridge to Mission, then back to Aldergrove. I had no idea where I was in that trip and followed my GPS only.

Besides the usual No-Flash-Rule in church, we were not allowed to move during the ceremony. Yes, NAILED on floor. It was lucky that we had a team of 3 people to cover different angles. I really can't imagine what kind of photos will come out from a single photographer working in that church. Luck was on our side again during photo session. Rain stopped for a while.

I must mention one thing in my blog is that Terry's dad made a great breakfast for us. "Wow... It's so tasty!", I told Brian. Alsolutely it was the best wedding day breakfast I've ever had. Thanks.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca


We were very lucky this time. Even though we had bad weather and terrible road condition, we had good people. Terry and Brianna are a great couple. They could do whatever we asked them to do and helped us to make the photo session done nicely and smoothly. The wedding party were composed of beautiful girls and handsome guys. Their fun made our photos full of joy and energy.

I must give special thanks to our good friend Brian, who played an important role in our photo shooting. This was his first wedding shooting, but he did a really good job. Because of the "no-walking" rule in the church during the ceremony, we could only take shots from limited angles. Brian covered an important angle and captured some nice moments. Moreover, he did a great job in helping us with the remote flashes in the photo session and banquet.

We selected some photos to post here, and more photos can be viewed on http://www.raymondleung.ca/weddings/briannaterry_wed/.


Jessie
www.raymondleung.ca

X'Mas Event

X'Mas is getting closer. I think 2008's December should be our busiest one. Here are 2 of the shots that I really like. It was a musical chair game in party.

Look at the facial expression of the audiences... (and Jessie if you can see her)
*Also look at the red shirt guy on the very right side of the photo. "Yes! My girlfriend won!"

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

Hey... What's that?

Little Mr. Kien Lin

Irene and Kevin's baby is finally here. I brought a few prime lenses and Jessie's camera to visit the cute little Kien. Because of work, I couldn't shoot in daytime. At the same time, I couldn't flash a week young baby. It was quite hard to capture an active baby with limited shutter speed at night.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

December's Photography Life

2008 is going to end. We still have some projects and shootings in this month. A few layout and design jobs deadlines are coming. The last wedding shooting of 2008 will be on 27th. I hope the commercial shooting can be earlier than the week of 21st (please... don't delay until January).

After that, RJP will have a short trip to Leavenworth, WA.
(Snow + X'Mas Lights + Photos)

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

New Website Layout

After a long wait, I finally updated our website layout. It has larger photos and faster loading speed. I cut the small blog in the website because I'm way too lazy to update 2 blogs at the same time.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

TTD Session Location

We visited a place for TTD (Trash The Dress) recently. It's an interesting place. If anyone is ready to get wet/dirty, please let us know (other safer and cleaner places are available...)

Photos were taken by our tiny A570 IS (I didn't take work gears with me). I wish it is wider than 35mm.

I took a look at the Canon G10 in store yesterday. It's a very nice compact backup with a 28mm zoom lens. I like Canon's G-Series a lot since the time I was new to digital photography. I still have a G5 at home for some tiny product shootings. At that time, G-Series lenses had f/2.0-3.0 aperture advantage and a flip-screen but it's gone now. Instead, Canon moved flip-screen + hotshoe compact function to S5 (or newer SX10) series.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

Gloria & Marcus - Oct 18, 2008

Sorry for the late blog update.

If I'm not mistaken, we shot a lot of photos with doctors and medical officers in a day. The day was very smooth except for the usual rushing creative photo session. Because it was too windy near the sea side, we ended up shooting most of the portraits indoor at Vancouver Airport. Although I was not feeling very well during the day (I guess it should be the cake that I ate at the night before), the photos turn out great and I am very happy with them. Gloria's brother shared a touching story with all of us in the reception. Tears and laughs were filled in the banquet... What a great reception!

On the next day, I started another 8 hours job at 7:30am... We finished the highlights in two days. I really need some rests.

More photos: http://www.raymondleung.ca/weddings/gloriamarcus/

Raymond
http://www.raymondleung.ca/

5D Mark II - New Tool Or New Toy?

5D Mark II should be the hottest topic between wedding photographers. It seems the first pre-order batch is all sold out. If you want to order now, you have to wait until December. When everybody is fighting for a copy, I think we should slow down and think. What does 5D Mark II improve your work flow except the 1080p video function? I think it's not an extremely huge upgrade but it's always a good thing to have more color depth, more buffer, more pixel count, better ISO performance, etc. I don't think LiveView is really helpful unless you don't want the mirror sound in a quiet ceremony.

I'm sure Jessie will get a copy later. If it's good, I may get a second one (but I still like my 1D Mark II N a lot). Should I wait for 1D Mark III N?

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

We Love What We're Doing

We're happy to know everything went well in Cynthia & Tommy's Hong Kong banquet and people like their Vancouver wedding day photos. Cynthia took back a gift for us. I treat it as an encouragement. We believe we are not only shooting photos and doing art business, but also making every single wedding that we document memorable.

The new workstation is still haunting me a bit. Somehow, I formatted one of my hard disks in old computer as "dynamic drive" at the first place. Once it's not attached to a RAID card (directly to new motherboard now), Windows Vista doesn't let me access it. If I want to change back to "basic", I will lose over 100Gb stuff... It's not a tough problem but it takes time.

I hate the process of changing workstation!

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca



*My Birthday Dinner was great! Thx for the cake! I have no idea why Jessie and I both wearing dark clothes... Maybe, we shot too much (LOL)

A million thx to my Wii gang!


Update...
On my birthday, we visited Vancouver Aquarium. It was mainly for fun because it was my vacation (away from all wedding photos). However, one of the reasons for us to be there... was checking out the wedding location. Our clients may have their ceremony at Aquarium in 2009. Mm... Did I say we were on vacation?

They are very tiny. Look at the size of orange on the right side.

New Work Space

As I mentioned before my desktop was dead and fixed in our busy weeks. It really affected our efficiency. Therefore, I purchased a new desktop, 3 weeks ago. Finally, I finished all the installation yesterday (Mm... it was sitting on the floor for 2 weeks untouched...)

Preparing for the "new century of 22.1 Mega Pixel", I have to work in a station with the same power as Jessie's station. I love to work in duo-monitor environment. I could use two 20.1" wide screens but it draws more speed and power from the computer. I don't want to slow it down a lot. That's why I'm using an old 15" monitor as my "option panel". 20.1" is color-corrected by Spyder 2.

We are quite excited about the news of 5D Mark II. We may wait until the 2nd batch comes out or 1st firmware update. We don't want the "1D Mark III focus issue" happens on us. I think all 5D-ers and wedding photographers are going to get one or a pair.

Blog update may delay a bit because of clearing photo editing and album layout works :-(

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca