The Reason Of Slow Updated Blog

I have to apologize for the slow update of this blog. This months are the busiest period of my recent 10 years. Because of some reasons, I couldn't wait until low season to take the interaction design program in design school. Although I arranged everything for the life of school + family + photo shoots, the stress from 3 sides are bigger than I expected. However, I feel really great to pick up my old skills and knowledge as a graphics designer.

When I created our present Raymond & Jessie Photography website, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was still very primitive and Flash website was the mainstream. Of course, there was no HTML 5, too. We noticed that iPhone/iPad couldn't read our website's flash items. It wasn't a big problem at the beginning. The busy schedule in Summer and the laziness in Winter made our website update plan delayed (year by year). Therefore, I decided to educate myself again to pick up the skills that I had before becoming a full time professional wedding photographer.

Now, I use my own website rebuild as one of the school website projects. The first version above isn't a complete change from the present one because I want to keep the similar feeling at this moment. It will be uploaded in a month. By the end of this year, I will design a brand new version. Stay tuned!

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca
info@raymondleung.ca
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Some fun projects from school:

Presentation ate up most of my time...

New 12" x 12" Custom Cover Photo Album

Yes... We have another new album for clients. After collecting ideas, we decided to add a new size and heavier album on top of our present ones. Page spreads are also like our older 9" x 9"album which has no gap in between. That means your 2-page-spread horizontal photo won't be cut into 2 halves. The sample that you are looking at is only 20 pages. Our albums start from 30 pages.











Chadwick got me a limited edition camera neck strap from Canon Australia. It's expensive (EVIL WON). I think it's good for heavier camera like 1D Mark II N. However, we still love our present ones from Canon Japan. Speaking of Chad, he said PocketWizard FlexTT5 will ship out at the end of April. I can't wait to test it.





Yesterday, a bird came into our home. I spent quite a while to guide it back to the door. This is a quick shot of that bird. It stood on our photo frame for almost 2 hours.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

New Published Article

We got published on a Chinese magazine again. The article is mainly about how Jessie and I work as a team and the advantages of having a female photographer in wedding photography . The writer told me that our portrait might not be on the article last week, but they finally decided to use it.



I know I missed my weekly blog update schedule. We are busy with some wedding and portrait inquires recently. It seems the advertisement and the feature wedding on magazine work quite well. At the same time, Vancouver's crazy weather affected our engagement and pre-wedding sessions a lot. Because of time, I have to drop a layout design assignment. At the same time, I'm expecting an interesting commercial photography session. I really hope we can start this assignment sooner.

Other than work stuff, I recommend a good book to all photojournalists. It's Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks. For those who are looking for camera settings beside photos, this is not for you. Joe teaches you something more behind words. You can get it fast from local Chapters or Amazon.ca



Another book that I want to read is Joe McNally's new book, The Hot Shoe Diaries. I think it's available in Chapters now. I can't wait to get a copy.



Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

Engagement Slideshow in HD Format

This is our first post of a slideshow in HD format. It took me some time to get use to 1080p and 720p video editing, although I did quite a lot of standard definition editing in Adobe Premiere Pro 2. Time changes so fast... Everything is HD now.

In 2009, our photography shooting includes some HD video clips from 5D MkII and HD-DV.

P.S. I'm still learning how to decrease the HD video size for Vimeo upload.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

Got Published

We got Brianna & Terry's wedding published on a Chinese Newspaper Magazine. But...

There are problems with this feature wedding page. They missed the photo and article credits. It seems the purple frame's layer is on top of the content's layer (See the L from "Love Story 1" was cut off). I have no idea why but I'll try to find out the reason.

*Update: Someone really screwed up (of course). I'm quite disappointed about their printing quality and their layout design. It's like my design course homework in university.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca




This is their web version which has our photo credit at the right bottom. See PDF

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

RJP Facebook Group

We created a Facebook group today. It's a good way to share our photos and events with people in Facebook community. If you are on Facebook, please come in to take a look.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca

A Special Day For RJP: We're WPJA members now!

August 18th, 2008 (81808 - lucky day?) is a special day for Jessie and I. In these years, we have been working very very hard in wedding photography. Finally, our effort is recognized by top professionals. We are accepted by Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA) which is the top association of wedding photographers in the world (http://www.wpja.com/). We can't just pay membership fee to be members. Only a few wedding photographers who are qualified for specific high standards in professional level are accepted by the association.

Jessie phoned me about the news when I was rushing deadline in office. Her tone was happy... I thought she might get a baby or something. After she told me that we were accepted by WPJA, I put down my phone and said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!". (Erin might think I was going crazy in office)

I'm not only happy for myself as a photographer but also happy for Jessie as her partner. She is such a talented artist.

Thanks to all friends and clients who have been supporting us!

Raymond
http://www.raymondleung.ca/

Couple Portraits

Do you believe Jessie and I have 5 computers at home? Because of the increasing work load, we purchased a new one today. It's mainly for replacing the 7 years old file server. Finally, I can run dual-monitor setting later.

I looked inside my file server and I found some photos of Agnes and Hannes. Those are never being posted.

Raymond
www.raymondleung.ca