Monthly Archives: January 2009


TET FESTIVAL IN BLACK AND WHITE

Last night, I went to my first ever “Tet Festival” in Garden Grove. The “Tet Festival” is essentially the Lunar New Year Festival or most know it as Chinese New Year, but the word “Tet” is Vietnamese. Confused? Since I was able to get back stage access thanks to Vivian Tran of “All Made Up”, I decided to document the behind the scenes of the pageant as much as I could. I’ll save all of the regular pageant photos for another day. Speaking of Vivian Tran, that girl is such a sweet heart and super talented at hair and makeup, so if you’re looking for someone that will do an awesome job, you’ve found her.
 

Anyhow, what kind of shocked me when I was walking up to the festival, was that it was setup like a Carnival? They had not only fried dough, but fried eggrolls too! And a ferris wheel? It made for a very interesting night.

 

This is all in good fun, but when I shoot black and white photos, I have this urge to name the photos with something dramatic and can relate to the photo well. Of course I never write about it or say it, but I think I will this time.  Here’s my version and they might not be the coolest or most interesting names, but feel free to name them also in the comment box.  

 

“The Crowd”  

“Anticipation”

“Searching For The Best Seat”

“Reflecting”

“Hmmmm…”

PHOTO OF THE WEEK : NEWPORT BEACH HDR

Let me begin by saying that of course I love photographing people. It’s what I do, I love being social and capturing raw emotion is my thing, but from time to time, I need, me time. Just yesterday I headed down to New Port Beach at sunset with some friends to sit, reflect and listen to my iPod while shooting nature or anything that was interesting to me. If you’re not familiar with HDR, checkout this link. Basically, it’s trying to get the photo to look like what we are seeing with our eyes. In other words, balancing all the lights and darks of the photo and not loosing any detail. HDR is certainly fun, but it’s time consuming to say the least. Here is an HDR photo from yesterday that makes me think about how much there is in the world, that we haven’t seen yet.

Newport Beach HDR

“THE BIG PICTURE”

Last week, I meet up with my good friend Aaron Dieppa and we sat down for a little one on one interview for his daily project “The Big Picture”. I have to give Aaron a lot of credit for committing to a project that involves, doing a video blog post every single day this year. So if you haven’t checked it out yet or subscribed, you really need to.

[B]RIAN KHANG HEADSHOTS BY [B]ECKER

There’s probably a million reason why I’m a photographer and not a professional male model. Yes I don’t have an 8 pack, it’s more like a 3.5 pack and I don’t have a perfect jawline, dimples, a perfect nose, nice hair and the list can go on and on. But what I do have, is that I’m 100% myself all the time and I don’t ever fake the funk! What you see is what you get with me and I’m perfectly fine with that. I realized today too, that I have 1 look. You can call me Zoolander from now on.

 

Today [B]ecker took some headshots for me down in San Juan Capistrano. In literally 15 minutes of shooting, I now have 1000 photos to go through. Not like it’s a bad thing for sure. One of these photos will be going to WPPI for some promo material. [B]ecker is so awesome at getting you to feel natural in front of the camera and it’s why so many people love his photos including myself. Without any further delays, here is me, me and me.

 

Deadly combo of “Blue Steel” and “Magnum” poses.

Why am I petting the Cracker Jack dog?

PHOTO OF THE WEEK : SKY ON FIRE

There’s nothing better that I love than shooting nature and skies. When I drove home yesterday, I noticed the amazing clouds and sunset that made it look like the sky was on fire! It was truly awesome!