Brian Khang | Photographer » 2009

Monthly Archives: February 2009

WHO AM I?

02.27.09 – 3:42 pm

After rolling out of bed everyday, I usually begin my day drinking Starbucks and answering emails as many of you already know. But today, I found myself sitting and staring at a blank Photoshop page for hours, thinking about things to put on my collage that say me. Why do you ask am I making a collage? Well, there is going to be an addition to my site coming soon and the person who is designing it for me, wanted to know more about who I am and what I’m about. Geez that could go in so many directions. Do you remember in school when they made us all do this? A bunch of pictures on a page, cut out from magazines that gives an overall impression of what we are trying to relay to our viewers. I really felt at times that I want to not include the obvious, like how much I love my iPhone or that I love Canon. Although some of that was clearly snuck in there as you can see.

I think if anything this was a great exercise to define myself and to share a little more about me with my readers. If any of you out there have blogs and have already done this, leave a link below. I would definitely love to see other peoples collages and see what you’re all about. Happy Friday!

By Brian Khang | Posted in PERSONAL | Comments (6)

TUAN OF TWO 1 STUDIO

02.25.09 – 2:14 pm

I can probably vouch for many, that most photographers don’t get to spend enough time in front of the lens, as they do behind the lens. I’m talking about headshots of course. I think getting fresh photos of yourself every once and awhile is a good idea and I’m happy that Tuan agrees with me too. Tuan is a photographer here in California also and when he contacted me to shoot some headshots for him, I was more than honored to.

Instead of posting just headshot photos of Tuan, I am going to post the stuff you wouldn’t see, like photos that say who Tuan is. We roamed the streets of Pasadena and just went crazy! Thanks Tuan for the mini tour of Pasadena, one of my new favorite places to shoot.

Here’s a bonus photo from my drive home. Please don’t drive and shoot, I’m a trained professional.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PEOPLE | Tagged headshots, Pasadena Photo Shoot Session, Tuan, Two 1 Studio | Comments (8)

SUNDAY

02.23.09 – 1:19 pm

Sundays, for us it’s always a time to kick back and relax after a long week. We’ll always find something useful to do with our time, but yesterday was different. We found our selfs finally returning 10 bags of bottles to the recycle center, which has neatly taken 1/4 space in our garage for over 6 months. Plus Helen likes to remind me every Sunday we need to go! It’s good to recycle and we should all do our part. Sorry, I had to squeeze my PSA in there.

So getting back to Sunday, it’s funny that most people which include Helen’s friends, always say to her, you’re so fortunate to have a photographer as your fiance, oh wait I wasn’t supposed to say that yet, but yes we’re engaged. Date has not been set yet, so don’t ask. Trust me when I say this, that I would love to take Helen’s photo everyday if I could. I could go on and on about how amazing she is, but I don’t think you can take the sappy talk on Monday, so i’ll spare you. But this past Sunday after much debate, I convinced her to take some photos. I really wanted to try out some 1 light or 1 strobe on the shoot also. More on that later. So here are some quick photos I took of Helen, because it got dark really quickly yesterday.

This photo is out of focus, but I love it.

This is some she wants to share with you. Helen love Chinese Calligraphy. This is the symbol for “Love”.

I always told her she looks better in my hats than I do.

1 light or 1 strobe. I always had the gear, but just never really used it for this. Back in the days of “Car Photography” we’d use this technique often for our shoots. It helps in getting really dramatic skies. I decided that I was going to try it out.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PEOPLE | Tagged 1 Light, Helen | Comments (15)

SALTON SEA : PEOPLE

02.21.09 – 11:00 pm

When I say people of the Salton Sea, I don’t actually mean the people that live there, but the other fellow [b] schoolers that came along on the field trip. Although I kept say the whole trip “Really? People live here? Really?” because we sure saw a lot of mobile homes there, but no people. At one point, a bunch of us wanted to venture into town, but saw a bunch of wild dogs and that quickly changed our minds.

Anyhow, this was the last part of the day and I knew that it would be the perfect light to shoot anyone that wanted photos of them selfs. michelle yam volunteered to be our model for the day to do some headshot type stuff, so you’ll notice just a bunch of photos of her below. I had the best time shooting with everyone and I’m looking forward to the next field trip!

michelle yam working it!

hanssie trainor and alfred bertulfo
the [b]ecker
kate noelle and tracy dee in some awesome afternoon light.

from the left (me, heidi ryder, kevin wynn, russ duchene, hanssie trainor, michelle yam, tracy dee, Jenny Alders Smith, kate noelle, [b]ecker, meg perotti, paige green, regis chen, jack ratana, alfred bertulfo, jen berry, matthew saville, john mireles) sorry if I missed anyone, but just leave a comment and i’ll add you.

why am I sitting on a broken down trailer asking for a tetanus shot? head to meg’s blog to see why.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PEOPLE, PERSONAL, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged alfred bertulfo, Day Trippin', hanssie trainor, heidi ryder, Jack Ratana, jen berry, jenny alders smith, john mireles, kate noelle, kevin wynn, matthew saville, meg perotti, michelle yam, paige green, regis chen, the becker, The [B] School, tracy dee | Comments (1)

SALTON SEA : LANDSCAPES

02.21.09 – 12:58 pm

Besides all of the dirt, grime and just plain nastiness about the Salton Sea, there’s actually a lot of beautiful landscapes that seems to change every minute of the day. Of course I mean sunrise to sunset. It’s just so amazing to look at the scenic backdrops and in an hour time, the colors there change so much.

In this installment of landscapes, we’ll be taking a closer look at, well.. landscapes. I’ll be keeping this blog post a bit shorter on the words this time, so you can sit back and enjoy the view! At times like this, I need some sounds of the ocean and seagulls flying overhead, minus all the bad stuff that comes with it.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PERSONAL, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged Day Trippin', landscapes, Salton Sea, The [B] School | Comments (5)

SALTON SEA : TEXTURES

02.20.09 – 1:22 pm

By now, you should have realized that I don’t just shoot weddings and people. Although, you’ve heard me say before that I love being around people and that statement will forever hold true. I think as a photographer, I just need to get out and shoot, just to shoot. To find things creative or interesting to me. Last week, I was actually able to do a little bit of everything. We did a photo field trip out to the Salton Sea. I say WE, because it was me and a bunch of other photographers from The [B] School. Not only did I get to enjoy a 2 hour car ride, thanks Jack for driving! But I was able to meet some great people, hangout and shoot.

When I say a little bit of everything, I certainly mean it. I will be blogging this trip into 3 parts, Textures, Landscapes and People. It was fitting since there were so many photos I want to share with you. When we first arrived, there was an abandon building, which I heard later that it used to be a night club. It even had a swimming pool. Checkout some of my favorites and yes I know they aren’t all textures, but what the heck, I decided to classify it as a texture. I want to also thank Joe Photo for setting up these monthly field trips on The [B] School and also to [B]ecker for setting up a great resource for photographers, The [B] School. If you want to join us on the next trip, make sure you sign up on the The [B] School.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PERSONAL, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged Day Trippin', Jack Ratana, Joe Photo, Salton Sea, the becker, The [B] School | Comments (9)

100,000 VISITS!

02.19.09 – 5:34 pm

This morning when I woke up, it didn’t feel any different than it normally does. I did my daily routine of Starbucks and watching 30 minutes of news, so I know what’s going on in the world. Following that, I always sit on my comfy couch, open up my laptop, answer emails and begin thinking about what to blog for the day. That is usually the hard part.

Early on when I first started blogging, I felt very reserved on what to share with the internet world. As a matter of fact, I only wanted to share my photos and that was it! Nothing about me, no talking about my life, Helen, friends, family and everything else whether it was lame or not. I just didn’t think people wanted to know anything about me, other than that I was a photographer. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not to long ago, I realized that there was this other 50% of me, that people didn’t get to know. Yes, I like shooting photos, but who was the guy behind the camera?

After visiting a few blogs early on in my career, I realized that I was not alone. People opened up their lives, so others can get a feel of who they are. Isn’t that the point about leaving your mark in the world? How am I different than another person? Being me of course! And with that, I started sharing more of my life. My friends and family thought I was crazy for doing that. They all felt the same way. Why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast or what my favorite pair of jeans are? Which are Rock & Republic if you didn’t know. To me, being able to share things and opinions, gave me an outlet to speak my mind. It probably doesn’t help also that I work from home and stare at a MAC all day. See? We need an outlet.

So I was so elated this morning to find out that I finally hit over 100,000 visitors to my site. I small milestone for some, but to me it’s big! It means that other people do care about what I’m saying or about me, well I sure hope so. Or they just came to look at some pictures. I will confess I do that also. Well if anything, by blogging so much, I know my spelling and grammar has at least improved. I am also going to make sure that whenever I visit someones blog / site, that I’ll always post a comment. I feel it’s so important to do, so others feel more connected.

Anyhow, to all my faithful blog readers, thanks for visiting my “Little Slice Of The Internet.” This journey for me has been so great and I’m happy to be able to document my life here. It’s always so fun to jump back in past blog posts and see how far I’ve come. Here’s to the next 100K visits and if you actually got to the end of reading this, please just say HI in the comment box so I know who my readers are.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PERSONAL | Tagged 100K | Comments (17)

IT’S GREAT TO BE HOME!

02.18.09 – 6:28 pm

Wow, wow, wow!! That was an amazing trip we just went on!! Ok enough of the screaming, it’s been a long week since we left our home here in OC and it’s great to be back. WPPI was a success and I’m so happy we made it out this year. So many great photographers and great people. I’ll have to give the complete update in a future blog post. You probably saw a little “Blair Witch” movie action in my live streaming video, sorry about that. It was just to give you an idea of where I was and what I was doing. Next year I’ll figure out a way to stream live high quality video.

One of the main reasons of going to Vegas this year for me, was to go to Beckers annual party and just chat it up with photographers. Becker just seems to out do him self every year, so thanks again Becker for having us. It was such an amazing party as you saw in my shaky video and again, I’m sure there will be another future blog post about that once the photo both pictures are ready. I want to thank everyone that stopped me to say hi. I’m so happy to finally meet some of my faithful blog readers. And on that note, I’m going to get some unpacking done and get back into the rhythm of things. I’ll also be sharing some long overdue photos from the Salton Sea field trip this week, so check back for that.

The only photo I have to share right now, was something that welcomed us when we came home. Thanks again Christina for the delicious cookies! We never tried Pinko cookies, but now we’re big fans! Cookie lovers out there, go get some.

By Brian Khang | Posted in PERSONAL | Tagged Pinko | Comments (1)