Auntie Amelia Bailey

We had the good fortune to meet Auntie Amelia Bailey at Queen Emma Summer Palace during a Hawaiian arts and crafts fair, where we were shooting for the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Amelia was surrounded by beautiful leis of all descriptions and pu'olo, the traditional Hawaiian lei basket made of ti leaves.

While I was taking pictures of Amelia and the other women in the lei stand, several people came up to greet Amelia. It was obvious the way that they greeted her with great affection that Amelia was well-liked and well-respected. It wasn't until later that we learned that Auntie Amelia is one of the masters of her art, as well as being an accomplished hula dancer.

We later set up a private photo shoot with Amelia, who arrived in style, beautifully attired, accesorized, and prepared with 3 different types of haku leis, puakenikeni, and several other leis, all tied up in traditional ti leaf pu'olos. It was a feast for the eyes, nose and the camera as well.
I feel fortunate to have met a real legend in the art of lei making.

Ukulele Photo Shoot

I was talking with my good friend and top notch photographer Jayson Tanega, and mentioned that I was looking for ukulele lessons as part of my assignment work to photograph cultural activities for Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Jayson recommended an ukulele maestro named Roy Sakuma. His wife Kathy was very receptive to the idea and helped me set up the shoot. It wasn't until I arrived and saw a photo of student Jake Shimabukuro on the wall that I realized what a legend Roy Sakuma is.


The studio on the other hand, left a little bit to be desired. It looked like a basic white classroom except for the multitude of photos on the wall. Just before shooting, I went downstairs where two local florists in the shopping center, Aiea Florist and Flowers By Carole, piled me up with free orchids and leis to use as props. The flowers made a huge difference in the feel of the photos, and combined with the happy learning atmosphere, made for some great images.

Pho-dog-raphy

It's not something I'm proud of. I'm a "pho-dog-rapher." I was recently forced by my kind-hearted girlfriend and business manager Kyoko to photograph a dog fashion show. This involved shooting pictures of all kinds of dogs dressed in rather unflattering aloha wear. I consider any form of dog attire to be animal abuse. Just let them be dogs, for the love of Dog!

Now, all joking aside, this was a benefit for the non-profit dog rescue organization Hawaii Dog Foundation, where Kyoko volunteers. Hawaii Dog Foundation gives homeless dogs a second chance by rescuing them, and finding new homes and better lives for them.

The fashion show actually had a runway, a

doggie clothing designer, and guest celebrities who paraded their

dogs. One rather feisty bull terrier in a red mu'u mu'u had personal problems with a few of the other dogs, and had a few shortlived scraps behind the stage. The star of the show was a tiny little rat-like dog that was born with only two legs. He managed to walk down the runway on its hind legs to thunderous applause from the audience. Awfully cute.

Posted are some pictures from my booming pho-dog-raphy career.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Years ago I was complaining to a fellow photographer about the complexity of Adobe's Photoshop program. He told me, "It's not that hard. A friend of mine learned it in two months. He never left his office the entire time. He came out pasty white and divorced." I never learned Photoshop very well. Then along came Lightroom.

Lightroom doesn't quite replace Photoshop as a digital processing tool because there are some things that it can't do. But it makes up for this by the fact that it's an amazing tool, specifically designed for professional photographers, for getting large numbers of digital images processed, organized, looking good and delivered to the client in record amounts of time. Of course, Adobe has now come out with Lightroom 2, which is even better.

The adjustment tools that are available to the photographer really make it easy to work on batches of images that have similar lighting situations. I enjoy the creative process. It's almost like being able to shoot the images again. The cataloging system in Lightroom also makes it easy to add keywords and to find images later.

The Web Gallery option is nearly automatic, saves amazing amounts of time, and looks professional when I need to show a group of images to a client. It's a valuable service for the client because it allows them to see proofs immediately and share the images within their company as well.

The one thing about Lightroom that I have a problem with is that somewhere between 6000 and 10,000 images, a catalog will crash. This means that I need to make multiple catalogs, and Lightroom has no function to easily share image collections between catalogs. Since Lightroom has to restart every time I open a different catalog, the process of combining collections is tedious.

Sensor Dust

I've had an ongoing battle with sensor dust. It drives me crazy! What happens is that dust gathers on the sensor of the digital cameras I use. It takes a lot of time to remove this dust from images after they've been shot.

I think most digital photographers struggle with sensor dust. So far I've come up with two solutions. One is to use the cleaning methods suggested by Copper Hill Images. Since the only method Canon seems to recommend is blowing the sensor off with a hand blower (which usually doesn't solve the problem), the helpful folks at Copper Hill have come up with a more effective method for sensor cleaning, or more accurately, cleaning the glass plate that covers the sensor . The other solution is to buy another camera body and try to avoid lens switches, especially in windy and dusty places.

I hope other photographers find the Copper Hill method useful. I feel like they're the underground freedom fighters of the digital imaging world.