Jason Lew Photography » Event

New Belgium Tour De Fat

Jason — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:26:37 +0000

New Belgium Brewery puts together one of my favorite events of the year, the Tour de Fat! Great beer, funny entertainment and crazy bikes! Despite the rather gloomy SF weather it was a fabulous time. Cheers!

Legacy for Children – Kristi Yamaguchi

Jason — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:04:51 +0000

Just thought I’d share a couple outtakes from a recent shoot I did for the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose’s Legacy for Children Award honoring Kristi Yamaguchi. Throughout the shoot I was very impressed by her graciousness as well as her many accomplishments. Here The Woz is interviewing Kristi, after the donning of pink boas of course!

Lunar New Year

Jason — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:38:19 +0000

I spent the past Lunar New Year’s eve having a feast with family and friends. The table was packed with food and drink. Good times. This year the weather’s been pretty crazy with sun one day and then rain the next. Luckily on the day of my shoot covering the Lunar New Year Celebration at the Oakland Museum, the sun was out along with blue skies!

Dia de Los Tres Reyes Magos

Jason — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:10:57 +0000

The Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose is a really cool place. I really dig it how most of their signage is in three different languages. I shot there a little while ago to cover the Three Kings Day event. There were music and dance performances and a lot of hands on activities. Of course there were lots of kids too!

I was shooting at the fire engine they have inside and there were a couple of kids in full firemen’s gear that were just adorable. I don’t use the word adorable very often but that just seems to be the best way to say it.

MLK

Jason — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:45:02 +0000

I had a great shoot this past weekend covering an event celebrating Black History from Martin Luther King Jr. to President Barack Obama. There were many hands on art activities focused on “heroes”, during which I took these photos.

I used the Nikon 50 1.4G during most of this shoot along with the 24 1.4G. I find that I rarely miss the 24-70 anymore. Yes, give me a stack of fast primes instead and I’m in shallow depth of field heaven. Oh, speaking of gear, I finally took my Think Tank Retrospective Lens Changer 3 out for a spin instead of my belt and lens pouches. It worked out pretty well for this shoot. Perhaps after a little more use, I’ll do a little write up about it…

Dias de los Muertos

Jason — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:26:51 +0000

It was rainy and cold during the Dias de los Muertos in Oakland but the festivities were still going strong. So no blue skies and amber sun in the background this year.

For this shoot I was using the 5DmkII with a 17-40mm or the 24L along with the 1DmkIV with the 50L or the 135L.

Out on a Limb

Jason — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:08:53 +0000

Here are some photos from a recent shoot for a museum exhibit marketing manual. The exhibit was great and so were the kids who were the models for the shoot. I had originally planned on using a small Dynalite power pack and head with a shoot through umbrella which I would wheel around the exhibit. I was also shooting tethered to a laptop. That all lasted about a half hour before I had to give up on that idea in favor of mobility. It would just not have been possible to cover all the areas and the kids in the time I had available. It was time for dual camera bounced flash mode or simply available light as in the photo above.

Luckily there were plenty of neutral colored walls to bounce flash off of and the space was not that big. I had to shoot at iso 1000 most of the time to pull in enough ambient light. Luckily the D3′s files are just so clean that I have no worries about shooting even at 1600 if needed. All shots were taken with either the 24-70mm or the 70-200mm 2.8.

Lunar New Year

Jason — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:58:55 +0000

I was hoping and hoping for no rain and pretty much got it, but I was left with an overcast, gray sky. Not very pretty for photography. Nonetheless, the performers were great and there was a great crowd turnout.

I normally like to be in control of every setting on my cameras. During an event there are so many changing variables such as light levels and color temperature. I’m always tweaking settings and furiously changing ISO settings. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about Nikon’s auto-iso capability. After being caught a couple times at too low an ISO when I wanted a higher shutter speed, I decided to give it a shot.

For the most part it worked out beautifully. Set your desired minimum shutter speed, your acceptable ISO range (I kept it to 3200 or less) and shoot. I had to be careful when bouncing flash though as the camera wants to bring the ISO down and push the flash hard. With flash I had to tweak my base ISO setting, but that wasn’t too big of a deal. I used auto-iso for most of the event. It enabled me to think less about the camera and more about what was happening in front of the lens.

I always look forward to seeing Kagami Kai perform. Great taiko playing and plenty of tasty mochi! There is always great audience participation, both young and old, for the mochitsuki (Japanese mochi pounding).