A few pictures from the always wonderful and provocative Dohee Lee during her work in progress performance at CounterPulse.
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!
I first met Takayuki Zoshi last year. I was deeply impressed with his skill and love of carving wood sculptures. He makes a lot of Japanese religious figures and it is amazing that each face is different. They have such a life to them. Each piece of wood is unique and has its own character, often influencing the shape and details of the face. When he begins carving there is this quiet intensity that emanates from his body and fills the room.
Zoshi-san will have an event at Flytrap Studio in the East Bay Area Feb 12-13 showing his artwork. If you are in the area, please check it out. For more info contact Kiyomi at kiyomi.koide@gmail.com
More photos after the jump.
I had the pleasure of shooting Jie Ma for some promo material a little while ago. She is a great musician and has been playing the pipa for most of her life. I started the session at a pretty reasonable aperture but towards the end I was shooting almost wide open. My 500 watt pack turned all the way down let me open up to f/2. I then went to natural light and took a few between 1.4-1.6. I even got in a few TTV shots with my little Argus camera.
I was flipping through the channels one day and all of a sudden I caught the sound of the Okinawan sanshin, a three stringed lute similar to the Japanese shamisen. Being half Okinawan, I’m always interested when something cultural pops up involving this area. I still try to pick up my sanshin now and then but sadly not as often as I’d like. The other interesting thing was that the sanshin player was an American who now teaches the instrument in Japan.
But enough about music. This show was about food and featured an Okinawan noodle dish called soki soba. The process of making it took a long time but I decided right then, I’m going to try it. The process involved boiling the pork ribs and then draining them, then simmering them with kombu, katsuobushi, sake and salt to make the broth. Then the ribs are pulled out and simmered in soy sauce, sake and mirin until the liquid is fully absorbed. I think in total it took me about two hours to make this including prep time, so it’s no quick noodle dish, but it was very tasty.
Cooking the ribs took longer than expected. I thought the seasoning liquid would never be absorbed by the ribs.
I cheated here. I should be using Okinawan soba noodles which are thicker, but I had ramen noodles on hand so I used those instead. I am still crazy enough to think about making my own ramen noodles, as soon as I source out some kansui…
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.
You know you’re a foodie when making pasta from scratch sounds like a good idea. I had an old pasta machine sitting around forever and finally pulled it out. When was the last time I used this thing? I blew off the dusting of flour that was still on there from the last use. Ok, good to go.
I think I still have to work on my pasta technique, or at least the mixing part. I beat the eggs and then started working the flour in. All of a sudden I’m doing a mad shoveling with my hands trying to keep the egg mixture from running all over the board, onto the table.
After wrangling the eggs and flour together, kneading and letting it rest, everything went very smoothly. The noodles were good, with a nice texture and flavor. I think next time though, I’ll roll the sheets out a little thinner to make a capellini size noodle.
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…
I hope everyone had a great New Year! Some very significant changes to my site happened this year. I decided to go back to the standard website and blog site instead of the combination of the two. If you have time, please visit www.jasonlewphoto.com and tell me what you think.
In the next few months, the blog posts will get a little more personal while still keeping up with my current shooting jobs. The main website will showcase some of my latest work as well as my favorites from past shoots. My gear list will be changing (again) as will my focus on video projects.
For now, here is a TTV photo from today’s shoot. More on this in a post to come.
I love Napa. Everything about it. The weather, the beautiful fields, the amazing food and the incredible wines. I’m so lucky to be so close. It’s a getaway I wish I could make more often.
Upon a friend’s recommendation I visited Duckhorn Vineyards and had a great time. The wines were really, really good. I ended up purchasing a bottle that I have cellared away for a special time. But enough about wine. On the way back I experimented with some motion blur shots from the car. These were all taken with a 24-70 and 1DmkIV at about 1/6 sec. I always love these kind of shots for the unpredictable aspect. You’re never really sure what it will turn out like until you see the photo.
