lesson

Eyes. /  by Allen Chan

One of the most important parts of the body that make an interesting photo are the eyes. From Clint Eastwood's ice cold stare to Tyra Banks' "smizing". For those who don't know, smizing is smiling with your eyes. Got it? It's also known as "the squinch" as coined by famous headshot photographer, Peter Hurley. He has studied all the best modern celebrities of this century and has learned that what makes their photos so interesting is because of the way they squint their eyes very slightly. You should look in the mirror right now and try it. Just raise your lower eyelid up just a tiny bit and BOOM! Instant Hollywood star!

Luckily for me, my wife is a natural at smizing.

This was one of my very first attempts at using a speedlight, softbox, and black background.

Man-smizing. This was from an actual job utilizing all three of my Nikon SB-900 speedlights and a white background.

Day 1 /  by Allen Chan

Hi everyone! This is my very first post on the blog and it's been a long time coming, thanks to some encouragement from friends and family (you know who you are). But, I've also been planning this for a while also. I started photo blogging a while ago when I started shooting with my first DSLR (Nikon D80 at the time) and thought my photos were good. Looking back now, it was embarrassingly horrible. I was over-saturating everything, super high clarity, basically I cranked up all the sliders to 100% like the true amateur I was. And yes, even did some selective coloring. I want this new photo blog to show how I am growing now as a photographer, as well as just show my photos from the studio, my travels, and the stories behind them. I might even throw in some lessons that I have learned along the way,

Let's start with this little gem of a turd. It's one of the first photos from my first blog in 2008 and showcases how bad it was.

Craptastic.

Now, this is something I see a lot of amateurs do. See that glow around the bridge? That is from cranking the Clarity up WAY too high. The whole thing is oversaturated and overall, it's too dark. Oh, and vignetting is also overdone. I basically wanted to do a moody and dark look and just went nuts on every slider that can make it as dark as possible. What I have learned over the years (as someone with no formal training in photography) is to ease back on these sliders. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So, if you are doing one or all of these things, do everyone and yourself a favor: ease up.

Maybe someday, I will revisit the Brooklyn Bridge and re-shoot it.