I've been messing around with auto photography (off and on and when time permits) and have been scouting my area at night to find locations that have great lighting and some sort of edge or darkness to the location, and I found a good one.. Here's a pic from a small series.



Thanks,
Visual Exposure

Whoa!! what a busy weekend. First Off, I hope everybody had a great Thanksgivig! I spent the day with my family and had a wonderful time cooking and spending quality time with the old folks. We decided to do something non-traditional and stayed away from the usual Turkey, so I cooked Korean BBQ and had Tilapia (that's fish). yummy...

[11.24.2006]
Now onto the rest of the weekend. On Friday I had the opportunity to shoot a Indian Henna pre-wedding. This was my very first Henna party so I really didn't know what to expect. The bride (Anita) was very gracious and welcoming to their home. The food was great even though it was all vegetarian.

Here's how the Henna started out..


And here's how it ended up.. The Henna covered Anita's arms and feet. It was pretty amazing seeing this for the first time. The Henna artists were very good and everything they did, was done in free-hand. Pretty cool!


Here's Anita with her Henna, I decided to do some shots of just here. Isn't she gorgeous!?


And here's one of Anita's friends who I thought was very pretty!! I never introduced myself but I thought she was gorgeous from the moment i saw her. I guess that's my fault for not introducing myself.. Hopefully, our paths will cross again.


[11.25.2006]
On Saturday, I shot a wedding in Chino Hills (again for Harvard Photography) and this time it was Vanessa and Chris as the beautiful couple. I was sort of nervous for this wedding, since the couple was 45 minutes late for pre-wedding pictures. I thought it was going to be a VERY stressful wedding, but to my surprise everything went off without a hitch. Here's the beautiful couple.


Here's the couple during their first dance:


Here's the couple during the cake cutting:


Congratulations to both couples and I wish you the very best!

Sincerely,
Visual Exposure

Shot another wedding for Harvard Photography. The wedding and reception was held at the Westridge Golf Club in La Habra. What a gorgeous (and very difficult) looking golf course.

Lillian and Lawrence were yet another beautiful couple. The wedding went off without a hitch, and I loved the little video presentation that was played during the reception. They put together this show that mimiced the show "Pimp my ride", but they called "Pimp my bride". It was freaking hilarious. I wish I had a clip to post, but you'll just have to take my word for it..

Anyway, here are some images from the wedding.. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to put a slideshow together, so this is all i have so far. enjoy!

Here's Lillian, isn't she beautiful!!


Here's the beautiful couple.




For the wedding the guys decided to go with the funny socks.


The couple invited around 200 guests to witness and share their day.



One of the funny parts of the wedding, occurred during the reception when Lillian's 4 yr old nephew wanted some cake before it was served.


Congrats to Lillian and Lawrence.

Thank you for visiting..

Hoooray!!! Victory is MINE!!! (well, at least for the moment)..

I've finally been able to resolve my BizTalk headache (from this post). The main issue had to do with non-matching .XSD file for the .NET Client Component that I created for H.I.S. (Host Integration Server). Once you create the .NET Client Component for your TI (Transaction Integrator) project a .DLL and .XSD file is created for you.

From the BizTalk Orchestration project, you then add a reference to the (TI) .DLL you created, and import the .XSD into your project. The .XSD defines a type of XML document (including parameters and data types) that you are passing between environments.

Well, if a change is made to the (TI) .DLL, you will need to re-import the updated .XSD into your BizTalk project so BizTalk can recognize any changes that have been made.

So after that hurdle, and a whole mess of smaller hurdles, i've finally been able to get things working...

Here's a little diagram of what the system looks:

Here's a slideshow for a wedding I shot for Harvard Photography on 10.21.2006.

Here's the slideshow..

Marie and Levis are a very cute couple and I had a blast shooting this wedding.


And here's a funny picture of the ladies fighting over the bouqet toss. Luckily no bridesmaids were hurt during the scuffle.

Calling all BizTalk 2006 and Host Integration 2006 CTP guru's.... HELP!!!

*sigh* Well I haven't had much time to post on this blog, due to my day job. As some of you know, im a photographer by night (and weekends), but by day I fall into the DBA/C# developer newbie/BizTalk 2006 (BT) newbie/Host Integration Services 2006 (HIS) newbie/and web surfer expert (lol) worker bee category. Where I constantly (well at least recently) have been learning and struggling with middle tier implementation and communication between our mainframe environment and our windows environment. Learning and experimenting with seamless integration between the two environments.

My current stuggle is getting BT to communicate with HIS. I have the mainframe talking to HIS and I am able to send/receive data in my proof of concept (from Mainframe HIS SQL Server) using both Windows & Host initiated requests. However, if I have an orchestration within BT that I want to tie into my HIS process. I have installed the HIS adapters for BT, but for some reason I can't expose the MsTI (which is the HIS adapter for BT) interface within my BT orchestration. What gives????

One of the problems with working with newly released applications is the lack of documentation. Since I am currently working with HIS 2006 CTP (Community Technical Preview) there are limited resources (sample code) available on the web and within the included documentation, so that's part of the reason that i've had alot of growing pains with these technologies. I have to basically rely on developer blogs and MSDN webcasts (whenever available) to find and patch as I see code available and leverage their code in hopes that it will resolve my issues.

If I cannot resolve my issues with HIS to BT integration, then I may need to write additional code (in C#) to achieve this integration...

I guess, I just wanted to vent... Thanks for reading..

FOOOOOD! One of my favorite types of food is sushi, so there was no way I could turn down an opportunity when asked to do a shoot.

Another new restaurant called SAWARA that is soon to open in Rancho Santa Margarita contacted me to shoot some items for their new menu and for advertising purposes.

Here are some of the images (don't they look yummy!):

Shrimp Platter:



Crab sushi:


Shrimp Tempura Roll:


(don't know the name of this dish)


Rainbow Roll:



I can't wait until this place opens up to taste some of their food. The owner is super nice and very welcoming. If you live in the area please visit the restaurant.

I've finally been able to find time to put a slideshow together from this past Sunday's (10.08.2006) wedding in San Diego.

Here's the slideshow from the wedding.

I had the great opportunity to shoot along side of David Jay and to see first hand how he works. All I have to say is, he is a very good wedding photographer. David is very gracious and helpful and I learned alot watching him work. THANK YOU DJ!! You are the man!!

After the beach shoot with KC & Jon there was a little situation where one of the groomsmen dropped his phone over the railing and was unable to reach it due to the unsteady terrain.


So, after DJ saw the phone in distress, he figured he would save the day by hopping over the railing to reach the stranded phone.


As DJ was heroically reaching for the phone, I was unfortunate enough to see this sight.. YIKES!! That's GROSS!! seriously, who wears Primal underwear.. :) (anyway, there you go ladies, that picture is for you!!)


I also met Amber (who is a friend of the bride and groom), and is also a wedding photog. She was great and very nice! I look forward to you in the future!

Here's Amber talking photo-geek with DJ.


The bride and groom (KC & Jonathan) are very cute! They had a wonderful and very energetic wedding.

From the the boat ride, where the groomsmen arrived at the wedding in a 40ft sail boat (I was lucky enough to join them.. Yippee..) luckily I didn't get sick, cause I didn't have my dramamine (that could have been bad)..

Then the groom, skateboarding into the ceremony, that was cool!! The beautiful ceremony! I loved the surf boards!

And my favorite part of the reception, was the swing dancing!! I loved it! the bride and groom and some of their friends from their swing dancing group performed some amazing dancing! I even wanted to join in, but unfortunately I would have looked the fool! But it does encourage me to take some swing dance lessons.

Again, Thank You DJ for letting me shoot along side of you! I look forward to other oportunities.. One of the most energetic weddings i've been to..

Sweet!!! Got my new Phone/PDA the other day (10.04.2006)

The Motorola Q... man this thing has everything. I already had a phone (the RAZR 3.0) with Cingular, but needed a PDA to manage my calendar, appointments, emails and contacts. Rather than having a seperate phone and a PDA attached to my hip and risk looking like a techno geek with a utility belt. I started to research PDA/Phone combo's.

I didn't really like the PDA's that were available with Cingular, so I started to look outside the Cingular realm. I was really happy with Cingular, so I was hesitant to look elsewhere. However, as my need for a PDA became stronger, I started looking at Verizon since they have a greater phone selection.

I started with the Palm Treo 700P/W but thought it was a little bulky and cumbersome. Then a friend of mine who works at Verizon allowed me to demo the Motorola Q for a week... from that point on - I was hooked..

So I purchased the phone from Verizon, and ported my number from Cingular.

The PROS:

• Phone and PDA as one device
• Calendar and Appointments
  
• Internet access (directions from google maps)
• Receive emails from all of my email accounts
• MSN Messenger (if I were using it to communicate)
• Cheaper than Palm Treo 700 P/W
  

The CONS:

• Text is a little small (but luckily I have good vision) when using the internet
  
• Can't yet resolve the SENDING of email from any of my accounts
  
• Can't yet sync with my Mac (but I hear MissingSync v2.5.1 will work)
• Can't use it as a modem with my Mac (at least not yet)
• No touch screen (which may not matter to me)
• The normal battery that comes with the kit dies too quickly (highly suggest extended battery)
  

Other than that i've been happy with my Q... Hopefully I will continue to find it useful..

Went to my godson's Tae Kwon Do tournament on Sunday (10.01.2006) located at the Ontario Convention Center. Since I haven't seen him and his Tae Kwon do in a while I figured it would be a good opportunity to take pictures.



it was an overall good day. We went to Rainforest Cafe for lunch and did a little shopping at Ontario Mills.

A wedding I shot this weekend for Harvard Photography.

Zenaida and Ronald were very cute together but very nervous. I did all I could to help relax the bride and groom due to some, let's say "coordination issues". In the end it was a very fun (yet somewhat stressful) wedding to shoot.

You can view the slideshow HERE :

In addition to the fun of the wedding, their little niece kept on wanting me to take pictures of her. She wouldn't leave me alone.

Here's a look:


Enjoy

:)

Had the opportunity last week (09.21.2006) to do some food photography for a local restaurant. The photo session lasted about three hours, but man was it stressful. We were able to photograph about 10 dishes in that time and it was overall a pleasant experience.

The restaurant is new and the owner has just finalized the lease on the location. The restaurant will be a type of Japanese fusion and from what I saw at the shoot, it looks to be a very successful restaurant. I can't wait for them to open.


Unfortunately, I can only show a couple dishes before the restaurant is open for business.

Man, im getting hungry...

*sigh* - I finally have some time to rest after spending the entire day fishing off the coast of Southern California (actual location was off the coast of San Onofre). So far my saltwater experience has only been on Open Charter boats with Davey's Locker, but I always have a great time (except on overly crowded boats where you spend too much untangiling fishing line). However, the crew always seem to do a great job finding the fish.

I decided to go on the fishing trip today because they were in search for the elusive (at least to me) Yellow Tail. This 3/4 day charter sounded good because it was an extended day trip (starting at 7am to 6:40pm), and they were going to search for Yellow Tail. Since I have yet to catch my first Yellow Tail, I figured I would give it a try, even though the weather was a little cold.

At first things started looking grim, because nobody was catching any fish.. Until about the 12 o'clock hour when somebody landed the first Yellow Tail of the day. It was a massive 30lbs yellow and it put up a great fight (It pulled the angler around the boat 1 1/2 times).

Here's the fish count for the day of 09.22.2006:
Boat: Freelance
Type Trip: 3/4 Day (extended)
# of anglers: 29
**The Catch**
11 - Yellowtail
33 - Sand Bass
4 - Bonito
2 - Calico Bass
1 - Barracuda
2 - Halibut

Unfortunately for me, this was my fish count:
0 - Yellowtail (i did get a strong bite, but tried to set the hook too early, and ended up losing)
1 - Sand Bass (too small, had to release)
4 - Calico Bass (only 1 keeper)
3 - Barricuda (all less than the 28inch keeper size, had to release)
1 - unfortunate seagull (I don't think these would taste too good, so I had to release)

other than that, I met some good fishermen and had a great time. Hopefully, my next outing will allow me to catch the elusive Yellowtail.

YES!!!! I've finally been able to update the website (Visual Exposure) with a Gallery. I tried to do as much as I could with the Flash/ActionScript programming, but got stuck (damn confusing Flash development, AAARRRGGGHH!). Thankfully, I was referred to Brett Austin (of www.goBrett.com) and he was able to save the day.

Brett took a look at my existing flash site, and was able to quickly identify the issues/problems. I would strongly recommend his services to anybody.

Thanks Brett! You rock!

Anyway, please check out the gallery at http://www.visualexposure.com.

Here's a slideshow that I put together from a wedding I shot on 09.16.2006. The couple was very fun to work with. Actually, the entire wedding party and family was fun to work with. It was a great wedding and the couple look great together..

anyway, enough of my jibberish.. Here's the slideshow.