Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

End of 2011 road trip – Chittering to New Norcia, Western Australia

January 2, 2012

To end 2011, I went on a short road trip to New Norcia in Western Australia. The little town is the only monastic town in Australia and has buildings in a Spanish style of architecture. It’s certainly an interesting place for a visit. To get there, I drove through the beautiful Chittering region via Chittering Road. There are many citrus farms and a few vineyards along the way. So It’s worth to stop by and take some photos. Especially the hilly landscape is perfect for panorama photos.

Summer time is when the hays get harvested. So it’s easy to spot hays rolled up on the landscape. With the perfect lighting and scenery, you can always capture great pictures. The day was sunny with some clouds scattered across the sky. It was a perfect day for landscape photography. I always feel plain blue sky is boring on a photo. Clouds add texture and gives an image more dimension when looking at it.

When I got to New Norcia, it was 2pm and so I spent 3 hours to explore the town. I switched to my Mamiya 645 to capture the town on films. So I should post them when I get them processed and scanned. The purpose of this road trip was to capture some astronomy images and create a time lapse short clip of stars. I had to kill 3 hours somewhere, so I drove around the region for other photo opportunities.  With the hilly landscape, I could easily spot group of trees and sheep on the land. They are often picturesque and is impossible to leave the place without taking a shot.

The sky finally gets dark enough to photo astronomy. I realized there is a large space antenna near New Norcia. I knew it would be perfect with it on the foreground with stars exposing behind. However, it’s not for public access and I couldn’t find a better location to capture it from a distance. So I ended up at this open land with a tree as foreground. It wasn’t an easy night photographing astronomy. There were many bugs and mosquitos bothering and the place was pitch black. You have no idea what is around you that could attack you in the wild. That was the downside of being out alone taking astronomy images. The results were awesome though and I’m satisfied with the output. The next location is very likely to be at pinnacles in Jan, 2012. Looking forward to it.

New Norcia Star timelapse from Gary Wong on Vimeo.

Tags: astronomy, new norcia, outback, panaroma, road trip, western australia
Posted in personal, travel | 2 Comments »

My blog domain is now moved to www.garywongblog.com

August 18, 2011

Yes, both www.garywongphotography.com and www.garywongblog.com are owned by me. I want to separate the two domains, so that my blog domain is to show all my recent works and updates. Whereas, the main site will become a showcase of selective favorites and projects that I have completed or in progress.

If there are any dead links or not found pages, please contact me to resolve them. Thank you!

Gary

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Living Social and Jump On It Perth offer ended!

February 8, 2011

Living Social and Jump On it offer
Thank you all so much for purchasing the offer on Living Social or Jump On It. I believe this is one of the best offer for my customers to experience. For those who missed it, my promotion for 1 hour portrait session is still available. Please send email for booking.

For my customers who bought the voucher, please contact me as soon as possible to book your session. Remember it is only valid until end of April. Looking forward to meet all of you and have great photos taken for you.

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Tips on animal portrait – How I do it

January 28, 2011

I don’t specialize in animal portrait, but I’ve done a few that I can share some tips on how I do it.

The images below are taken outdoor, so I’ll focus on how I did this session.
Dogs are hard to control as they usually run wildly once they are unleashed. That’s ok, we can start off with some photos capturing them running.
There are two situations; 1) The dog runs parallel with your camera. That is when they run across from left to right or right to left. 2) The dog runs toward or outward from your camera. The difference between the 2 situations is that for 1), the distance between doggie and you is constant whereas 2), the distance changes dramatically.
So the hard part is to capture the doggie in focus! For 1), since the distance is constant, the auto focus on the camera is pretty reliable. Keeping the shutter speed above 1/500 and/or aperture of f2.8 will get you many sharp images. You could also pan the dog and keep the dog within the frame while pressing the shutter. But the panning effect won’t be very noticeable as the shutter speed is too fast. So if you want panning effect. Slower the shutter speed to 1/125. I won’t go into too much detail of panning since I didn’t do that on my session.
For 2), when the dog is sprinting towards you, how can you get sharp images? Basically, unless you have top of the range camera body and lenses. Your auto focus is not capable of getting sharp images. Trust me, I used Nikon D700 and prime lens, but AF didn’t go too well. So what I did was I set manual focus and frame the location that I want to capture the dog and when the doggie runs into that spot, I press the shutter with the continuous mode turned on. So I ended up with at least 2-3 sharp images at aperture f4. With the dog running towards you a few times, you should have at least 10 nice sharp images.
I worked with a prime lens of 85mm. With this focal length, I could include more landscapes into the image. With a lens of 200mm and longer, you could get images of the dog fill up the frame.

After some running session, you and the dog probably needs to get some rest. So now is time to take some still photos. The doggie would spend more time sitting or lying. So lens selection can be anything you like. For me, I would use my 50mm to get some detailed photos on eyes, nose, feet and name badge. Even when the doggie moves a little, you can still manage the distance.
While the doggie is sitting or standing, to get him to look at the camera is also tricky. Dogs are really sensitive with sound, so they will get distracted and look away easily. What I did with my session was to make some strange noise that would keep his attention. This is all up to your creativity, there’s no standard sound that would keep your dog’s attention.

So that’s how I did my session. Not to mention that lighting is always important. I take photos 1-2 hours before sunset, so I don’t get harsh lights and the dog don’t get exhausted too easily. After all, it’s to enjoy the outdoor session.

Posted in personal, portraiture | 1 Comment »

Wedding Photo talk @ Vianei Wedding Hong Kong 30th May 2:00 – 3:30 pm

May 24, 2010

To be honest, I’m not a good writer nor a good speakers. But I’ll love to share my thoughts and experience with anyone who cares about wedding photographs. Anyone including couples who are getting married or photographers who are serious about wedding photography.

Here’s a chance for me to do that at Vianei Wedding. My trusted wedding gown vendor who always show support with my work. I’m honored to present a talk at their shop. Here’s the detail with a brief agenda of the talk.

Wedding Photo talk @ Vianei Wedding Hong Kong 30th May 2:00 – 3:30 pm
maximum 10 couples, register at info[at]vianeiwedding.hk or call 2369 2069.

The talk will be in two parts.
Pre-Wedding:
- Choosing your style
- Choosing locations
- Posing

Wedding Day:
- Planning with the photographer
- Increase photo quality
- sharing my experience

After the talk, there will be Q&A and open discussion. If you feel your wedding photos are one of the most important element of your wedding. Then join a session for free to prepare and find out how to find the right wedding photographer.

Posted in bridal, engagement, personal, weddings | 2 Comments »

Street photo – Temple street Hong Kong

March 14, 2010

It’s often that when I’m not shooting weddings, my camera will just sits on my couch sun bathing. I love photograph landscape, but only when the weather is nice which only happens 20 days a year. Obviously, my camera is not sun bathing most of the time. So in 2010, I told myself to bring my camera out more often to just do some street photo shoot. Which you might think it’s easy, but Hong Kong is difficult sometimes. People don’t like cameras pointing at them, unless you are a tourist and of course I don’t look like one. Anyway, I went out with my buddy for some street photos at Temple street. It is a well known night market tourist attraction. You can find cheap clothes, accessories, electronics, many fake items and also tarot. Have a look at this place!

Anything you can find for cheap


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Joey Make-up opening!

March 7, 2010

So with the previous post on the Bridal Make-up photos. Here we have the opening of Joey’s Make-up studio. As most of you might know about the pricey rent in Hong Kong. Most of the photographers, make-up artist, wedding gown vendors can’t afford to hire big spaces. So what we have in Hong Kong are these small size office/studio to suit our needs. They are good enough for make-up trial or meeting with clients.  The importance is the location right at Tsim Sha Tsui, which is one of the well gathered area with many wedding gown vendors, make-up artists and photographers nearby. So it’s a very convenient location for couples to shop for their wedding.

With Joey’s setup, she puts a lot of DIY to decorate her studio. Check them out.


The Bling Bling card holder and photo album!

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Featured on Ruffled blog – Honmi + Mathew Wedding

February 20, 2010

A few days after I posted Honmi’s wedding. I received a message from my twitter. It was the owner of Ruffled Blog asking for my permission to reference my photos of Honmi’s wedding. I was so exciting how people all over the world could see my works. Really honored and I will continue with what I love to do.

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The KISS wedding album unboxed get 3 WOWs

November 30, 2009

WOW WOW WOW!
First WOW, the KISS album only took 3 weeks from the day I ordered it to the day I received it. That’s fantastic speed for oversea ordering.

Second WOW, the albums as expected are so pretty. The leather feels and smells good. I mean it, I can’t stop hugging it, haha. Each spread is so flat, loves it!

Last WOW, the print and the color is very much what I see from my calibrated monitor. Which means I can just drag the photos into my template for future albums. Simple simple simple.

With these samples, I’m sure many of my future clients would love to own them. The red leather would go perfectly with Chinese wedding.

Thanks so much for KISS books. Love you all.

01_kiss02_kiss03_kiss04_kiss

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Find me on Facebook!

October 17, 2009

I’m on facebook, find me!

Bridal

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