What I’ve been up to?

Ok folks, I’m back!  Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

• I went to Hong Kong for a couple of weeks, had 1 engagement session, 1 wedding session, and 1 family portrait session, and some quality time catching up with family which hasn’t happened for many good years. It’s really been long due. =)
• My cat, CC, has been diagnosed with cancer about 4 months ago. Her conditions deteriorated rapidly while I was away from home, but she hung in there like a warrior and waited for me to come home. We spent the final moments together as family, and words cannot express the pain I’ve gone through. Life never means so much to me, and I’m beginning to discover new meanings to photographs I treasure.
• Work is piled up, and I’m doing my absolute best to get things done. I managed to lock myself in front of my computer and came up with about 70 album layouts that will help speed up the album design process hereafter.
• I’m preparing for an entirely new website for the year 2010. I know, the last major changes haven’t even been 2 months and I’m already working on the new.
• New Blog! Yep, I finally decided to move this blog in the first quarter of 2010 to WordPress. I migrated from my PC to my iMac 6 months ago and I simply hate using my PC… sorry folks, "I was a PC"! WordPress will make the blogging less painful to do especially the picture posting part which I had trouble with over the past few months. Moving large number of pictures back and forth the Mac and PC isn’t the most enjoyable part of my job!
• I attended a Joe McNally’s Location Lighting Technique Workshop early November, and it’s really an eye opener to see the Master of Nikon CLS work his magic. It’s absolutely inspiring and it is opening new doors to how I shoot with my Nikon SB Speedlights. It’s also inspired me to go back to my experimental phase again with small objects and multiple flash units to get creative with lighting; eventually this all will contribute to new ways of how I shoot. Photography has always been exciting and fascinating for me, and it always seem to find new ways to keep me going forward!
• Must be that time of the year… I’ve been on a spending spree lately with photography related items. One of the new toys (haven’t used this term for my camera stuff for a long while!) is the PC-Nikkor 35mm F/2.8 shift lens seen below, and I have a tilt adapter coming in to help me explore new boundaries of the land of tilt-shift. =) Stay tuned, you’ll see me using them on the field in no time…
• I hope my new Panasonic DMC-TS1 is truly waterproof, ’cause I’ll be testing it in Maui after X’mas. Can’t wait!

This is it folks, time to post some pictures to share!!!

Goodbye CC, you’ll forever be missed

 
Herman Au is a Wedding Photographer located in Los Angeles, California
Service area includes LA, Orange County, and San Francisco Bay Area
Will also travel worldwide for destination weddings
http://www.hermanau.com