New preset for food photography

A new preset for still life color improvement is available over at the new photo site. This set is design to achieve the crisp clean fine dinning look.

Collages print from Lightroom to Jpeg, with layout preset for Big Pictures…

A web version of my portfoilo using LR "print to file" function

Remember this post I did back then using contact sheet II from bridge? Well, I was updating my portfolio printing from lightroom this weekend, and I thought to myself, I like what I see with the unify space and such, I wonder if there is a easier way for me to STOP making the grid and open these countless individual PSD files and combine them manually.

I look around in lightroom, then it hit me..all I have to do is just to set it at “Print to Jpeg File” (here is to countless night I spend coping ALBUM layout on photoshop…..what a waste of time). Thus, to live up to my matto of making everything in my life as fancy and extra spicy, I found a way to combine this LR function with the BIG PICTURE from PanosFX

1) Download the “Big Picture 2″  from PanosFX.com( Free or Commercial, it is totally up to you). It’s a photoshop Action, they do have it in Element as well but I don’t use it so in theory I think you can do what I am about to do in Element as well.

2) Open up Lightroom and select 25 photos. The Big Picture action will require you to open a landscape orientation in PS later, so with that in mind, go to the “PRINT” module and open up the “PAGE SETUP” make sure you have a Landscape orientation.

3) I had made a screen cap of the setting:

Thus you will get this jpeg as a result:

4) Open this jpeg in Photoshop, and make sure you have the Big Picture actions install, apply the one of the “action” from the “PFxBig picture” folder.

5) Follow the instruction, and you will get something like this:

But why stop there, when you can have some fun rearranging stuff and change sizes :

I think this method is more forward and require less time for the PC to open and process 25 folders, plus I can adjust the crop in the print module….Which is a plus since I would say I work extensively in Lightroom.Preset download:

Print 25 photos on 8×10 : LR2 only I think…Download here

Now, this is a trick I use normally if I don’t want the photos to be evenly space out. I will make a couple (2 to 3 ) virtual copy of the one I would like to leap in 2 cells (or 3). Then adjust the placement on the mat…(place your cursor on the cell and then hold down mouse button and toggle). Combine with cell spacing, which will give me something like this:

After I ran Big Picture action in PS :

You can download a lightroom print preset for the above effect here

I then got ride of the row of white space, and then resize and move stuff around:

Now, go out there and have some fun!! If you like these idea and would like me to continue posting print layout preset, please comment below!

A wedding up on Grouse Mountain

I was really excited to be shooting Kaley and Pale’s wedding. The whole day was really beautiful. Although the rain did made an appearances and they had to move their ceremony back indoor, we did manage to take a break in between the speeches ( and toasting) and got a couple of those Vancouver landscape background Pale wanted.

Donovan

Don 2 weeks-23-Edit, originally uploaded by Vivian Chung Photography (KJmeow).

I had mostly use my skin tone only preset for baby Don’s photo…I just like the effect, and hey my kid has a dark yellow skin tone..(olive-ish yellow) and with my pasty white skin (blood lost and sleepless night) it seem to be the only thing that I can do to balance the two out…

I did change the tone curve and saturation up a bit from the “MB photobooth skin tone only” preset, but the merit are the same. Bare in mind that you will have to work around the WB and the hue in HSL for each different situation. I had use bounce flash with these raw, but because the blind that I bounced it on had a light cream color, the WB was not too out of wack.

Download : Baby skintone only wih speedlite

Introducing……

Don 3 days old-1, originally uploaded by Vivian Chung Photography (KJmeow).

He came out early!! Guess he can’t wait for the planned c-section date. Actually he is about 2 weeks earlier than his due date…

We are still pretty tired but excited. Aidan kept telling me that ..er…baby is crying..may be we should go check?

With this exciting addition, please note that I might not be able to keep the usual response time with emails. I will try my hardest to reply but it may take up to a few days~

A very tired Vivian.

Lensbaby composor in Wedding photography

Congratulation Michelle and Brad!

Lightroom preset Party Animal was used, but I changed the hue of split tone.

I rented this new lensbaby for their wedding, but I had reuse my own aperture kit from Erica’s wedding. I must say that after using all 3 model, this is probably the best in control and thus my number one must have item for wedding photography. I shoot about 70 frames with the lensbaby composer; all done without use of a tripod.

Here are some cake shot (they use cup cakes) with the heart sharp aperture:

I will post more photos of Michelle and Brad’s wedding in the coming days. Still recovering from that crazy party!

Cheese! Plate!

I went back to my favouriate cheese store in the lower mainland at the beginning of Dec 08 to shoot some promo shot for their cheese platter they had set up for the holiday. In the course of 2 hours, I had change 3 backdrops, learned that I love the 430 more than the 580II (ok, Canon flash suck, period. ) and that there is a chesse call Twiggies from Agassiz, BC that looks like Marshmallow.

I had picked up some 75cents poster and some $1 vinyl border for my home studio use a couple weeks before this shoot. Turns out they are such a big help in doing this type of promo shoot. I shoot like crazy eventhough there were only 3 plates of cheese, but because I had no idea what the site and design work was like, so I had to cover everything.

Mount Pleasant Cheese

3432 Cambie Street
Vancouver, BC V5Z 2W8

Store Phone: 604-875-6363

Pasta polo

dessert-0064, originally uploaded by Vivian Chung Photography (KJmeow).

I do not know what happen…but I “forgot” to keep posting what I intended to do with this photo blog. I started this blog in August under the advise of my friend who was guiding my photography career. Photoblog has become more popular because you are actually letting your potential client to get a sense of your styles as well as you as a photographer. I had personal blog, and space pages, but wanted to achieved a more professional status. This blog was intended for that purpose, not to overwhelm people with every single pictures I took (There is flickr for that..:) ) , instead client or friends can see what I have been up to.

Now, it got pretty sidetracked when I was uploading all of my lightroom preset posts. I had done a number of jobs since then, a lot of them are cooperate shoot so I won’t be posting those. There are a few that I really love, and I will try to post a few of the sample photo tonight

The challenge for this shoot for a restaurant is speed. I had pick out a booth near the window, but the ice cream was melting so fast that I didn’t have a lot of time to construct the backdrop right. My solution, use other plate of desert as background. I ended up finish filming all of the desert with in half an hour.

B&W high contrast preset

hard light-0137, originally uploaded by Vivian Chung Photography (KJmeow).

This is one of those image that define what I love to shoot. I need a photo using Hard Light, and I shoot a couple of really harsh extreme one, but this is a happy accident. I turn my shutter slower by mistaken and I really like the softness of this photo.

Speedlite 580 raw, point at butterfly position. The position of the speedlite also leak some light at the background, which is my beloved shower stall.

MARCH22/08 update: vivianchung’s High Con B&W.rar

It’s a set, actually, including the modified Extreme edition.

DVD case and Mini Album

Is it just me, or these looks so cute and pretty?
They are DVD case from TAP and mini sample album from Ventura, which I might add that aside from the fact that they are so deliciously to look at; I always get complement from their professional look.
I included a mini-book as a surprise gift for Cecilia and Keith, after all they were so understanding and fun to work with.