Hong Kong and China

Wow, I haven't posted here in over 2 years. I just re-read some of my old posts and they sound so stupid :/

Anyway, I will soon be heading to Hong Kong and this blogspot will be my HQ for all things in my day. I hope to take many photos and edit them to put them up here daily.

Hold on tight :)

Project Tribute

Okay! It has a name, wtf?!

So... my ideas have been brewing quite a bit. I've developed a deeper sense of what I want for Jingna's shot. While scrolling through her gallery, I realized that I seem to especially enjoy her as a model. While her photos generally seem to be environmentally bright, she herself has a gloomy introversion. This will be the essential signature within the shot, but I'm still clogged as of who is going to be my model. The only person that really pops into my head is my old friend Kimi, who I don't see anymore. She 'had' that feel to her in highschool, but she seems much happier now.
Some of the shots:


Junko's shot is already finalized, I really just need the money to purchase the outfit. I figure I'll pay for the outfit and that will be my payment to the model... whoever that might be. I'll also need to purchase a REALLY big wig. The piece of the gosuloli will need a black wig with large pony tails, though those could be made (not sure how easily).


The final shot will undoubtedly be the most expensive to me. Rei requires blue hair, red eyes, and a plug suit that does not exist. I've found a plug suit on a cosplay site, but really... it sucks bad. I might as well wrap Yoshimi up in white spandex and DRAW the suit contours on her with a sharpie if I were to purchase that thing. So, I'm left with Dani and I to design it. I've remembered that I wanted Rei to have her eyepatch on, and so I've found a figurine that is sort of like how I envision it:


Had a really good quick photoshoot today. Lei was kind enough to join Kelsey and I. Kelsey brought some of his arsenal and we had an assassin-themed shoot. Anything to pass the time as traffic piles up in Kea'au bypass. I really hate that merge lane.

Lehua mentioned a photoshoot this saturday, but I'm foggy of the details. All I remember her saying was that it was an all-day shoot... something about the school which she works at.

Ugh, it's already 1:44 am. I need to sleep by 2:00 am or I get bitchy.

A New Project

So I've been gone for a little while, I apologize my beloved blog.

I've been to Japan! It was amazing, stupendous, fantastic, thrilling, testing, lustful, beautiful, and I'm dying to go back, but that's for another blog.

I need a new project, a new photography project... and I have an idea. I'm going to work on three pieces which pay tribute to my three favorite artists: Megumi Hayashibara, Zhang Jingna, and Junko Mizuno.

I'm a huge Neon Genesis Evangelion fan. I've watched the series 7 times now and I don't see myself stopping there. My favorite character in the series is none other than Rei Ayanami, and that is in a large part because of her Seiyuu (voice actor/actress), Megumi Hayashibara. Megumi is an extremely well-accomplished voice actress, she's voiced such characters as Fey from Cowboy Bebop, Paprika, and a ton of other characters in other shows. She's also a singer, but I feel that her strengths really lie in voice acting. Here is a trailer for the Eva movie "Death & Rebirth" where Megumi displays her wonderful voice in the beginning:

Eva rei
Uploaded by bishop72230

So, my tribute to Megumi Hayashibara will be none other than a shot of Rei Ayanami. A friend of mine, Yoshimi, would make a perfect Rei Ayanami.

Next on my list is Junko Mizuno. She is a "Kawaii Noir" artist, which means that her artworks are usually about cute, yet scary things. The BBC show "Japanorama" makes use of her artwork as commercial segways. Here is a compilation of most of them (please note the very last one):


My favorite is the last. It is also what I will base my shots on. I'm going to attempt to get someone to wear a gosuloli outfit and hold a Katana with blood on it. I've attempted this with Tammy (sort of) and I'll try to perfect it.

This brings me to my last, and most difficult artist: Zhang Jingna. She is an amazing photographer and is known throughout the digital grapevine as one of the most growing fashion photographers, and she's a year younger than me! Yes, smell the envy yet? Anyway, her work has been a huge inspiration to me and I strive to better myself through her. You can find a large portion of her work at her DeviantArt page here. Anyway, I still haven't decided what to do about that shot, as she herself is a photographer and while she does have her own style, I find it hard to pinpoint a shot that screams "zemotion".

Anyway, that's my to-do list.

Short Films

I have a hidden love for short films. A couple of my favorites are "The Parlor" and "Silent Years". Silent Years was actually done in Hawai'i, on the Big Island.

Silent Years:


The Parlor:

So Close

I'll be stepping on Japan soil in less than 16 days now. It's getting exciting every day.

I did something I probably shouldn't have, but I felt like I had to. I bought a new camera, the Canon 50D. I argued it out with myself, and this shouldn't hurt me too bad in the wallet. I had about $2000. The camera was $1200, then $300 for the rail pass, then $50 for the cellphone, bringing my lovely $2000 down to about $450. I just sold a lens for $100, my old dSLR should sell somewhere between $300-400, and finally, I did a job for someone a little while ago which totaled to about $400, this brings me up to about $1200. This seems okay, seeing that everything aside from food will be paid for once I get to Japan. I'm a little paranoid about the $400, but oh well. I already have the 50D in my hands now, just got it today in the mail! It's a lovely device, I haven't quite had the chance to test it out yet and tomorrow is Akino's birthday, restricting me from kidnapping and boring her to death by taking panoramic shots of the sunset :( oh well.

Speaking of which, I made her some little button pins for her birthday. She picked up an iPod Touch today for herself... since she received a nice, fat stipend from SAC for all of her hard work. I've been telling everyone that we're going to have a BBQ for her, but I have no idea of the location yet :(

I asked Ola, yet another boss of mines, if she'd be willing to purchase a lens I've had my eye on for awhile. They seem to enjoy simply purchasing things for my services instead of checks. Works for me, as I probably would have spent it on a lens anyway, and this way I don't get taxed! Ah, tax evasion! Anyway, the lens is a Sigma 50mm f/1.4!!! I bloody lub Bokeh. I did my fair share of research, and it seems that the Sigma tramples over the Canon f/1.4... as it should, it's a friggin 77mm diameter lens! The Canon is 58mm or 62mm, can't recall. Ah, these filters are going to get expensive. Anyway, I haven't heard back from them since my request, so I hope they took me serious... I don't ever ask for anything.

Dark Christmas went... okay. I didn't think it was a very successful event. You can pretty it up all you want, we simply didn't get the crowd that we needed to show that the students were getting something out of it. I don't know what my problem as a Publicist is, I just can't seem to nerf down my time on making things pretty.

My classes are going well. I have been skipping quite a bit recently as a result from Dark Christmas, and the pattern seems to be sticking with me. I'm just thankful this pattern didn't emerge in October. In any case, I'm ready for the finals, just one silly paper for Philosophy and I'm finished. I just need to worry about work now...

So I ran through an interview the other day for a position in Myhraliza's office. I was pretty confident and still am, some of the questions they asked seemed contrary to what they told me about the job description though. In any case, it's a job and one with people that I enjoy to work with, so I suppose it's a good decision.

Well, this was a rather long blog. Lots on my mind, I suspect.

The event Dark X-Mas is almost here :(
It's a tie-in between the Haunted House and Christmas, so sort of an imitation of my favorite Tim Burton movie, Nightmare Before Christmas.

It's usually a bad month for me when this sort of event happens, but we'll see.

I won the Tribune Herald Calendar shot for the month of November, so I'm a whole $50 richer! Of course, $10 of that is going to pay for the shots and $20 is going to my loverly model, Tiff, so I'm $20 richer, but at least I'm not going the other way.

What more? Hmmm, I'm working on a "Hello" video for my friend, Haruka. She graduated last semester and went back to Tokyo. She's slid into somewhat of a depression, so I'm trying to cheer her up, if only just a little bit. Still haven't finished taping everyone.

Anyway, that's about all I really want to discuss right now. I'm procrastinating a lot and have a mountain of things to do, but I just can't seem to get myself energized about any of it.

Never Sleeps

Hello!

I just got back from a conference in Las Vegas. The conference itself was for Student Unions (or what our campus calls "Campus Center"), called ACUI. It's basically a 3-day session-packed conference and a great reason to go places and network with people in other campuses doing the same things that you're doing to benefit your Student Union. I left Hawai'i with a chest cold, so I was pretty miserable the first few days there. I wasn't really digging the Vegas vibe. I don't like to gamble, I don't have a thing for Hookers, and although there were half-naked girls walking around all over the place it just felt really dirty. When my sinuses finally cleared and I WAS able to smell things, I suddenly realized that the entire city smelled like one huge burning cigarette, which made me sneeze fanatically for a few days. We had the first day off, so we took advantage of this and went all over the strip. During the night time, we went wandering over to the MGM and then through Paris. We had this great idea to go up the Eifel tower and to watch the Bellagio Fountains.

It looked amazing. My eyes had not been so contempt since New York. We decided, though, that we needed to experience the fountains from down below. We hastily headed down towards the strip in front of Bellagio and waited for the show to start. As Celine Dion's voice began to mumble strange Italian words from "Time to Say Goodbye" I fell in love. The fountains left me speechless, and as the final pressure blast from the larger circle shot up following Bocelli's finale I felt a deep love for this place which renewed my passion.



Anyway, from that point on, I had a pretty great time in Vegas. I gambled, I lost, I stopped gambling.

The keynote speaker for the conference was an advocate of the Pay it Forward movement and showed a great clip that I had not seen before from the Free Hugs Campaign

All in all, it was definitely a positive experience.