Hi, thanks for visiting! Clearly, I haven't been updating this blog. But I haven't stopped taking pictures! Check out my Facebook page or jameswangphoto.com to see what I've been up to.

Really, Old Navy?

I came across this Old Navy commercial on Microaggressions. To me, it's not overtly racist but it comes very, very close. Was it just a coincidence that the twins turned out to be little Asian boys? That it's a smirking white dude-equin that says, "NOW I can tell them apart"? 

It's possible they accidentally hit upon an Asian stereotype, but that would make them careless, at best. Look at how much trouble Garfield got into for this unfortunately-timed strip:

Now here's an ad campaign that strikes me as racist... MetroPCS's "Ranjit and Chad."

One of the new ads can’t even get its racism right: At one point, Ranjit exclaims “Holy shishkabob!” Kebabs are, of course, a Middle Eastern, not Indian, food.

excerpt from It’s Racist But It Works: MetroPCS’s “Ranjit and Chad” Commercials Boost Sales

Catching Some Rays

A diaper leaves one hell of a tan line, though!

Today's Portrait Session: The Williams Family

I did a portrait shoot today for the Williams family. What a great bunch! The kids loved having their picture taken. Everything they did was adorable... it almost makes my job too easy!

I still have some time slots available this Summer. If you're interested in having your own family portrait taken, you can email me at james@jameswangphoto.com.

Formal Group Photo: Burlington Public Library Board of Trustees

Here's a group photo I was hired to take for the Burlington Public Library's Board of Trustees. In cases like this, I don't want to waste too much of their time fiddling with lights. It was a Thursday evening and  everyone just wants to git-er-done and go home. But I hate the look of on-camera flash--it makes photos look so flat and amateurish. 

The Setup:

Before I had the Trustees come over, I set up one 3 x 4 ft. softbox, up high and angled down, on a stand positioned camera left . Then I adjusted the power of the Speedotron head and softbox position to give me an f/8 (@ISO 200) reading on my light meter evenly across the scene.  Why f/8? I wanted enough depth of field to keep both rows of people in focus, but blur the stack of books in the background. I made an informed guess that f/8 would do it. Maybe f/5.6 would have been better, actually. The books are still a little distracting. To capture some ambient light, I set the shutter speed to 1/30 sec. Even at that slow shutter, the people weren't going to have motion blur. They are frozen by the strobe.

The actual shooting went really quickly. Once they got on the set, I arranged them to match their heights and took maybe a dozen shots. After that, they went back to their meeting. Piece of cake!

Bride and Groom Running

I'm in a wedding photography class this week, taught by the awesome Lara of The Studio Nouveau. Today, the class shot a bride and groom (actually models, not a real couple.)

Here's a fun little sequence I threw together from the shoot:

Tracker Update: Still Crazy/Cute

I've been neglecting my blog. To all my loyal fans (Mom, Becky), sorry! Don't worry, I haven't stopped taking pictures. These days it's more assignments and less personal photography.

Have you been in Tracker withdrawal? Here's your fix...

Same old, lovable Tracker!

Taking Stock of the Situation

Here are some recent studio shots...

Out-of-this-World Retouching

I want to share a cool retouching technique I picked up at a recent seminar by Katrin Eismann, "The Photoshop Diva." It's a way a smoothing skin while retaining the texture. It takes a few more steps than just using a blur filter, but the results are more natural.

To illustrate the technique, I chose this picture of Edward James Olmos by Chad Forbes (shared under the Creative Commons Attribution License.)

(Screenshots below are from Photoshop CS3 on Mac.)

Let's begin, shall we?

1. Open the image in Photoshop.

2. Duplicate the background layer (press Command + J or drag the layer over the "New Layer" button)

3. Invert the new layer (Command + I)

4. Convert the layer to a smart object by selecting Filter -> Convert for Smart Filters in the menu bar.

5. Select Filter -> Others -> High Pass.

6. I start with 6.0 pixels for the radius setting. Since we're working with a smart object (see Step 4), we can go back and adjust the value.

7. Select Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.

8. Set the Radius to half what you used for the High Pass filter. In this case, High Pass was 6.0, so Gaussian Blur will be 3.0.

9. Set the layer blending mode to "Vivid Light."

10. The whole image will be blurry. Since we only want to smooth Admiral Adama's face, we add a layer mask. Invert the layer mask so it is all black.

11. Using the brush set to white, paint over the areas of skin that need smoothing. I recommend using a low hardness setting (under 10%) and medium opacity setting (around 50%-75%) for the brush. Next, paint over the eyes and mouth with a black brush at 100% opacity. We don't want these areas smoothed.

In the screenshot below, I pressed "\" (backslash) to show me how the mask looks (the tinted areas are masked.) Press backslash again to go back to the normal view.

This is what my layer mask looks like by itself. Creepy!

13. That's all!

Compare the difference:

Left: Original, Middle: Gaussian Blur only, Right: Better skin smoothing. The results are subtle, but that's the point-- not to look obviously "Photoshopped."

Again, I didn't come up with this technique. I don't even know why is works. Katrin Eismann didn't invent it either, actually. She learned it from someone else.

Hope this helps!

2010 South Asian Showdown

Last night, I shot at the 2010 South Asian Showdown, a competition featuring 12 teams in 4 different styles of Indian dance. It was so much fun! The dances, costumes, and energy of the performers were amazing. I want to thank Dominic Chow for inviting me to shoot the show with him.

I shot 2500 pictures, filling up all the memory cards I brought-- 35 gigabytes total! Here are photos of the winning teams:

University of Maryland's EntouRAAS team wins the Garba/Raas category.

UCLA's Nashaa team wins the Hindi Film category.

The Broad Street Baadshahz from Philadelphia win the Fusion category.

Carnegie Mellon's Chake De Bhangra team wins the Bhangra category.

NYU's Pandemonium wins the People's Choice award.

UCLA's Nashaa team wins the Best in Show!

Stay tuned for more photos from the show. Prints will be available for purchase at this address:

http://www.pictage.com/796056

Article about my library show

This article appeared in the Burlington Union newspaper as well as online at wickedlocal.com.

I'm the Featured Artist at The Burlington Board

I'm the featured artist on The Burlington Board, a new website for the Burlington, MA community. Gene, who runs the site, was kind enough to put up a bunch of my images in a slideshow at the top of the page!