My son's been taking an after-school chess class and Friday was their tournament day.  He's never play chess before and he's doing quite well.  He even beat me!  However, I'm not a chess player either, I barely know how to move the pieces.  Here are some shots with the 90'MEM because I wanted to hang back and not disturb them.

Our friends invited us to join them for a weekend in Palm Spring staying at a Korean-owned hotel in the Desert Springs area.  The hotel offered a large heated pool and many indoor and outdoor jacuzzis.  It was nice to enjoy some water fun in the middle on winter to relax and replenish our souls.

For a change, I brought the 90'MEM with me this time, hoping to capture some close-ups while the kids are playing in the water, but I ended up with some scenery shots instead.  For the full set, [CLICK HERE].

Just a few shots of my son's school's winter recital.  This year he also get to be announcer introducing his grade, so he was pretty nervous about that.  One little parental tip I gave him was to look up when he's saying the last sentence so it doesn't seem like he's just reading off the card.  He did a great job, and I'm a proud papa!

My wife and sister-in-laws are thinking about starting a business to sell pet products.  I've been tapped to take product photos for them.  Not having much experiences in that area, I felt I needed some practice.  First, I purchased a 3 light setup with a tent (seen below) and set it up the best I could.  Then it's time to take some test shots.  I used my MiniDigi Rolleiflex as the model, mount the 90'MEM on the M9 and setup the tripod.  Although the diffused lights were too strong, I really didn't have to worry about shutter speed since this is still life on tripod.  After about 5 shots, I found f/8 to give me the right amount of depth of focus.  Now, I just need to iron the background a little...

We went to the Long Beach Dragon Boat Festival with a lot of expectation, perhaps too much.  We wanted to see a lively show with people cheering and lots of good food.  However, it turned out not too so much of a spectator sport.  There's no announcers so we had no idea who was racing and whether or not it's an important race, no score board, so we had no idea what we're watching, except we see people sometimes race, sometimes not.  Don't even get me started on the food.  Let's just say we spent about 40 minutes there, had some grubs, and everyone wanted to go home.  I've got some shots to share, nonetheless.

I saw someone's pictures on Instagram of a lotus pond and it fueled me to go out to take some pictures.  A quick search showed that Echo Park Lake is the perfect spot.  I switched between the 90MEM and 28'Cron, but I think if I have another chance to shoot it again, I'd use the 50'Lux for its shallow DOF.

Yesterday was Darren's high school graduation, the entire family/clan couldn't be more proud of him.  It was a rather cool summer evening with good light and a joyous mood.  It was awesome to find that Mr. Ziolkowski, one of my favorite teacher back in high school, was there to give a touching speech.

I started with the 90MEM to cover the walk-in, speeches, and the handing out of diplomas.  Then I switched to the 50'Lux with a ND-filter to handle all the portraits.  I did not dare to use f/1.4 too much because I needed to make sure everyone's faces are in focus, so I mostly stay around f/2.8, unless I see some opportunities to go wide-open.  Here are just some select shots, you can see the full set [HERE].

This evening, went to my son's spring concert.  There was a natural spotlight on him throughout the performance, good thing I brought the 90MEM to grab some shots.

I needed a picture of myself to put on our company's corporate website.  Instead of paying someone to take a studio headshot, I thought I try to take one of myself in the backyard with a more natural environment.  So I setup the tripod at about 10 feet away from my standing spot and mounted the 90'MEM at f/4.  I had a little bit of trouble with focusing so I asked my sister-in-law to stand in for me so I can get the right focus.