I own two 2nd-generation Drobo 4-bay devices, and I’ve definitely had a love-hate relationship with them. Both Drobos had to be replaced at one point because of issues with the Firewire connections. Fortunately Drobo’s customer service did a good job of working with me (the second time around at least), but it was still a frustrating experience. The biggest problem by far though with the first two generations of Drobos, and a constant source of frustration for me, was the […]
read moreDrobo 4-bay USB 3.0 (3rd Generation) Storage Array Review
The Lipstick Stain
My good friend Dagny Looper is a 2nd-year film student at NYU. This month she shot her pre-thesis film ‘The Lipstick Stain’ in NYC and Upstate New York. Originally she had planned to shoot in Arkansas just before Christmas, and I told her that if I was home in Houston at that time I would try to come help with the shoot. Eventually she realized it was much more feasible to shoot it in New York, and she found enough locations […]
read moreSesame Street China Launch
With the Western world inundating China with the best and worst it has to offer these past few decades, it’s no surprise that eventually even Big Bird would make a migrational trip over the Pacific to visit the Middle Kindgom himself. His inaugural visit was part of a water conservation project sponsored by Thirst, an Australian NGO based in Beijing that has done a series of ‘water dragons’ with school kids around China. This event also involved making a water […]
read moreEWC Great Wall Climb
The 2012 East-West Center Alumni Conference in Beijing wouldn’t have been complete without a field trip to climb the Great Wall of China. And climb we did! After a rainy conference morning which looked like it was going to put a damper on our climbing fun, the weather cleared in the early afternoon as participants young and old crammed into several charter buses. By the time we reached the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall that we would be climbing, […]
read moreEWC Beijing Alumni Conference
Every two years the East-West Center, a Honolulu-based Asia-Pacific research institute that funded my M.A. studies in Hawaii, holds an alumni conference biennially somewhere in Asia. Having served as the official photographer for the last three conferences (Hanoi in 2006, Bali in 2008, and Honolulu in 2010), I almost had to miss the conference this time around despite it being held here in Beijing. Another job in Los Angeles came up at the same time as the conference, but the […]
read moreSichuan Earthquake Recovery
AFD (Agence Française de Développement), known in English as the French Development Agency, is a French international development agency that does a lot of good work in China (as well as in many other countries). In fact, they were the top foreign donor to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake relief effort. In commemoration of their work on the earthquake relief efforts, they commissioned a documentary to be filmed in several of the regions in Sichuan where they supplied recovery funds. As […]
read moreRock the Web Finals
One week after the semifinals cut the number of contestants in half to only six lucky survivors, Rock the Web held the finals of their inaugural season singing competition. Following different rules than the semifinals, this time online votes from friends and supporters couldn’t help the contestants. It was all up to the judges this time, and the first three rounds would see one contestant eliminated each round, leaving three contestants to compete in a final round. There were three […]
read moreRock the Web Sanlitun Photo Shoot
A few days after shooting the semifinals of Chinese singing competition Rock the Web’s first season, I took the six finalists to Sanlitun Village for some ‘glamour shots’ to use as publicity for the competition. Uta, the eventual winner of the competition, was out of town that day, so I shot her pictures a couple of days later when she returned (she is the one in the red dress in the last several pictures, which were some of my favorites). […]
read moreRock the Web Semifinals
Two weeks after returning from the incredibly exciting Las Vegas training camp, Rock the Web held the semifinals of their singing competition in good ol’ Beijing. Originally the semifinal competition was scheduled to take place in Las Vegas at the end of the training camp, but since three of the twelve contestants couldn’t get US visas, in the end the event was moved to a Beijing venue. The venue was pretty awesome, but the most spectacular thing to me as […]
read moreRock the Web Vegas Photo Shoot
While frolicking in Las Vegas with the Rock the Web crew and semifinalist contestants, we figured it would be negligent on our part to not take pictures of the contestants in the swank mansion we were staying in (and rents for US$10,000 a day at normal rates, which I’m hoping we weren’t paying!). After all, the manager of the mansion told us that it was often rented out for fashion shoots. The only problem is that I hadn’t brought any […]
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