Author

Sean Chin

Inspirational, Travels

Back from South America and Inspiration

The above is an episode of Travel+Escapes’ original web series called “New Nomads” featuring blogs such as PlanetD.com and FoxNoMad.com! 

It’s been a few weeks since my last update but I am back from my trip to South America. Over the next month or two, I will be posting regular weekly posts about all the places I was fortunate enough to explore. Overall, I took over 8,000 RAW photos! So much so, that I just purchased a new 15TB Synology NAS unit to store my entire archive into (review coming soon).

The reason why I included a web episode of “New Nomads” here is because on my trip, I met so many of them! I met year-long backpackers from Austria and Sweden just to name a few. As a matter of fact, two of my friends from university are backpacking across the world as we speak. You can follow Ted and Jen at RoadMapsToHappiness.com. One thing that I really enjoy about traveling and especially this adventure is making new connections. I believe this is the first time I’ve ever been to places where I really could not fluently and directly communicate with the locals. However, what I found is that there is definitely more good than bad in this world. Pretty much everyone I encounter was friendly, helpful and kind. There was a lot of Spanglish, notepad writing and hand gestures going on, but at the end of the day, I was able to get around just fine.

South America is officially my 6th continent covered and only Antarctica remains. In a way, I can say that I’ve now travelled to all of the habitable continents on Earth. So, before the onslaught of my in-depth posts comes about, I will just give you a quick overview of the places I went to. The first stop was a long layover in Bogota, Colombia, then Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then both Brazilian and Argentinian sides of Iguazu Falls, then to Cusco and Machu Picchu, Peru and then finally Lima, Peru.

I cannot wait to show all of your my photographs and tell you about my travels to South America!

Best,

SC

2013/02/07
1493
Photography, Travels

Happy New Year, NEW Image Gallery and South America

Photo taken by Sean Chin at www.SeanChin.com.

Taken at “Songs of the Sea” performance in Sentosa, Singapore in 2007.

First of all, let me just say Happy New Year! I hope all of you have a fantastic 2013.

I want to take this moment to give you all a little gift from myself. Over the last 3 months, I have been secretly and feverishly been going through my entire photographic archive since 2005 and re-mastering all of my favorite images. This portfolio includes four main categories: travels, concerts, special events and sports. I really hope that you take some time to go through it and please do leave me some comments as I enjoy reading your feedback and constructive criticism. For the longest time, I’ve been tired and sick of using “social” sharing portfolios such as Smugmug, Zenfolio, Flickr just to name a few. There are just way too many privacy, pricing and copyright insecurities that I no longer have the patience to worry about. After many hours of research, I stumbled upon an amazing new platform called Piwigo. It is a software that you can install on your own server, which means that I am in full control of my work. I never have to worry about a company like Flickr closing down and then losing all of my comments.

As many of my readers know, I LOVE traveling and plan to continue my bucket list of exploring all seven continents before I am 30. In just a few weeks, I will be leaving on a journey to South America. More specifically, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. I really look forward to visiting Rio, Iguazu Falls and of course Machu Picchu. In the next week, I will be writing a “what’s in my bag” featuring what gear I’ll be carrying for this trip.

Again, all the best in 2013!

Update December 9, 2013: I am now using the “New Smugmug”. Many of the photographers I follow use the new service with great pleasure. So, I decided to take the plunge along with the Black Friday 40% off discount for the year. 

Update January 3, 2013: Many thanks to Pierrick Le Gall, creator of Piwigo, for working directly working one on one with me for the last few days to customize my image gallery!

2013/01/01
1673
Music, Photographer Notes, Photography

Photographer Notes: Carrie Underwood 2012

Carrie Underwood performed a few nights ago at the Air Canada Centre, one of the largest venues in Toronto, Canada. Photographing her was fun and interesting at the same time. First of all, a superstar like her didn’t have a photo release trying to grab our copyrights or restrict us in any way, major props to Underwood and her PR team. The shoot was interesting because it was not from the pit as usual. Instead, the media had to shoot from the sound board which was pretty much in the center of the arena.

Preparation:

A few hours before heading to the gig, I pretty much knew exactly what songs she’d he performing. Photographers got to stay for the first two songs, which were “Good Girl” and “Undo It”. Also from researching YouTube clips of these songs, I knew for a fact that lighting was going to be no problem at all and that it would be pretty bright and consistent.

Gear:

Since I knew we’d be standing at the mixer, I brought a small foldable stool to make sure I shot over the most pit instead of taking the risk of getting hands in the way. Because we’d be far away from the stage, a monopod was needed to help stabilize a super telephoto lens. My next challenge was lens selection. There were a few options that could have worked here:

A) 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x = 420mm f/4 (a good reach)

B) 400 f/2.8 (a bit too short)

C) 500 f/4 (would lose some good stage shots)

D) 70-200mm f/2.8 + 2x = 140-400mm f/5.6 (a bit too short, but room to crop, good range to get a balance of stage, band and close ups. Downside is small aperture at 5.6.

I ended up going with option D. Even though I hear people talking about how awesome those super tele primes are….they just aren’t for me. My thought is that with a supertele, you are already significantly limiting your range of movement with a monopod and making it a fixed focal length just restricts even more. If you few my full set of photos, you can see that I got a wide variation of different perspectives of Underwood and all her glory.

For the future, I think that the ideal setup would be the Nikkor 200-400 f/4 +1.4x for an effective range from 280-560mm f/5.6. To me, that sounds like the most perfect focal range for sound board shoots. What at that f/5.6 aperture you ask? Well, my answer is that the D4 can easily be boosted up to 6400 then down to 3200 ISO and I have no problems with noise at all.

One funny thing I did notice however was that at 400mm, the shot didn’t seem to really focus in the view finder and got really worried that I’d have a bunch of out of focus images. But when reviewing them later, they surprisingly turned out pretty sharp out of the camera RAW. So, I’m not sure if this is an issue with my TC-20E III or what? I’ve read negative issues with the version 2 of this 2x converter. But it seems like version III was made to compliment the 70-200 VRII.

Editing: 

Going through Underwood’s photos was pretty easy. Great lighting made things very simple for me, as I just had to do white balancing, a bit of clarity, shadows, blacks and some cropping for the really close up profiles.

Check out Live in Limbo for my full set of photos and let me know what you think.

2012/12/11
1868
Photographer Notes, Photography

Photographer Notes: Crystal Castles 2012

Hey all, I thought about doing a segment like this for a while now, and I’ve finally decided to give it a go. I am often asked HOW I prepare, shoot and edit my concert photography. So today, I shall do that with my last memorable gig which was Crystal Castles at the Kool Haus in Toronto last month.

Anyone who is familiar with this band know how challenging it is to get some decent shots of them. This is primarily due to the fact that they have no front light and their entire show is filled by strobes that can cause some serious problems if you are prone to them. Thankfully, I diagnosed that I am not epileptic…photographically, this often results in dozens of black frames.

Preparation: 

Usually, the moment I find out that I am accredited to cover a concert, I will look up their setlist on the web such as Setlist.fm. By researching the last couple of their gigs, I was able to determine that the first three songs would be Plague, Baptism and Suffocation. By knowing this information, I search for some live records of these performances on YouTube where I can preview the lighting conditions and any cool poses they might do on stage. Quickly I learned that Alice would be stage diving and interacting heavily with the crowd in the 2nd song Baptism, so I readied myself for that with ease.

Gear:

It doesn’t hurt to ask other fellow photographers (or creep them on forums) about what tools they used for shooting the same band. I discovered that instead of the getting the normal 3 songs, pit, no flash rule….accredited photographers actually got 3 songs, side of stage and flash! Most of you know that I am not a flash kind of guy at all, so no SB-910 would be coming with me. Instead, I decided to shoot high ISO (6400-8000) on the D4 with 3D tracking for fun. Surprising, the D4 was able to focus and lock on to lead singer Alice Glass. I shot primarily with the Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 from the side of the stage. After the first 3 songs, we were able to shoot from the back of the crowd where I used a the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8.

Editing: 

Unsurprisingly, I did end up with MANY black unlit frames. I ended shooting just over 700 frames and I was able to get around 25 useable shots. I used LightRoom 4 for the bulk of my editing as usual. Because of my preparation and research, I envisioned the stage dive shot in my head and you know what? I got it, as seen above. If you want to see the full set of my photos and a review by one of our writers Mike Gallagher, check it out on Live in Limbo.

2012/12/06
2003
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