World of One: Yin Yang Whisper

Ladies and gentleman, allow me to present the next installment in the "World of One" series: The "Yin Yang Whisper." As I walk pass this building on my way to practice everyday, I always think to myself "wow that looks really cool maybe I should take a picture." Then I never do. Finally, I got my shit together and made it happen.

Whenever I'm trying to come up with a new idea for this body of work, I usually feel like I'm just rearranging black and white dots on a page. Being Asian, of course one of the first things that I usually think of is the yin yang symbol. However, I never follow through with that idea because I always think it will be cheesy. I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out though. Whenever I look at it I think about how hard it is to listen to your own advice.

World of One: Narcissus

It felt like I was going to die if I didn't make this picture. The idea of it kept calling to me from the back of my mind. As with "Reflection" this was shot using film, and then scanned and manipulated in photoshop after. Photographed at the reflection pool at the Christan Science Center in Boston. Concept was inspired by the story of "Narcissus" from greek mythology.

World of One: Reflection

It feels like I've been waiting all summer to take this picture. Unlike the previous images in the world of one series, this was shot on 35mm kodak color film. Of course the film is scanned and manipulated digitally after. But actually shooting with film again, reminded me of how I'd completely forgotten the feeling of fear that came with it. The big difference is this, when you're shooting with film, you're bleeding money every time you press the button. I hear dollar signs in my head for each click of the shutter on my old Minolta.

But film has a completely different feel to it. The colors between each company and film type are different, there's more of an element of unpredictability to it. Each roll of film feels like more of a gamble, there is less room for error. I don't even know if I think this is a good picture or not, but I do know that I want to keep making more of these things until I get it right.

Girl in the Window

Probably one of the better pictures I've taken.

In photo-school they teach you little tricks to composing your pictures in order to make them look a little more interesting. One of these tricks that's always eluded me however, is taking a picture of someone standing in a window. When you do this, the window basically acts like a circle on the page telling the viewer where to look. If you do it right, it's really difficult to take a bad picture. In my case however, I always managed to press the shutter a split second too early, or too late. Thereby leaving pieces of my subject cut off by the edges of the frame, resulting in a terrible picture. Finally on a bright sunny afternoon this past week, I got the idea to set up this shot in formal setting. As all the elements finally came together, the process started to feel like second nature, like "damn, it'd be really hard to screw this up right now. I have no idea why it was so hard before, why do I feel stupid?"

BBoy Monster: Kim Minsung

BBoy Monster: Minsung, Radio City

BBoy Monsters have invaded New York!! I was in the big apple last week for our annual crew reunion, and met up with the legendary BBoy Kim Minsung for a shoot in time square. This guy is a former world record holder for 1990's and all around ridiculous powermover. Our crew has affectionately nicknamed him "God Moves," here are a few reasons why.

BBoy Monster: Korean Devil