Shoot what you got. Share. Enjoy.

I do a lot of odd things in my life, but you can’t fool me into munching down on a chocolate coated jalapeno or a habanero pepper. Well, unless it benefits the Sylvia Thomas Center!  Unfortunately, someone (which would be me) needed to record some video of the action so I’ll donate in other ways (*wink wink*).

All of this craziness went down at super sweet Original Leena’s Chocolates for their Cuatro de Mayo extravaganza! (*Queue the fireworks*)  If you are ever around the Brandon area, give Leena and Anthony a holla!  I can’t speak enough about these two; not only do they laugh at my fairly lame jokes but their customer service is always on fire!  I love these folks and most of all, what they’re all about: hard work and giving back to the community.  They usually don’t have chocolate coated peppers in stock but give their mouth watering, super delicious, chocolate dipped pretzels and chocolate covered Oreos a spin.

I met this super talented kid, Andy about a week ago. Oh, and let me mention, this kid can down mocha frappuccino like no tomorrow.  So we linked up a couple of days ago to do his headshot to submit for an audition going down this weekend. I don’t do extensive touch-ups outside the realm of teeth whitening but I knew Andy didn’t have the time to find somebody to touch his photo and have it back in time for the auditions. I couldn’t throw this humble yet frappuccino-filled actor to the wolves like that.

Decided to stay up a couple of nights, dig deep, and ka-boom! Just because in my heart, I knew it was the right thing to do.

So if you see this handsome and talented kid around town, wish him luck @ least. I’ll be praying though.

I’m not going to lie, I always wanted to be one of those Instagram hippies where they take photos on their iphone/ipod, throw some vintage holga-esque effects and wah-lah! Unfortunately, I had to sit on the sidelines and watch all the cool kids play with Instagram since I’m rocking an Android phone. Sure, I tried to look for Instagram want-a-be apps in the Android Market, but it’s not the same. It’s like that first day in kindergarden class, everyone whips out their fresh box of Crayola crayons and you’re the only one rocking the lame Roseart Crayons. Pretty lame.

I wanted in!

Finally after a couple of long restless nights of longing to be a hippie, the folks behind Instragram (wwww.instagr.am) heard my long, sorry cries and then brought joy by releasing it for the Android folks to party it up once and for all.

I know you want to join the fray. Feel free to follow me on instagram @ namphan813.

Grab your ticket here.. http://instagr.am/android/

That image right there all started almost 2 months ago. I just have been really busy lately so these experimental projects have been left collecting dust and filled up with loneliness until recently.

A little background.. this super duper clean 2002 Pontiac Bonneville belongs to my father in-law. I usually don’t like to take photos of my personal cars because I know them inside and out. I like a challenge and wanted to use a car that I’m not too familiar in regards to the lines and body features. I have a tendency of going to these creepy dark places to do these type of photos but since this is my father in-law’s car, I didn’t want to come back home empty handed and explained why I arrived back in a taxi, no in a Bonneville. So at 1am, I thought the safest place would be at the Glazer Children Museum. Don’t ask me why I thought a children museum would be any safer at 1am when all the parents and kids are sleeping around this time but I made it back 100% intact.

Back to the point.. this image consists about 3 or 4 different exposures. Like my last attempt, I used the same method which was a long exposure (15 or 30 seconds), a vagabond battery, and a Craftsman worklamp.

Okay, enough reading. Check out the video of me rambling and the different layers used in Photoshop

Photo on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/namphan82/6831108633/

Have any questions or comments?
Hit me on twitter: twitter.com/nphan82
Facebook: facebook.com/profile.php?id=1323387305
Google+ Gplus.to/namphan

I’m not going to lie, I hate keeping tabs on receipts for that just in case moment. You know, when Uncle Sam comes knocking on my door and want to take a peek at my receipts for all of my business purchases while he’s spread out all over my living room. And you know these stores are not going to make receipts last more than lifespan of the return policy; the ink always fade faster than your tenure at your first real job at the local fast food joint and the paper gets wrinkled so easily unlike your lovely grandmother. You know the follow is also true, some of these receipts are so small, they’re meant to be shoved into that little corner of your pant pocket to be reborn again as clumps of pocket lint.

Then one Saturday afternoon, I found the holy grail of saving receipts by the ways of an app called Shoeboxed. The app is available for iOS devices (click here) and Android devices (click here).

The app is fairly simple which just requires you to create a Shoeboxed.com ID and then the app will prompt you to take a photograph of the paper receipts. Once you take the photo of the receipt, it goes to a far away land, a physical person reviews the data, and then will input certain fields (ie Cost, Category, Tax) which you can review and edit later on Shoeboxed.com. So once you make a purchase for the business, it just take about 10 seconds to do all of this and you don’t have to worry about keeping the physical receipts anymore. If you have a tax or accountant guru, you can also export the data in many different formats that is compatible for Quickbook and Freshbooks, just to name a few. The best part about this app is that it is FREE. Free as in nada, nothing, zero.. FREE!

Give it a try and let me know what you think. As for me, I love it and it’s one less stack of ity-bity pieces of paper that I need to worry about.

I’ve been putting together a mailer/package for restaurants to promote my photography business. Just a quick clip of the concept, contents and tips.
Props to Clint Davis (clintdavis.net) for sharing his work and inspiring me to create a decent mailer.

I’ll update this in about a month and let you guys/gals know how effectiveness of my small budget campaign. If you have done anything like this before, by all means, please share any tips.

Have any questions or comments?
Hit me on twitter -> twitter.com/nphan82
Facebook -> facebook.com/profile.php?id=1323387305
Google + -> Gplus.to/namphan

As you can see, the Portfolio/Album section has been definitely beefed up. It’s full screen now unlike my old setup which disappointed me a bit.

Like with all new projects, there is some cleaning up to do. My post from my last setup has all disappeared but they should be resurrected somehow as I did back them up (a good boy scout that I am and I hope you guys/gals are doing the same too!) And please a bit patient with the Album section as I have to go back and do some optimization of the images. Beaming 5+ meg files and using them in your portfolio don’t really make much sense to 80% of the masses.

Hang tight and definitely let me know what you do and don’t like of the new website.