Thoughts on Typical

Thoughts on Typical

You could live a typical life or you could live the life that works best for you. By typical I mean working at a job you hate and before you know it, it's too late to try anything new.

I quit the typical life at age 25 to become a full-time photographer and failed a bunch of times up until now. And will most likely fail a bunch more in the future. Failing is kinda fun actually because it leads to great rewards later down the road that make failing all worthwhile.

But with all that being said, you only live one life so why waste it living a typical one when you have the option to live the life you want. Remember money is only a number and anyone can make money anytime if they put their focus to it. Time on the other hand is extremely valuable. Once it's gone, you can't get it back.

Al Bee LA

Al Bee LA at the Attic.

Track Life with Yellow Factory

Filling up the EG6 at Nikko Circuit.

Photography is Like the Stock Market

There's a whole lotta ups and downs. Blood, sweat and tears. Unexpected sharp twists and turns. It's like a bad storm you're trying to get out of...but you can't so easily. Most important thing is to keep moving and making pictures, even if they're bad pictures.

Retired My Canon 1D Mark II N

This was my very first "professional" working camera which I paid a little over $5,000 USD brand new when it was first released. I put down all cash on this thing and had served me well for eight years. Although the shutter had to be replaced twice, this is one solid camera that's been through rain, dusty environments and etc. I had no complaints whatsoever...just it was time to move on to a newer, lightweight camera body (the 6D).

I sold the Mark II N to a used camera shop in Tokyo and got about $300 USD cash on the spot. Not bad I think as I was expecting to get much less considering that I only had the body, two batteries and the charger to include.

Look at the size of that thing

This complete stranger was thrilled to see such a long lens that I had to grab a photo to illustrate...

Sunset with Two BRZ's

A lot of my feature editorial work takes me to some amazing locations especially with the car stuff. I love cars and everything about it. Been shooting cars since my high school days and now I'm 30. I don't think I'll ever stop. I'm grateful that I get to shoot what I enjoy and somehow make a living from it. I mean, I have friends who don't like what they have to photograph and since they've been shooting that one particular thing for so long, they don't know how to get out. I think that especially goes for studio photographers. Shooting cars is actually how I first got started in photography and my very first paycheck from using a camera ever in my life, came from doing a car feature. Then from all the automotive work, I branched out into shooting other things that I enjoy like the photojournalism stuff, fashion, portraits and commercial work.

The above photo was taken somewhere deep in the countryside of Gunma, Japan while shooting a tech feature on two beefy HKS supercharged BRZ's. Time to go home now...

What the Duck!

This is one huge duck floating in Hong Kong's harbor...

Albert Siegel's Big Pentax Glass

​Last weekend I went out to a park just off the bay of Tokyo with a photographer friend of mine Albert Siegel who was doing a hands on review of Pentax's 560mm F5.6ED AW super-telephoto lens that he got on loan from the company. A unique piece of glass it is  and surprisingly lightweight that you can shoot with it handheld if you are buff enough like Albert is. He's a Pentax guy on a mission and as a Canon shooter, it was refreshing to the hands and eyes to play around with some of his equipment.

This is Tsubasa Park which is a pretty decent walk out from the train station. And even a longer walk if you're carrying a load of equipment on your back which was the case for us. Or more for Albert I should say... The park was a perfect location for shooting planes taking off at Haneda Airport as the end of the runway is just right off in the distance from where we were situated.

​The pose. Obviously photographers love these types of poses especially with long glass. I shot this photo of him down low from the ground with my 6D and the 16-35 F2.8.

Here's Albert missing the shot that he should be getting. As photographers, we often miss lots of shots during our working profession but what's important is that you can still smile about it, pick yourself back up and go out until you get things right even if the previous day that you worked 14 hours on was complete garbage.

New Website is LIVE

In light of some new projects coming for me in the near future, I got a new domain (www.christopherjue.com, don't forget to bookmark it), logo, and ditched the WordPress blog. I wanted to put more emphasis on showcasing my work in a traditional portfolio type manner so I went fishing for another platform. After talking with a few industry people about the options out there, the decision was made to hop on over to Squarespace. It's simple, easy, fast and just works right.

One of the main problems I was having with WordPress is I found myself spending more time messing around with all those useless plugins, updates and customizing things that ended up never working the way I wanted it to (because I'm not a pro website guy). With Squarespace, I can now focus more on the content which I'm excited to do now because I've got a lot to spill on here.

Still a few kinks around on the website as I'm still changing/updating some areas but I got the bulk of it up and running for the most part.​ Will probably be adding some new images into my portfolios section during the course of the next few weeks.

Would love to hear all of your thoughts if you have any...