We love the Discovery Room at American Museum of Natural History--it is hard to believe that we left New York more than two years ago! 
Whenever I browse through our old pictures, or hear about the wonderful opportunities our New York friends are exposing their children to, a bitter sweet feeling always wash over me. However, I am grateful for the many changes that our move to Chicago has brought along. 

Using photos to tell stories is quickly becoming my favorite way to shoot!

I have some exciting news to share with you--I am attending the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago on June 6th and 7th! This will be my very first time to attend an art fair, and I am very excited to show my work to the public in this way! 

I was exposed to photography at an early age, as my parents have been in business with Kodak, and passed me along their passion in photography. My official journey in photography started in 2012, when I started a course with NYIP in professional photography. 

Over the past years, my curiosity in people and the world have taken me to document friends, family, strangers and many beautiful places. At this art show, I will be showing a collection of my landscape and wild life photography.

Event: 57th Street Art Fair
Date: June 6th and 7th 2015
Location: 57th Street, between Kenwood and Woodlawn Avenues, adjacent to the University of Chicago campus

My booth: 823, under Michelle Kuo Photography

A little info about the art fair:
The 57th Street Art Fair is a 2 day outdoor celebration of visual arts (Glass, jewelry, photography, painting, sculpture and more). Founded in 1948, it is Chicago's oldest juried art fair. This year it will feature 198 artists.
Thank you! I hope to see you there!
http://www.57thstreetartfair.org/

My Pilates teacher once said that a lot of people have determination, but few of them have persistence. Unfortunately I have been proving her right since my website building has been static for a long while. 
We moved to Chicago from NYC in 2013 after Thanksgiving. From April to August 2014 we were away on vacation. Oct 2014 we were busily moving into a new place. Today, after all the moving and traveling and holiday craze, seems like a good day to restart. I will try to regularly check in from now on. ;)

At the end of 2014, we went to the show Medieval Times. Every show presents a different set of challenges to photograph. For this show, I found the biggest challenges in distance to the subject and in shooting in low light condition. 
The stage is oval shaped, with seats surrounding it. We were seated near one side of the curve, thus not very close to the center of the stage. The lighting was constantly changing between very dimly lit to bright indoor lighting to suit the mood of the show. I had a 24-105mm mid telephoto lens, and my ISO was adjusted between ISO 2400 to ISO 4000. I find that the quality of the images dropped below acceptance when ISO was beyond 4000 in this case, due to the small size of the subject in the image and decrease in clarity. 

Here are my findings from the show,

1. Try to get CLOSE to the subject as much as you can. 

Exposure is controlled by 'three legs': F number, Shutter speed and ISO. 
Because of the fast pace of the show and the low light condition, I didn't have a lot of wiggle room with any of the three legs. 
F4: F number at the smallest to let in the most light 
1/200: barely fast enough in this case to freeze the motion
ISO 4000: highest ISO I could accept in this case due to increased noise and lost in details 

Tip: The images are much more appealing when no further cropping is needed. The more cropping there is, the more grainy the images appear. (The lost in details accompanying a high ISO becomes more obvious.)  

Conclusion: For close ups of action scenes, the closer you are to the subject / the closer your lens can bring you to your subject, the more powerful images you will have. 

2. Try MOODY shots
Because of the big distance from most of the actions, and that I don't have a longer telephoto lens, my images of fighting scenes didn't stand out.  My favorite pictures from the show were the moody, dreamy ones where the subject, lighting, shadow and the occasional smoke played well together. 

So next time when you go to a Medieval show, it may be worthwhile to invest in a VIP seating area or to bring a longer, heavier, faster lens. But even without all that, stunning shots are still possible with good technics and discovering eyes.