Miss America's First Communion Portraits.

This coming Sunday (April 29th, 2006) is the first communion sunday for Miss America... Yes, her name is "America", her first name that is....

Her mom saw one of our communion portrait displays, and wanted exactly the same pose with the same stain glass background for her daughter's communion portraits.

Her mom planned to present thank you cards with her photo on them to those guests who will come to celebrate Miss America's first communion.

I liked Miss America's sensitive pure look, and her willingness to pose, so I was somewhat carried away clicking too many times than required by her mom....

Here are some of the images in slide show...
Enjoy...



When I asked Miss America what she wants to become when she grew up, she said she wanted to be a portrait artist like me...

Well, well, well, what a quick witted girl she is...

Deeply Touched By A Gift of A Bouquet

Recently I had to bring my wife to Kaiser emergency room because according to her doctor, who reviewed her blood test result, my wife's sodium level was so dangerously low that I better had her treated right away. Unless I acted immediately, the doctor warned me that my wife could have another convulsion just as she had about a year and half ago, which resulted in a week long hospitalization.

But while at emergency ward, I remembered my client Stephanie needed to pick up her baby portraits to bring them with her as she planned to travel out of State to her baby's grandma that evening.

So I phoned Stephanie to tell her about my situation and arranged the time when I could hand out her portraits at our studio.

When that time arrived, Stephanie brought with her a beautiful bouquet for my wife. I was in such an emotional state that afternoon that I was deeply touched by Stephanie's kindness.

I decided to preserve the bouquet for good by taking a picture of it. And here it is preserved for good.

And here is a composite of Stephanie and her baby, Amaras.

Thanks again Stephanie for such a thoughtful gift... My wife appreciated it.. This time she stayed only two days in the hospital...

Yes, we DO Passport / Immigration Photos

Once in a while, we are asked if we do take PASSPORT / IMMIGRATION photos.

Answer has been always, "YES, we do!". Not because there's big money to make by taking passport photos, but because it is a service by which our clients could easily learn of our other services by looking around our studio.

Actually, some people decided to have their family portraits done at YouShine after seeing some of our samples displayed at our studio.

By the way, we guarantee our passport photos to meet every government's requirements. We take a few pictures so that our clients can choose the right expression. And we do make sure lighting etc. are exactly as specified by the governments. In order insure exact size and format, we also place the template issued by passport authority over the image we take before cropping it to insure that the size we crop is exactly as the size the requirements that are specified as shown below.

Unlike those folks who take passport photos with Polaroid cameras and thus could not produce exact centimeter sizes, we can produce any government's requirement such as Canada, Iranian, Japanese, etc., whose requirements are different than USA's using Centimeters for size. And the photos we provide right after the sitting is real color photos, and not Polaroid shots.

For this service, however, we require appointment for we do all our sessions by appointment basis, and we hate to turn away any who come without any appointment. For this elaborate service for two 2"x2" photos, we charge simply $15.63 plus tax.

Instant Thumb size photos can be enlarged...

While doing her chore as an executor of her parents' will, Kimberly came across the following strip of photos that her parents must have taken at one of those mall photo-booth.

Those photos reminded her again how sweet her parents were to each other, and wanted to preserve them, for they were somewhat faded and worn out over the times. When she showed them to her siblings, they wanted to have copies of them as well.

So Kimberly came to us to ask if we can make them to 5x7 after restoring them like as new photos. Of course we told her that we could do that with our high powered scanner and with my Photoshop skills.

Here are what we did on those thumb size images...

Though her parents are gone, I can tell for sure that their memories will live on in their kids' hearts...

Mr. Strong, The magazine Cover Man

Mr. Strong of Fremont, Ca was chosen to be the cover man for one of those home improvement magazines in recognition of the excellent works he has done over the years.

When asked to submit a few images worthy of magazine cover, Mrs. Strong did some google search and found me. Her foremost question was how soon I can produce images worthy of magazine cover. I told her we can produce them within 24 hours. She then immediately asked me to show up at her house as soon as I can.

We planned to photograph him at one of his actual job sites, but it was raining that day, and thus we ended up photographing him at his house. And he did remodeled his house the way his wife wanted.

Here are a few images they purchased being well adviced by his daughter, who majors in interior decoration and design..

Sydney, Class of 2006

Sydney was not happy with the photos taken by her school photographer.

Her mom took a few portrait once with her at our studio some years ago, and Sydney remembered that she could have many satisfying images of herself at YouShine. So she talked her dad into bringing her to YouShine Photography.

Here are a few poses that we did and she happily ordered.

New Real Estate Sales Agent

Dan needed his publicity portrait in a hurry so that he can make his business cards and flyers as soon as possible. He came from Pleasanton, CA being referred by his boss.

He came in a casual shirt, all wrinkled up... (I used photoshop to smooth out some wrinkles on his shirt), and yet asked me to make him look good in that outfit.

Here's what I did for him, before and after enhancement work..

And then I asked him to wear a tuxedo I keep for High School Seniors.
And took a few more after the pose that one of successful real estate brokers in our area has used.

And the result is as follows. Before & after enhacement work.

To get his smile, I told him he looked like Burt Lancaster as well as Kirk Douglas, who are a couple of my favorite actors...

Don't you agree? Can you pinpoint what were done to enhance his image?