Photographic Justice at the 145th Golden Spike event in Utah

I made it out to the 145th Anniversary of the Golden Spike event in Utah.

I went because fellow photographer Corky Lee wanted to do this flash mob of many Chinese at the two locomotives.  145 years ago there were no Chinese in the photo though the Chinese played a major role in the building the transcontinental railway.

I always had a problem with that.  I started to paint a mural at the Chinese Historical Society of America's museum where I am an artist in residence.  When Corky told me what he was doing, I wanted to be a part of it.

The local Chinese community of Salt Lake City organized the Chinese community and loaded three tour buses full to the Golden Spike event.  The event organizers accommodated us to get that picture.

I took Amtrak to Salt Lake City.  Arriving there at 3am was a bit rough.

We got to check out the railroad museum in Ogden.  We took a light rail called the Front Runner there.  That evening we went to Ho Ho restaurant for dinner.

The following day after a simple lunch at Little Taste Chinese restaurant, there was a press conference at the State Capitol.  Both the Governor and Mayor  whom were to present proclamations did not show up.  That evening the local Chinese group CATS-UT treated us to dinner at the Golden Dragon.

On the third day we boarded the buses at 7am for the 90 minute bus ride to the Golden Spike event.  It's out in the middle of nowhere!  Apparently the railroad does not run through there nowadays and the two replica locomotives are there only for show.  Other than us 175 or so Chinese...there were about the 200 regular (white) people there for the event.

That evening we were treated to a bbq at Ze and Andy's house.

We got stuck out in Salt Lake city by two days as a rockslide in Wyoming, tornadoes in Nebraska and a freak snow storm in Colorado delayed us from leaving till Tuesday evening.  And it wasn't till 2am that we boarded the train on Wednesday morning.

I first went to Salt Lake City back in 1979 to lion dance for the Keelung sister city and Pioneer Day parade.  A lot has changed since.  There were probably three Chinese restaurants in Salt Lake City back then.  The food was so so....but nowadays there are many Chinese restaurants and some are suprisingly pretty good.  South State Street which seems to be the main drag now has many Chinese restaurants.  There's a new Chinatown mall that opened last year with a fancy gateway.  And of course many Chinese and Asians in Salt Lake City.

Photos of Mikoshi at Cherry Blossom Parade

My thirteenth time carrying the mikoshi at the Cherry Blossom parade in Japantown. I've gotten to know a lot of the people in the SF Taru Mikoshi group.

I used my DSLR Fuji S3 with the 12-24mm lens. I didn't dear use it while carrying for the fear of getting it wet. I'm not as satisfied with the photos this time. Here's a few.

Day of Remembrance

I wound up doing the graphics for this event again. Being that I did the graphics for two years prior, I thought I'd let RT do it this time since I did it mostly for the benefit of JTA. It's best this labor be spread around.

So...RT and LS came up with this design:



A graphic with RT's face in it...hmmm...I guess that's not what JH had in mind. When asked to re-do the thing with this image supplied, RT and LS got upset and walked away from it.



So...who else to ask. Me.

JH wanted this photo because it really shows the event thirty years ago. I came out with this graphic which they like. It's for the postcard.


Next was the flyer and poster. I just took the image and extended the sky. I placed the copy in the sky and added a gradient in photoshop. Hey...it looks pretty good. I should've did it that way for the postcard! It would've been a lot less complicated.



Then came the brochure cover which was a lot more easier. Less copy on the cover. They wanted it to be printed in monochrome. No prob....

Now why couldn't RT and LS do that! This time not for JTA.

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I went to check out the event at the Sundance Kabuki. Here are some images. I'm loading it last to first. That's how this blogger thing seems to work.











..oh, what is Day of Remembrance. It's an occassion where they remember the decision to pass an executive order which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans being forcibly uprooted from their homes and incarcerated in detention camps for the duration of WWII for the crime of being of Japanese descent.

I feel that this type of feeling still prevails to this day as I have seen with public opinion during the olympic torch events. There is still this underlying of this Yellow Peril and Anti-Chinese feeling. Using issues like Free Tibet to vent their anti-Chinese feelings. A few years prior to that, when an American spy plane was detained when it had to make an emergency landing in China, there was a lot of anti-chinese talk that came to surface.

With the 9/11 attacks, many Muslim Americans are targets of frustration.

The Japan bashing that was going on when our country realized that the auto industry was dominated by Japan.

It's still there.

Photography and Graphics for Eric Mar

Eric Mar is running for supervisor of district one. Chris Chow arranged for me to do Eric's portrait. Chris said it's for free. Gullible me said yes....hey...I support the brother. We need more A's in the board of sups.

I wonder...what if Chris had his family business Chow Associates do free work for Eric. I think he'll get into deep doody with his OL if he did. So...I did the photo shoot. It was in my living room. Simple softbox, reflector, twist flex background... not expecting nothing for it. But Eric told me to go ahead and bill the campaign committee for it.

A few days later they needed this flyer for the kick off campaign. It was a last minute thing too. So I tore ass and did the flyer. Only told to change thing everything. This went for five times. It involved five drafts! That's a lot of time for each one.