I'd never seen an electric cello before, but there you have it. Tina Guo performed at the Asian Heritage Awards, hosted by Asia Media (SoCal based). A huge huge gala event, with ball gowns and tuxes, and an impressive number of Asian Americans in leadership roles from all different industries and arts, attending.

This is the first photo assignment in which I've had to worry about getting names of people I photograph. I opted for higher than usual resolution so that images could be zoomed in upon, and name tags read. Often times name tags weren't visible, and I scrounged for pencil and paper (I located some in the fancy telephone booths of the Hyatt, and helped myself) so I could scribble down names.

The awards ceremony involved a lot of scurrying. The stage was large, and photographers hunkered down in front of them, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible amongst the speakers and teleprompter-like screens (they weren't teleprompters though; they were screens to show the speaker what images were being show on the large screens behind them) occasionally popping up, meerkat style, to snap a photo. There were 2 podiums, and 3 sets of stairs, plus another stage for live music and action bounced between all those areas. Like a cast of crabs (cast:crab, flock:birds) we scurried around to get the best angles and to capture fleeting moments and collectively groan when a significant moment, such as the handing out of an award, was obscured by the podium.