Kings Canyon

Just like our trip in January to Death Valley, a few of us (Joe, Jim, Hoa and myself) went camping in Kings Canyon a couple of weeks ago. This trip was strictly about photography, grilling and enjoying the beauty of Kings Canyon. Unfortunately, most of us got some mosquito bites b/c they were everywhere!...but I gotta say Joe had it the worst. Poor guy looked like he had some sort of skin disease almost. Anyways, here are some pictures from the weekend...

2-Year Wedding Anniversary in Ojai

Being that Na and I love to travel, we're always looking for a new destination to visit. For our 2nd wedding anniversary, we decided to stay in Ojai for the weekend since neither one of us have been there before. Ojai seemed to have the nice small town feel that is only an hour and a half away from Los Angeles, but is worlds away in terms of pace and lifestyle. Luckily for us, we were able to find a deal at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. This place rocks! Their attention to detail and service is everything you'd expect for a resort of this caliber. And the best part...every single employee was helpful, friendly and always had a smile on their faces...I mean everyone! They looked like they wanted to be there and that's extremely rare to see...at least from my experience. Here are some of my favorite shots from the weekend...

The main entrance...

The hallway from our room and the main lobby

The world famous Spa... complimentary yoga & fitness classes with your stay!

Some shots around the resort...

The little surprise they left for us in the room upon arrival (Obviously, we didn't wait too long to dig in!)

The town of Ojai (we rode our Electras all around town)

These were taken at the local farmer's market that takes place every Sunday

Iron Mountain Boys, a bluegrass band that played at the farmer's market (they were hilarious!)

And of course...some of the delicious food we ate! The steak and rack of lamb from Suzanne's were awesome!

On the way to Ojai, Na found a local winery so we stopped by and tried out some local wines!

Chris George

Had a chance to do some food photography last week for Chris George, the executive chef at Roy's in Pasadena. This is my first attempt at lighting food. Used a very simple set-up...one softbox and one bounce card.

Fundamental Commercial Photography

That's the class I'm currently enrolled in. During this semester we've shot many different things using various lighting techniques but I've found throughout the semester that my assignments were always focused around a common theme... Can you figure out what it is from the images below? (I shot these for my final project on digital so that I can have a color copy of them. The actual assignment was shot on large format B&W film.)

If you guessed GLASS, then you are absolutely right...and very, very observant too! But I suppose I can see why some people would think otherwise...

Mammoth in late April

With El Nino weather this year, we were very fortunate to have snow storms well into April and even early May at Mammoth Mountain. Since we have yet to take advantage of the massive amounts of snow (over 10 feet base in late April!) in MM, we finally found some time to do a quick ski/boarding trip. BTW, it is so late in the season when we went that fishing season has already started! Didn't take too many photos but here are a few that I was able to get...

Serene June Lake at sunset on the first day of the fishing season... I was talking to one of the fishermen at the lake and he says that the layer of ice on top of the lake just melted that afternoon.

Heading south on Highway 395 right before Mammoth Lakes

The Tufas at Mono Lake

Mono Lake at sunrise...

More Tufas...

Being El Nino, there was plenty of rain during the winter months therefore resulting in a huge population of poppies and other wild flowers in the desert this year. This picture of Na and Kenji is from the California Poppy Reserve in Lancaster on the way home.

Our new Christmas presents!

I realize we're no where close to Christmas and that it's almost summer but I finally had a chance to take some pictures of our bicycles this past week. These bikes were our Christmas presents to each other and we absolutely love them! They are Electra bikes and we really like their styling, colors and just overall "cool" factor (well, at least cool to us!). Na has the Ticino 8d and I have the Amsterdam. We don't take them out as much as we like but we definitely try to take them out as often as possible. With warmer weather and summer around the corner, we're looking forward to riding them a lot more often.

Harmony Midori Lim

Congratulations to Yoko and Phil on the newest member to the family! Harmony is such a little cutie! With their laidback personalities, we're sure they'll be great parents to little Harmony.

So one of the first things I saw when I walked into Y&P's place was the green wall they had in the hallway and in Harmony's room. I love the color and decided to shoot the majority of the pictures using the green as the backdrop. We tried different props to put Harmony on including a leather chair, a stool and even a snare drum! Check out some of our favorites...