On an early Saturday morning...

A few weeks ago, Victor and I decided we wanted to (or at least we attempted to) get some skyline shots of Downtown LA early in the morning before the city wakes and goes about its business. However, it just wasn't meant to be as you can see from the pictures below...

Beautiful downtown LA filled with sun and a thick layer of.....FOG?

So instead of shooting the skyline, we ended up shooting other things while we waited out for the fog to clear...

It didn't happen so we gave up and decided to go grab some breakfast instead. I remember Na mentioned that breakfast was good at the Nickel Diner in downtown LA so we decided to give it a try. We got lucky too b/c the diner was just about to open when we arrived. It's a cool little spot with a lot of the old school feel with breakfast that is quick and good.

Mammoth Lakes, CA

It's been at least 15 years since I've been up to the Mammoth Lakes area during the summer. Since Jimmy has never been and it's been a while since Jesse, Na and I have gone, we decided to do a short weekend trip. Everything is almost like I remembered except that it was crowded...really crowded! I remember it being a really slow town in the off season, but I guess Mammoth has become a year round destination since my last summer visit. And the weather was perfect...warm days and cool nights. Here are some images from that weekend...

Tart

Just wanted to share a few shots from Tart, the restaurant located in Farmer's Daughter Hotel on Fairfax. Na and I had a chance to go out there a few weeks ago on a weeknight, so we took advantage of the cool patio seating especially on a warm summer night...

In case you were wondering what the little strips of paper are...they are the internet access passwords for free wireless!

Chef George!

I had another chance to do some food photography for Chris George's creations a few weeks ago at the Roy's in Pasadena. His food is not only pretty to look at but they taste just as good too! He is very creative with the colors of the ingredients in that the plate presents itself as a piece of art...I almost feel bad about eating them...almost. Here are some of my favorites from that shoot...

Yosemite National Park

We were lucky enough to reserve a canvas tent at Yosemite's Curry Village this past July for a weekend trip. It was the first time for most of us staying in the park so we were quite excited. The weather was warm but the water was still flowing nicely from this past winter's snow storms. We rode bikes around the valley, drove up to Glacier Point for the spectacular view, and enjoyed the Yosemite valley floor tour and the Mariposa Grove tour. Here are some pictures from that weekend...

The view from Glacier Point

Na took this great picture of Kenji while he was trying to burn off some excess energy on the Ahwahnee lawn

Here is a series of Kenji jumping off a huge rock on Mirror Lake.

One of the rooms in the lobby of the Ahwahnee Hotel. BTW, how interested does Kenji look about being in the picture?

Yosemite!

Just started looking through some pictures from our trip to Yosemite from a couple of weeks ago and just couldn't resist the view of Half Dome from Glacier Point at sunset. More to come for sure!

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...