GOOD MORNING SAN FRANCISCO! Lan totally will hate this image but I had to show you what I got to wake up and see at 7 am. Excuse the major tungsten coloring – I forgot to switch my settings around from last night.

I (lazily) stitched together a panoramic image of the view from my window. Our hotel is smack dab in the heart of San Francisco. The morning fog kind does wonders to images yes?

My morning face! Excuse my lack of cuteness in this picture! I went to bed around 5:30 am and woke up pretty early so I’m sorry that I look sleepy.

No day can begin without a bagel.

Afterwards, we went to pick up our car from the parking garage. It is madness trying to find a parking spot here in SF!

We stopped in Chinatown to grab some eggtarts from this one special Chinese bakery.

I got in trouble for taking pictures inside the bakery so I could only get the food instead =(

Freshly made Eggtarts!!!!!!

I’m not the only one who thinks these eggtarts are photo worthy.

Our day started off heading towards The Ferry Building where tons of fresh food is sold everyday.

Lots of homeless people are scattered all over the city. I always feel a little sad when I pass by one. God bless them!

After chilling around the Ferry building, our real agenda was to go see Muir Woods. But to pass it you have to take the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, the fog didn’t want to show off its red beauty to me so all I got were these:

I plan to try again later.

So the funny thing about this image is that as we approached it, you’ll notice how foggy and sort of dark the sky is.

Look at the difference of the sky as we pass through it.

Clear as day.

We drove along seeing miles and miles of luscious green hills following Google Maps to head to Muir Woods to hike.

Eventually, we decided to take a break and jog in this vast open space.

So far, I’ve done a jump photo in Toronto, Michigan, Venice, and now San Francisco.

Literally driving around and around, we knew google maps led us astray.

So we stopped for a few photo ops and turned around with new directions.

This is one of my favorite images. So as we were leaving I wanted to take this artsy fartsy image of the old man and his profile with the stained glass window. After I shot it, I realized that there was a trash can in the background -____- LOL

How is the scrolling? I’ve posted about 60+ images and we have barely made through the halfway mark of this post =)

So on the road we continued again towards our destination…

Passing by amazing scenery and winding roads and finally to Muir Woods National Forest!

The circular wood piece is of a tree showing its age as it grew until it died. It was born in 909 AD!

You know I did more jogging =)

So on the photo on the right was my attempt to take a picture of myself looking up at the trees – clearly I failed.

It was a very lucky day for us because salmon are very rare to see at Muir Woods. This mom and dad to be fish were swimming upstream trying to prepare a place for their eggs. It was amazing because the fish stayed in the same spot for at least an hour fighting the water as they worked together to make sure their little fish eggs could be safe.

Although we kept walking for 2 hours on the trails we found that the highlight of our day was to witness such a rare spectacle happen.

We love trees! I was going to do a little homage from Superstar the movie just for you Grace! (But i was too embarressed)

Banana Slugs!

Experimenting with some black and white

We returned but no luck with the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog was still there =(

Winding down the day with a good ol’ book.

And ending the day with amazing Korean food.

Day One is DONE! Thanks for scrolling through all the images!!!!

First off, apologies for the delay in posting!!! My trip started off with my two friends Lan & Byoung. I am super lucky to be traveling with these two because I get to experience flying in luxury. Byoung has flown 2 million miles and so he gets all these fancy perks! We got to hang out in the Admirals Club where we got to chill in style. You’ll have to forgive me because I’m trying to post this with such enthusiasm but I have tons of things to say and I’m super tired. BUT I really want to post =)

On the plane, I found Lan and Byoung sleeping which is pretty funny with that guy in the background.

And its so cute because they were holding hands!!!

San Francisco is about 3 or 4 hours away and if you know anything about me – I can’t sit still. So when it comes to sitting in uncomfortable chairs in a crammed space late at night – the only you want to do is not to sit still – so i stared at the window. Let me just say that it is extremely beautiful to look through a window on a plane at night. The stars are all out, the clouds are within reach, and the ground below looks like a circuit board. I really wanted to capture this with my camera but night shots in a moving plane present difficult challenges technically. I got a chance to experiment a bit and I wanted to show the results.

This first image is an obvious example of what happens when you try to shoot at night with no light to expose the image. On the right is the wing of the plane but you can’t see anything else. Knowing this, I bumped up the ISO to 1600 and changed my aperture to make it as wide as I could. I change the shutter speed to stay open a little longer too.

Shot number two presented this image and so you can see a little more light coming through. I slow the shutter down even more. My hand isn’t steady at all and the camera has nothing to focus on so I switch it to manual focus so that my lens doesn’t waste time searching. I push my camera right against the window and control my breathing to be as steady as possible.

Image 3 comes as the above. A little more detail and those blue specks? Those are stars =) Results are comiong through.

I try again but this time I put my shutter speed at 30″ right before BULB and…

Voila! Considering the circumstances I think this image came out pretty successful. I love how the image shows me actually holding my camera and the round circle of the lens sorta frames the constellations. The night sky was breathtaking but lets get real: cameras don’t do justice to God’s work.

Here’s one image just to show the stars with the city lights of the ground as we were arriving in to SFO.

We rented a car for the weekend and something about the late night sky was calling my name. I literally snapped a bunch of images to show the mountains against this yellowish green sky but it was really hard to get an image I liked =( so you will all have to settle for this one instead!

We arrived around late midnight and stopped at Lan’s favorite thai restaurant called Osha.

I was happy camper by the end of the night and the city was just so cool to look at! My eyes were darting all over the place just so I could catch a glimpse of everything!

Last image of the day: Chocolates on my bed.  And that’s where I shall continue in a new post!

Desgined  by me for my friends birthday party. I loved the font that I found but I forgot about it.

In other news, today I got this message and it was a really nice surprise. Encouragement! Adam couldn’t have picked a better time! I needed a little boost!

I got a chance to revisit some images I shot last year of my friend and dancer Laura. It was a beautiful location set against flowers and organic bushes with the signs of telephone lines in the background. She looks a lot like Alanis Morisette doesn’t she?

Anyways, her birthday was recently and I am compiling some of my favorite images to give to her as a gift. Usually when I shoot, my favorite part is to go home immediately and look at my favorite images. I can usually batch in seconds picking the ones I know instantly. Usually the ones I know are “THE ONE” are instantaneous – I often know the moment I finish pressing the shutter button. After reviewing them a year later, I have had a change of perspective on certain images. Ones I hated originally are now considered a second time. These are a few that I’ve come to like as I re-look at them again.

She has such graceful movements. The true test was photographing her in perfect syncronicity with the movements of her hair, face, and dress.

I love the dead center composition and negative space. (This is one I had originally scraped).

We ended up moving to different locations and I discovered this beautiful brick wall which at sunset had a shadow of a tree. I told her to try to mimic the tree’s shape and lines. It was a little arduous at first because some of her movements didn’t line up with my vision. But here are the ones I love the most.

This crop and angle are pretty weak in my opinion but I think her body position is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I decided to go BW on this because her pose wasn’t enough to hold in color with the tree’s shadow. The background was really obsolete in this image.

I love photographing dancers. They are just so uninhibited in terms of body movement which is a true example of how our limits of the body are really extended when tested.

I was shooting some product photography with nail polish because I really wanted to study macro. I’ve never used nail polish so it was fun to experiment and play with the colors. Although, the smell is really strong and it flared my nose up sometimes =)

But while I was shooting, I discovered my immediate attraction to the unfocused images because it gave more of a fine art abstract turn. I ended up keeping this one as one of my favorites. A very happy accident.

To see the final image that I went with, click here.

truly an inspirational exhibition – not to mention some beautiful fashion photography shown. Go if you’re Dallas – its’ only $12 with a student discount.

I’m big on candid images because I think they’re more intriguing than the normal smiling faces.

Of course, when I actually snap a smiling one – the camera blurs on me -___-

The lady at Starbucks took this and I forgot to set everything for her! I shoot manual so I tend to forget to reset it when someone else takes the picture for me.

I heart you Melanie!

This woman is the kindest person ever! She is incredibly sweet and talented! (Those drawings on the wall – she did those too!) She even bought me marble rock book ends! One of the best gifts ever!

I remember downloading this app way before it became a cataclysmic success in the iPhone world. A visual blog from your phone – of course it would be an instant hit.

Constant photos on the go! Come follow me if you have instagram! I love looking at other’s photos!

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