Engagement Photos
March 12, 2010 / Tags: Jon, Kathy, Our Wedding, Wedding Photography, Weddings
Kathy and I took engagement photos today. Update: The first few photos are up on Sean's blog -- thanks Sean, they look great! As with most things, I totally underestimated the amount of effort involved. We had to scout a location, find things to wear, Kathy had to test makeup... it's not just showing up and getting your photo taken.
We chose Laguna Beach for our engagement photo site. The first four photos in this post are from a few weeks back when we went to scout the location. We were kind of messing around when I took this one, but I liked how it came out.
The next photo was taken on our porch. Kathy was testing her makeup and wanted to see how it looked through the camera. It was raining outside, so I used the reflector to bounce some light back from the darker (inner) side of the porch.
The last two were taken today while we were waiting for our photographer to arrive. Since I got my 5D MkII, I have been using my 24-105mm almost exclusively, so today I made it a point to use my 50mm 1.4 prime. I love how this one turned out.
New Year's
January 1, 2010 / Tags: Angela, Anthony, Bertha, Christina, Daniel, Edie, Gary, Hao, Jon, Karen, Kathy, Lisa, Michael, New Year's, Sonny, Uyen, Willy
It's a new decade! And just like last year, we spent new year's with our high school friends. Thanks for arranging everything, Michael!
Pete & Heather's Wedding
November 29, 2009 / Tags: Bailey, Becky, Brad, Carlsbad, César, Erica, Heather, Jon, Kathy, Pannikin, Pete, Pi'i, Rachael, Wedding Photography, Weddings
Despite being Pete's Best Man at his wedding, with Kathy's help I was able to play unofficial photographer, too.
The day before the wedding, we had the rehearsal. Pi'i was supposed to blow the conch shell, but because it was cold, it came out sounding like someone who can't play the trombone. Everyone laughed (except Becky, apparently).
After the rehearsal was the rehearsal dinner. Our table got kind of... erm... loud. Let's just say that the red wine was really good. And I don't normally drink wine.
On the morning of big day, there was still a lot of stuff to do. But first things first — Pete needed coffee, so we went to Pannikin and got breakfast.
We also bought a few extra muffins for later. Then we went home, finished preparing things for the ceremony, and headed off to the wedding site. We didn't want to risk Pete seeing Heather before the ceremony, so we put a bag over his head ("It's for your own good, Pete") while he called to confirm that the coast was clear (i.e., Heather was safely in the bride's dressing room).
Meanwhile, Kathy had been following the girls around and got some nice getting-ready pictures of Heather.
While getting dressed myself, I took a couple pictures too. We convinced Pete to let us wear colorful socks instead of boring brown ones that would match our tuxes. And Pete gave us monogrammed cufflinks made out of old typewriter keys!
Right before leaving the dressing rooms, Pete and Heather reached out and held hands. Even though it may not look like it in the picture, they weren't able to see each other when they did this.
One last picture and we're off!
We didn't take too many pictures during the ceremony — actually, I didn't take any, since I was in the ceremony — Kathy took these. I really like this one of Brad and Pi'i coming in:
And this one of the crowd when Heather made her entrance:
After the ceremony, the groomsmen had to get our cameras for a photo. Brad, César and I are all into photography, so we had our picture taken with Heather as if we were photographing her. How meta. (The picture of us was taken on the photograper's camera, so it's not on this site.) While I had my camera anyway, I took a few photos.
Remember those extra muffins we bought at Pannikin? They came in handy; Heather was starving! (And the couple doesn't get to eat at dinner anyway, right?)
Kathy took some photos of the tables at the reception before I got there. They were really nicely decorated.
Here's the newlyweds acting oh-so-mature at dinner.
The rest of the evening consisted of the customary cake cutting, cake eating (mmm... red velvet cake...), photos, dancing, car decorating, and Pete carrying Heather over the threshold.
Needless to say, I was exhausted after the weekend marathon, but it was a lot of fun.
Visiting Philip in St. Louis
October 26, 2009 / Tags: Beer, Calvin, David, Food, Jon, Kathy, Philip, Photo Outing, St. Louis
Since Kathy and I didn't take a summer vacation, we decided to go visit Philip in St. Louis with Calvin and David.
We flew in early Friday afternoon. Philip picked us up and took us to eat St. Louis style pizza. I forgot the name of the restaurant already, but it had these cool red booths that I couldn't resist taking a picture of:
The cheese is a mix of provolone and mozzarella. It tasted very different, but I liked it.
After lunch, Philip dropped us off at the Saint Louis Zoo and went back to work. Calvin was teasing Philip because Philip's mom said "oh, he loves the zoo." But after visiting, we can see why — the Saint Louis Zoo is the 3rd-largest in the US, ranked #1 by Zagat, and admission is free. (A recurring theme in St. Louis, it seems...) We didn't have time to hit all of the exhibits, but we did see some cool ones. I liked how a lot of the exhibits allowed you to get very close to the animals.
After Philip picked us up, he showed us around his alma mater, Washington University.
In the parking lot, Philip was looking for a building or something and didn't see a woman trying to back out of a parking space, so he just kept driving. (This would be another theme throughout the trip...) Fortunately, she saw him and didn't hit him, but we laughed that she was probably cursing at us. We coined the term "pulling a Philip" to mean "purposely blocking someone from backing out of a parking spot." Philip wasn't amused.
We had dinner and some excellent root beer floats at Fitz's. They make all their root beers and sodas on the premises — you can see all the equipment behind a big glass wall. (I didn't take a picture, though.)
The next morning, we woke up early and went to see the Gateway Arch. (Well, Kathy, Philip and I work up early — we had to drag Calvin and David out of bed.)
After the arch, we had lunch at St. Louis Bread Co., what we Californians call "Panera". They had the same design, same logo, etc. — it was just called St. Louis Bread Co. Even the web site on their cups pointed to panerabread.com, but we were joking that Panera is better because this particular location badly burned our paninis. (We took it back and they fixed it.)
After lunch, we toured the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Anheuser-Busch is probably best known for making Budweiser, but they apparently do a bunch of other stuff too, like owning Sea World in San Diego and selling baker's yeast during Prohibition. You learn something new every day. The (free) tour started off with a visit to their Clydesdale stables and ended with two free beers. :)
More than anything else, I was impressed by the sheer amount of beer they produce. During the tour, we visited their secondary fermentation tanks. The tour guide said that if you drank a beer per hour, it would take you 137 years to drink all the beer in one tank. These things were huge, and they had several hundred of them on the premises. (You can't see it in the photo, but the tanks are pretty deep, and there are another set of tanks stacked on top of the ground-level tanks.) And they have several breweries across the country. That's a lot of beer.
That night we had dinner at Rigazzi's on The Hill (St. Louis' Little Italy), then dessert at Bailey's Chocolate Bar. I loved how the place was decorated, and the chocolate brownie was probably the best brownie I've ever tasted. It was a little bit crunchy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. Mmm...
Sunday morning we got up a little later, checked out of our hotel, and went to have brunch at Wild Flower. The food was really good. They had this one wall next to where we were sitting that was decorated with masks. The masks were for sale, too. We didn't buy any, but I took a few pictures.
After brunch, we visited the Cathedral Basilica Saint Louis. The pictures don't do it justice. There's a sense of awe that you feel when you're inside that pictures just can't convey.
Other stuff we did that afternoon...
We checked out a condo that was for sale. (We were curious about property values there.) The model unit on the 5th floor (which was recently sold) was nice. Two bedrooms, corner unit, with floor-to-ceiling windows for the entire corner (living room and kitchen) that had a view of the Gateway Arch. The bedroom window on the other side overlooked the 4th-floor pool.
We took some pictures with the pretty fall trees as a background.
We wanted to visit The Cupcakery, but they were closed on Sundays. So we got boba instead. The tea was good, but the boba was pretty tasteless and hard. :( I'm thinking about starting a boba critic web site. ;)
We visited the Saint Louis Science Center. Admission was free.
Calvin and I made David and Kathy solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. It took them a while, but they managed to figure it out.
When we left the Science Center, it started to rain. We hung out at Philip's place for a little bit, then he took us to the airport.
It was a fun weekend. :)
On Saturday, Kathy and I went to Mitsuwa for a late lunch. We saw a sign that said they were having a Hokkaido Food Festival. I had my camera with me, so I took some photos.
Their temporary cash registers (for the festival) were running on Eee PCs running Ubuntu! (They were attached to monitors.)
Unfortunately, we didn't discover the food festival until after we had eaten at the food court, but we bought a few croquettes anyway. They were so oishii (delicious) that we ended up going back to Mitsuwa the next day for lunch.
After Mitsuwa (the first day), Kathy wanted to try out this dessert place in Irvine she had read about, Mochilato. They specialize in mochi ice cream and shaved ice. Yet another reason to move back to Irvine...
