Bay Area Adventures | September, 2018
It’s time for another month’s recap! We start off with my third viewing of Crazy Rich Asians, this time with Tiffany, Greg, Dan, and Jeri down in San Mateo. We decided to check out Wursthall before the movie.
And then ice cream sandwiches from Cream as a pre-movie treat.
Our September Office of Accountability Meeting. Hide and seek in Stephanie’s garden.
Quickly followed by a paint date at Pam’s!
I love visiting Pam’s home studio. She has so many delightful plants.
Stephanie worked on painting one of Pam’s begonias.
Lizzie created a couple very realistic renditions of strawberries.
I quickly sketched each of our drinking vessels. A lot of them were hand-blown glass by Pam or her husband.
Fernanda painted an assortment of tropical leaves!
And Pam worked on giving her dog illustrations birthday hats. Adorable.
Such a fun and talented group of ladies!
Tuesdays Together Oakland in the VSCO offices.
And back for round two at Wursthall, this time for a meet and greet with Taiwanese directorWei Te-Sheng.
Having a crazy rich Asians moment. Tesla, Boba Guys black card, and Wursthall investor card.
Here’s my photo with Wursthall owners Tyson Mao and Kenji López-Alt.
Then off to a very fancy Sony event. It took up three floors of a giant floor and had models set up at different stations. There were a bunch of cameras and lenses you could borrow for free, and it was so very interesting. I wasn’t very ambitious about trying to shoot all these things but had a lot of fun watching other people interact with the stations and thinking about my place in the Sony Alpha world. All of my personal photos are shot on Sony these days (so everything in this blog) and my mirrorless camera is my daily companion on all my adventures.
A pile of photographers!
There were trampoline artists bouncing around on a giant trampoline!
I had a great time hanging out with Brianne of Brown Fox Calligraphy as she customized free t-shirts with whatever words people wanted.
And then I met Benjamin Von Wong, known for his super creative concept shoots.
Checking out Oakland’s Cocktail Week with Stephanie…
We actually went and visited her husband John at work at Lake Chalet!
Taiwanese food with Liz and her friend Jane.
La Chinoiserie had a pop-up at Coloso Coffee in Oakland. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat all of these things myself. I just snagged photos of them!
But I did eat this slice of halo halo ube halaya chiffon cake, and it was amazing.
Neighborhood Mid-Autumn festival! Got my moon cake, plus some inari pockets.
I wasn’t able to make it to Stephanie’s launch party celebrating her Fleurot tarot deck, but I loved her invitation suite and took a photo of it for fun!
A solo paint date at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. I used my library card to get a free pass through Discover and Go. Here’s my collection of autumn leaves.
And an assortment of plants I found inside the dry cactus house.
More sketching! I headed into the city to join Arterra’s Sketchy Tuesday. They’re a landscape architecture firm that holds these events every Tuesday of September within public but often hidden places in San Francisco. This time it was at the brand new Salesforce Transbay Terminal… which then was discovered to have some structural flaws that same afternoon and was closed for repairs. I spy my past bride Serena on the banner below!
The park really is quite expansive and well-designed. It’s been called the High Line of San Francisco. Hopefully they really resolve those construction issues soon. Here’s my watercolor sketch from the cactus corner.
Ok, this one looks like an architect’s sketch. :)
Not quite the Oculus of NYC, but an interesting space inside.
Afterwards, I walked over to SFMOMA, which I haven’t visited in a little while. A little candid scene outside.
If you follow my instagram stories you might know that I’ve been taking an oil painting class, and it has made me so curious about artists’ brushstrokes and processes.
And another visit to the Matisse exhibit.
Finally, that same day, I went home and then drove back in to the city so I could attend a meetup for the 100 Day Project hosted by the originator of the 100 Day Project on instagram, Elle Luna. We met at Backerkit, a startup in Soma.
Everyone had such interesting projects and beautiful stories about the impact of the project on their lives. You might remember my project this year was 100 Bay Area Gems. It was a whole lot of work and I sort of just put it aside once it was complete, but perhaps I’ll pick it back up to turn it into something more once I gather the energy.
And after the meetup, a reunion/ new meeting of our Design Your Life group. We revisited a exercise we did about our core values and discussed values that had shifted or stayed the same for us. My five words were Meaning, Connection, Adventure, Growth, and Resourcefulness.
And last but not least, a little TAF gettogether since Zeyen was in town for a wedding! Here I am with Joy and her daughter.
And here’s Young and Zeyen.
‘Til next time!
Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.
