Western music very often comes in fours: 4/4 time, 4 strings on a violin, and all those beautiful 4-member groups: string quartets, barbershop quartets, brass quartets– even the standard rock band is usually two guitars, a bass, and a drum kit. But a bit more uncommon is the guitar quartet. No, not a band with…
Miles driven by others: 37 Miles flown: 390 Miles driven by myself: 150 ____________________________________ =577 miles traveled, and that’s just today. Sometimes exhaustion is the most gratifying feeling in the world. In that moment when you finally sit down and have a chance to rest, you can feel the very essence of gravity as it…
$1453. That’s the amount each one of these eighth graders is trying to raise to go to Washington, D.C. Not having much money to give to the cause, I contributed what I could, grabbing my camera and headed through the thick 8am fog to take portraits of each student. Later, we created a website with…
It’s been a very soggy week here in California. It’s rained every day since last Saturday. Despite the dreary weather, I’ve been keeping busy working on several projects of mine. One of them is the 25 by 25 list that I posted last week for my birthday. Well, I’ve been 25 for a week, so…
We met up in Jack London Square, the waterside district of Oakland where century-old warehouses and new businesses coexist, an area in the midst of a transformation to chic before our very eyes . When Mark pulled up and stepped out of his silver sports car, it was clear that he was a man with a…
It was mid-morning. I sat at my desk typing away at my emails, attempting to appease the multicolored starred and flagged messages crowding my inbox. Taking a break from the work, I glanced outside, and I spared not a moment before grabbing my camera and walking straight to the window. Stretched perfectly over downtown Oakland,…
You wouldn’t know it now, but I wasn’t really one of those little girls who spent her time dreaming of her wedding day. My first wedding experience was in high school, when I was hired to play violin in a string quartet. All I can remember from that episode is the impossibly long rendition of…
Let’s sit in the sun. Karthik leads the way and picks out a good spot. We had grabbed a couple dogs from Top Dog and headed to the well-manicured lawn on the edge of Berkeley’s campus. We eat and chat, catching up on each other’s lives– my after-school program and my photography; his long chain…
She teaches preschool in Arizona; he teaches high school here in California. They fly back and forth, often to meet back home in Seattle, sometimes for a vacation down in Mexico. But they are doing the long-distance thing, and doing it with grace. Even when Cami studied abroad in Italy, Eric still met her nightly…
Paul Yen! Paul is one of my good friends from Duke. He was home in Cupertino for much of the summer but is about to move out to New York City. Whether he decides to go to Parsons for design or work in advertising, he’ll also be ready for any acting gigs that come along…
On Saturday, I got to meet Yasuko, a pianist from Cal State East Bay for a brief headshot session. We ended up having a cool spontaneous adventure on our shoot. Walking up Oak Street from the Lake Merritt BART, we saw a restaurant with a cool brick and window facade. When someone from the restaurant…
Stephanie’s back! You might recognize her from the anti-iPod shoot I did with her for Mochi Magazine a little while back. Stephanie Isidro is a young aspiring actress, so look out for her in the years to come. Best of luck!