A Day at Central Park

Joy's cousin, Ann Wang, and her family came to visit NY for a couple of days a month ago and we accompanied them to the Central Park on a Saturday. Since there were kids involved, we just picked a spot and sat there for a couple of hours. :)


I just love the look of these two ladies.


Wang family's two boys (MuMu, the older one and BoBo, the younger one).  Kids can play with anything, including a willow tree's leaves.



Wang family's friend's daughter whispering something to MuMu.


Unfortunately, this photo can't really express what I experienced on that day.  The father was blasting music with his portable boom box walking in Central Park and the kid just held the stereo as he walks along with his dad.


In the foreground is BoBo's shoes and underwear and they are being dried in the photo.  He fell into the lake while playing with the sticks.  Fortunately, the spot he fell into was shallow so only parts of his waist and down got wet.  I saw him fell into the lake.  Originally, I thought he jumped into the lake to retrieve something but when BoBo heard me saying that, he said "No, it was an accident." :)


During mid-dinner, BoBo's eyes started to become smaller and smaller and eventually, this is what happened.  It was very interesting seeing a kid chewing while half-asleep.  :)

Yakitori Totto

Yakitori Totto is a Japanese restaurant located in mid-town Manhattan. I love some of the food from this restaurant. Unfortunately, it's price is a bit (just a little bit) on the expensive side and the place is usually packed with people that if you go there late, you'll usually have to wait for a while. The longest that we ever had to wait was close to 2.5 hours on a Friday night. As a result, this is a restaurant that we only bring people to if they are visiting NYC and we want to to let them taste some good food.

Joy's brother was visiting NY a couple of weeks ago and so we went there. Since we did not want to wait, we had Joy's brother getting there early to reserve seats.

I just love this salad. The greens are fresh. The little fishes on top are crispy and the dressing is fantastic.

Don't remember what this is but I remember it was tasty. It came on a skewer with 4 or 5 pieces, not just 1 on the plate. :)

Joy loves fried calamari. She orders them wherever she is.

This photo is blurry but I like the way it looks anyway. Grilled bacon with asparagus. Bacons are always tasty. :)

I LOVE this one as well. The sauce on top of the grilled tofu is yuzu flavored miso.

First time that we ordered this. Thought it was an egg omelette but it was tofu too. Although its texture is different from what we normally have. It was cooked with sake so I felt buzzed after we left the restaurant. Haha~

Joy's brother loves pig related stuff. He brought that pig all the way from Taiwan and this pig appears in many photos that he takes. :)

Some other restaurant we passed by on the way home. Nice reflections I think. :)

4/17/2009 - Jannelle + Lin Weddings

Lin, a tall guy whom I met in our youth group a couple years ago, asked me to photograph his wedding ceremonies on 4/17/2009 and of course I said "Yes".

What's interesting about this couple is that they had two vastly different ceremonies on that day.  One held in a Buddhist temple and one held in a church nearby where Jannelle grew up.  Different religions among families can sometimes be a problem so it's nice to see what this couple did.



The first ceremony at the temple was held in the morning.  Here are some photos that I like.

Lin's sister helping him with his traditional "tuxedo".  :)  I love the face expression of Lin's cousin? on the left side.

 

According to the shop lady, Jannelle and Lin are the first borrowing these traditional clothes so these closes are completely new.  Kudos to this couple for going with this radical route. =D

 

 

With their traditional clothes, I wanted to create an old fashioned looking photo as well.  I think Jannelle definitely has the look here but I'm not sure if I have acheived 100% of what I really wanted.

  

The traditional Chinese wedding bow.  I like how you can see the people tilting their body to the middle more and more to see or photograph this couple.

While Jannelle's parents and Lin's mom and uncle are signing official documents at the front, the couple was entertaining the crowd in the back.  I love how I can see the couple looking at each other here and the crowd looking at them...smiling.

While giving the speech, Lin's mom became very emotional and so did Lin and Jannelle.  You can't see it in this photo of course.  :)

The song they were singing is in Chinese.  Since Jannelle does not speak Chinese, she constantly looked up at Lin for support and I believe Lin was trying to teach her to sing.  Very sweet.

When I said "Be goofy", this is the result.  You need to enlarge the photo to see how cooperative Jannelle was.  Lin, you disappoint me.  :)

 

This photos is way funny.  The boy in the back is copying what the girl is doing.  =D

These are very "Lin", either expressionless or the big smile.

 

Joy said why put up this photo, no one knows what she's doing anyway.  I think people can tell (if they look carefully) but in case they can't, I'll explain here.  Joy is giving a congratulate card to Lin.  There's a pocket in his sleeves.

 

This one is quite funny as well.  The person trying to run away went up to the couple wanting to congratulate them but then instinctively said, "Happy New Year".  But can't blame her, the couple does look very Chinese New Year.  :)

Later in the afternoon, another ceremony took place.  Unlike the first, the second ceremony was very intimate.  Consisted of both side's family members only.

Having only attended a church wedding once (and that was a long long time ago) and never photographed any previously, I found myself running around the place quite a bit and missed certain shots.  Sorry, guys.

A portrait taken before Lin arrived at the church.

The bride's side preparing to enter.  As soon as the organ started playing, they enter.  I thought that the groom was supposed to have a walk-in as well but there wasn't one.

Not only does the lady plays the organ, she sings too and quite well may I say.  Can you tell I'm a total newbie at church weddings.  :)

 

 

 

After the ceremony.  Taken in the church with the light coming from the Window.  Very cool I think.  :)

And there was still plenty of sunshine outside so we went out and took some photos.  I like the following photos.

 

  

  

 

Lin and Jannelle, thanks for inviting me to be part of your weddings and being brave enough to have me photograph them too.  Hope you are happy with at least some of the photos I've taken.  =D

Minor site redesign

Made some minor changes to the clearcubic.com website. The current HTML and CSS standards have always made it difficult for me to put the footer at the place that I wanted. So I moved the footer to the top. Now that the footer is on top, I guess I can't call it a "footer" any more. =) Also made some minor, minor changes to most of the pages.

And the first album of 2009 is coming soon. Yipee!!! And here's a photo that will give you a hint on what the album is going to be.

Food Incident

Pop Quiz

What is the BLUE object in the photo on the left?

1. Type of Food
2. Type of Poison
3. Food Decoration
4. UFO (Unidentified FOREIGN Object)
5. Rubber Band

Answer: I would say it's a combination of  2, 3, 4 and 5.

Yesternight, Joy was nice enough to boil some dumplings and veggies for me as my dinner.  Shortly after I started eating, Joy said "Sorry, you know how pregnant lady are very forgetful."  and she pointed at the blue band in the photo.  That is the rubber band that ties the veggies together in the supermarket and Joy has forgotten to remove one of these and boiled them together.  So what did I do?  I removed the rubber band and continued to eat.  Gosh, I certainly feel healthy today.

Georgia Aquarium

Found these unposted photos taken back in 2006. Went to Georgia on a business trip and company took us to the Georgia Aqaurium after work. It is supposed to be the world's largest aquarium but I remember it did not take us that long to finish walking the entire place. :)

To view the entire album, click on the title of this blog entry.




Did some one say "crowded"?


small fishes, BIG fish.


And many, many fishes.


This looks like a dancing lady to me or just some one saying "HI"!


I believe these are piranhas. They sometimes are portrayed as terrying fishes in movies. While they may be, here, I think they actually look kind of cute.

Reynaldo & Marcia Wedding

Haven't updated anything in quite a while. It's not that I haven't taken any photos during this time, it's just that I have been so busy moving in the past couple of months that I simply don't have the time to go through what I took. That and it's Winter time in NY. Winter isn't exactly my favorite season to go out and take photos. =D

But today, I will finally post some photos from a wedding that I took back in Dec. 1, 2008. This wedding was a first for me. It was an extremely small one. There were the bride and the groom, the 5 family members, the priest and myself for a total of 9 people. I certainly felt honored, but at the same time awkward to be there.

The wedding ceremony took place in a small NYC Italian restaurant at 5:30pm. The restaurant had very dim lighting (which I was very much afraid of as I'll have to resort to using the flash). Since the restaurant was small, there really wasn't much room for me to move around to begin with and when there were other customers coming into the restaurant, the space available to me got even more limited. When adding these two factors together to photograph a bride who's dark skinned, we got ourselves a not so easy task.

Marcia and Reynaldo, thank you for having me be part of your special day. I wish you two the best.

Now, onto some of my favorites from that day.


The bride, Marcia, after she finishes preparing for the ceremony.




The bouquet that Marcia created herself.






I love the serene look on Reynaldo, Marcia and her god mother.


This is probably my top 1 favorite from that day.