Quite a bit of travel recently. I was in Oklahoma City three weeks ago and San Antonio this week. Went camping last weekend in Shenandoah, VA with friends as well. Here are some shots from my phone.

Earlier this year, I took John and Niki's family photos. We had a lot of fun. So this month when they were having a party for Ella's 2nd birthday, they invited me as a guest. Friends and family gathered for a nice meal and fun. Niki's dad baked cupcakes and her friend, Daphne, made lovely pink icing. John rolled up his sleeves, throw steaks on the grill and showed off his famous Gambas al Ajillo dish. At one point, Ella and her little friends literally used cupcakes as sponges and painted their faces with icing. I was glad I captured those moments for them.

Shot an engagement session last weekend in Georgetown DC. The weather was nice and Arianna and Chris were totally awesome. More photos from the shoot soon...

I did this photo shoot of Shirley and her family earlier this year. Shirley, who used to work with my wife, always wanted to have family portrait photos taken. The first time we tried to arrange the shoot one of her kids got sick the day before so we had to call it off. A month later we ended up at Fairfax Lake Park in Reston, VA on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Went to this farm in Maryland a few weeks ago. We got there at around 13:00 and the heat index was probably slight above 100 °F. Insane... There weren't a lot of peaches but there were tons of sour blackberries. My wife neither eats peaches nor berries (the only berry she likes is strawberry) so we didn't buy any and we thought of that fruit picking as an exercise.

John and Niki has a super cute daughter, Ella. Ella is hyper, always smiles, laughs, and loves shoes. We did a shoot during the Cherry Blossom period in April around their neighborhood. We were out for two hours and Ella wouldn't stop running and climbing. It was a blast!

Just to went a friend's place for birthday dinner. Shinny just turned 30...

Sumi and Allen are a very sweet SoCal couple. Sumi was working in DC at that time. Allen flew in for a conference and they decided to have a lifestyle/engagement session here. The shoot was back in April and it was the hottest day in spring. Despite the fact that the temperature actually reached the high 90s, everybody was so excited and pumped up. In the morning we strolled around Georgetown, checking out small streets and colorful row houses. We then headed to Mandarin Oriental Hotel Washington DC for some indoor shots. Later in the afternoon we wandered from the Capital to Lincoln Memorial before calling it a day.

Recently, I have been getting a bunch of questions about what cameras I use, camera tips and suggestions, etc. Most of them are along the lines of "I'm thinking about getting a digital SRL. Which one should I buy?". In the past, I used to throw back a few questions like "What's your budget?" and "What kind of photography are you interested in? Portrait, landscape, etc.?". However, nowadays I think the most important thing is to find out whether photography is something you truly like.

As previously mentioned, my journey from Cinque Terre to Rome was quite hectic but we eventually arrived in Rome at around 15:00. Since we were going to spend the next two days checking out the city, we planned to turn the afternoon into a retreat at our hotel, Rome Cavalieri—The Waldorf=Astoria Collection.