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Met at Cal (UC Berkley), Sachini and Mike had a perfectly blended Buddhist/Jewish wedding at Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills, MD

Politics brought Caroline and Pete together in 2008 when they were both working on the presidential campaign that year. They quickly decided that they enjoyed spending time with each other much more than electing politicians and have been together ever since.

Wedding of Erica Turner and Sherwin Thwaites, a Berklee College of Music graduate, on a lovely summer day at Brookside Gardens, Maryland.

Time really flies. I remember that around this time last year the 4th of July fireworks show in the area woke Nathan up and it wasn't easy making him go back to bed.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Minyoung and I went to college together. We did the engagement shoot in Georgetown, Washington, DC. The wedding was in the Philadelphia metro area. The church had just recently completed a renovation and we were lucky enough to be the first wedding in the brand new sanctuary.

We also went to Hua Hin twice while we were in Thailand. The first time we stayed at Dusit Thani Hotel. Dusit Thani is a fairly big resort with lots of room. The second trip we stayed at Rest Detail Hotel, which is a much smaller boutique hotel.

We also spent a few nights in Khao Yai at Kirimaya Resort. It was my first time in Khao Yai in more than 10 years. It's certainly a lot more developed that the past around the national parks with lots of small boutique hotels. Kirimaya isn't new but pretty well maintained and still has that nature reserves sort of feel to it.

Adobe held the Digital Marketing Summit 2012 conference (formerly known as Omniture Summit) earlier this month in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Salt Palace Convention Center. This year it was twice as big than the previous year with twice number of attendees exceeding 4000+ customers, partners and industry press/analysts.

Last November, my family and I went to Thailand again. It was around the time Thailand was facing the worst flooding in 50 years. And because of that, we were debating whether to postpone the trip. Although, we’d bought tickets way months ago, United Airlines posted a notice stating that it would allow passengers ticketed Thailand to make changes to their reservations one time free of charge.

A Penn Stater met the love of her life in the nation's capital.

I got a chance to attend Adobe MAX in October last year as a lab teaching assistant. MAX is Adobe's annual conference aimed to educate developers and designers with its latest technologies. Since 2008(?), it's always been held at in the LA Convention Center/LA LIVE area

It was a beautiful Fall day at International Country Club. It didn't count the number of guests but it was a big wedding with both bride's and groom's high school, college and graduate school friends. The dance floor was always jam-packed. It was a lot of fun.

Kat is from Ohio and moved down here not too long ago. She and Brian are both runners and that's how they met. The first time I met them they looked very athletic and dressed almost the same with one of those black polyester/fleece fabric outdoor jackets. Because they both love running, Kat planned a little after ceremony surprise for Brian where they put on running shoes and trailed off into the woods in the back of the main area.

First wedding of the year back in March at Newton White Mansion in Prince George's County, Maryland. The weather was incredible but unfortunately the ceremony and reception were held indoors. Although it was right at the end of March, I guess the venue didn't allow any event organized outdoors until April. Anyway, I couldn't have been a better day.

Grandma drove from Texas to pickup great grandma from Nebraska before uniting with the younger generations in Virginia for this very special occasion.

Here is my first attempt photographing a newborn. I did baby photography in the past but at that time the subject was a little over a month old. Nathan was between 5-10 days old in the pictures below.

Visited Hoover Dam, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Car broken into in SF. Stuff stolen. AMEX was awesome! FOX Rent A Car not so much. Pain to deal with.

Esther and James flew in town from the Bay area just before Thanksgiving. Not much I can say about this wedding. It was a beautiful day and perfect wedding.

Stayed at ARIA Resort & Casino at CityCenter. It was my first time there and I had a mind-blowing experience.

This is definitely not just another couple wanting to do a session in Georgetown. Let me tell you about Frank. Frank is avid StarCraft fan.

Esther and James flew all the way from California. Although it was pretty sunny, the temperature was around high 40s in the afternoon. I saw Esther shivering on many occasions. :)

Before this trip, we beach-camped once at Assateague island and it was pretty awesome. So we had really high hopes for OBX camping since it was going to be at the KOA Cape Hatteras campground, which is private (i.e. not part of a state or national) and should be less crowded generally speaking.

It's been a while since the last blog update. I guess I'll start off this one with pictures from the dance floor ... just to show insane it was. People totally rocked out with different wicked moves. I think the elderlies had as much fun as the younger ones.

Sheree and Tyrell definitely know how to throw one heck of a party. The groom even rocked out some massiv tunes with his buddies during the reception.

This is the last photo set from the Thailand trip back in February. We visited an up and coming tourist attractive for the Thais called Suan Phung. One of the most famous resorts there is The Scenery Resort & Farm, which is often known as New Zealand of Thailand. Anyway, not going to write a lot because I'm in San Jose, CA this week but my bio clock is still on DC time and it's 3:00AM there. All I can say is it is another good trip away from the city and the resort is definitely worth a visit.

Getting back to my two week vacation in Thailand, I did a day trip to Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is the old capital city of Thailand. It was the first day that I started recovering from food poisoning and didn't feel like throwing up all the time. The drive from Bangkok to Ayutthaya is very easy and only takes about an hour. We had lunch at a noodle place called ก๋วยเตี๋ยววัดใหญ่. It was very good. Definitely a must try when you visit Ayutthaya.

This was the only engagement shoot I did last winter. In fact, it was in January and January was cold as far as I remember. However, on that particular day, the temperature was in the 50s. Shin and Brett were so pumped up they ran around in t-shirts.

Hua Hin (หัวหิน) is a famous beach resort town — a two and a half hour drive from Bangkok. Unfortunately just before our Hua Hin trip, I got really sick. Like diarrhea sick. Like couldn't sit straight at the dinner table sick. Like had to wear a fleece in 80 degree weather sick. It was probably a case of food poisoning. Anyway, that's why I didn't take that many photos during the beach trip.

My wife and I recently took a trip to Thailand. Bangkok was around home base. From there, we did short trips to Ayutthaya (the old capital city of Thailand), Amphawa (a famous floating market village), Hua Hin (a famous beach resort town), and Suan Phueng (known as New Zealand of Thailand). We had a blast and I'll be posting more photos on the blog as I have time. Feel free to ask any questions if you are interested or planning a trip there.

Sorry, haven't made a post for a while. I have been busy with my new role at work as a Solutions Engineer. What's more is that I just came back from a 2 week trip to Thailand. It was great and I'll surely be posting some photos from trip soon.

We spent our Christmas skiing/snowboarding at Stowe Mountain Resort, Vermont. Having already been to Killington, we wanted to try out a new place. Heard a lot of good things about Stowe and thought we would give it a shot. It really didn't disappoint us at all, partly because we luckily picked the best two days. A week before Christmas, the temperature was constantly below 0°F. At one point I was -14°F on SkiReport.com. The day before we arrived, it never made it out of the single digits.

I shot this session last month. Even though it was November, the weather was in the low 70s. It was one of those few good fall days. We started at their home in Merrifield, VA. Then we went to the top floor of the parking garage of the building I work at in Tysons Corner. It was great. There was so much space for them to run around with balloons. Danny's car became a good prop as well. Overall, it was another fun session. The sunset couldn't have been more glamorous.

Went camping with some friends in Shenandoah Valley on a weekend last month. During the day it was in the 60s if I remember correctly. The temperature dropped pretty quickly after sunset. It had to be in the 30s when we went to sleep. However, the coldest moments were early in the morning. I kept waking up every 10 minutes or so because of sleeping in a fairly thin sleeping bag. The next day we went hiking in Shenandoah National Park. Great weekend, great weather, lots of fun!

With the recent release of Imgur public API, I quickly put together a desktop application, which allows you to quickly drag and drop an image into the app and get back a URL that you can paste in an IM window, email, Reddit, Digg, etc. It also keeps track of upload history while giving the ability to delete your images from Imgur's servers. Here is a quick screenshot. To install, click Install Now on the left.

Who doesn't love fall? Here are some photos from Big Meadows at Shenandoah National Park. It's about an hour drive west of DC. The weekend we went was pretty crowded. I originally planned on visiting Luray Caverns but the line was long...about an hour wait. So we changed the plan and hit up Big Meadows instead.

I was really looking forward to shooting Arianna and Chris' engagement session. It was the last Sunday of September and you bet the weather was great. We arranged to meet in Georgetown near Waterfront Starbucks. Arianna and Chris are stunning together. They met in college and now live and work in the DC metro area.

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.

My trip to Cinque Terre, Italy. Hiking through Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. Rick Steves style travel with lots of photos.

My trip to Switzerland - includes visits to Gimmelwald, Interlaken, Spiez, Berner Oberland. Rick Steves style travel with lots of photos.

After 3 days in London, we spent 2 days and 3 nights in Paris staying at Hilton Arc de Triomphe, which is a block an a half from the Courcelles metro stop. Hilton Arc de Triomphe really deserves the name Hilton unlike the dirty ghetto rundown Hilton Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA (now Dolce Hotel). It's clean, nicely decorated, and located in a good neighborhood. It also has a great executive lounge with an open-air seating area. Our room was nice, roomy and clean.

We flew a morning flight into London Heathrow and arrived in the evening so that we could get a good night sleep. The plane landed at almost 22:00 and after we were done with immigration we had to get some money exchanged, took a long walk to the Tube station, and lined up to get Oyster cards. We didn't leave the airport area until 23:30. After having a late dinner, that night we ended up going to bed at around 2:30 or so.

A few weeks ago my wife and I spent two weeks in Europe visiting London, Paris, Berner Oberland/Gimmelwald in Switzerland, Cinque Terre and Rome in Italy. Although it was pretty expensive, considering the dollar fell to a six-month low against the euro during that period, the trip was worth every penny. Anyway, I want to share my experience about the planning process and specifically how I managed to shoot about 40 GB of RAW images without taking a laptop on the trip.

Hello World! You heard right. Although I regularly contribute to the Adobe Professional Services Public Sector blog, this is actually my very first personal blog post. Can you imagine that? Anyway, this blog will hopefully focus on my photography work and things that interest me and are worthwhile sharing. Head over to my portfolio website to check out some of my work.