Birds have begun to fly south

Friday night.

Vien takes me to a ramen joint deep down in the recesses of Alphabet City.

It was sooo good but it oddly reminded of La Paz Batchoy,

which is NOT a bad thing at all.

9:00 am Saturday Morning at Carl Shurz Park

Waaaay up at the Upper East Side for the early morning shoot for Koyuki.

Midday coffee break with Mica

Monday morning madness with Santi.

Dressing him up is like playing with dolls.

He's such a hottie in this denim shirt.

Taco gets silly and rolls around on the sidewalk.

So not even a day into my Creative Experiment (a.k.a. no more Facebook until I do something semi-magical), Ifang messages me to schedule Koyuki's photo shoot this weekend. I haven't been commissioned for a shoot since Kyle asked me to take a new set of headshots, photos of which I haven't uploaded to my photo blog or website. Add that to the list of things I didn't do because of a certain social network.

Quick refresher, Ifang was the pregnant woman I shot a year and a half ago. Koyuki is her now 20-month old daughter, whose adorable elbow dimples can be seen here when she was only 3 months old. She needs photos of Koyuki to submit to an agency. Hopefully I capture photos good enough to get her noticed. I've been searching for children's portraits online to get ideas. The weather this coming Saturday should be ideal for portraits unless mother nature decides to go schizo on NYC again.

Off to more photo researching...

Been sick since last week. I was actually down with a bad fever last Tuesday and had to call in sick from work. Despite having the day off I still had to to go down, do laundry, shop for food and make my own chicken soup before finally collapsing in bed by 8pm.

The day before that (Monday), I finally made time to take photos of Kendra, who's been asking for headshots from me for months. 

Armed with clamp lights from Home Depot and a shoot through umbrella from B&H strapped to a tripod with velcro and Mica holding a gold reflector, we managed to take good photos of Kendra by the window despite the gloomy rainy weather outside that provided us with no sunlight whatsoever.

Given the cheap equipment and poor light source, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome and am inspired to do another one soon. Now if only Caitlin will let me photograph her. She says she afraid of cameras but I will soon change that.

Joe and Tito Ans are back in NYC after their three month trip to the Philippines. Joe called me up as soon as they got back to remind me of my promise to take him to Coney Island before they head back to Syracuse. I was still sick but obliged. I was supposed to take both Joe and Omar out on Sunday but it turned out to be one big family trip since Tito Ans, Nana, Tito Chon, Tito Mo, Ana, Poy and Santi decided to join us and we all hopped on two cars and ventured out to Coney Island. Of course, the rest of the party came just to eat hotdogs and sit by the boardwalk while me and the two boys went in the amusement parks. They went on a few rides and I joined them for the famous Cyclone roller coaster. I personally love coasters but that was one of the scariest rides I've ever been one. It's an old wooden ride and the entire time it shook and rattled and felt like nails would come loose and send us flying in the air. I was sent slamming from one end of my car to the next with every turn since I sat by myself. Joe and Omar had each other to cushion themselves every time the train took a mad, sharp turn.

Today, I took Santi's 5th month photos and compared to past few months when he never cooperated and I never really got good smiling photos, today I had the hardest time whittling down images since he was smiling or laughing in 95% of the shots. He was totally adorable today.

Complete albums from all the photo sets featured here can be seen on my Facebook as usual.

This weekend has been an alcohol filled weekend. Me and my ladies, Mica and Caitlin have been drinking since Thursday night. Work has been terribly exhausting and frustrating that I find myself needing a drink every night after work. One time we went to Ulysses and while we were on our way there, I was saying that I wished that no guys would bother us like that 22-year old the last time. I semi got my wish. No 22-year old did bothered us, but in turn, every other older dude tried to catch our attention. One 38-year old named Eugene in particular would not stop coming over and talking to me. He bought me two rounds of drinks (and Mica too) and came and went three times just to try to get my contact information. I gave him nothing and humored him until it was time to catch a cab home.

Friday night was spent hanging out with Dustin (our soon to be ex-subletter) at L'asso Pizza in the lower east side. He works there every weekend until 4am so Mica, Cait and I came over and had pizza and drinks with him. The pizza was amazing. I will have to take Louiie there when she comes.

Today is my day off and decided (by default) to stay in and make something out of whatever I found in the kitchen. I ended up making vanilla-vanilla cupcakes and had Ikea meatballs with buttered veggies and mashed potatoes for dinner. 

Working a double tomorrow so I better hit the sack.

Ps: I found this on Neil Gaiman's blog. A photo he took of Amanda Palmer kissing her exboyfriend Blake sometime around August 17 during her stay in Boston.

and then here's a photo I took on August 13 in Provincetown

Guess the human statue took a fast ferry from Boston to Provincetown for the weekend.

I made a different version of my usual meal, which would be chicken and potatoes for lunch.

Baked crusted chicken cutlets with garlic herb roasted potatoes and my usual veggies.

Such a small meal for one yet I ended up with an overflowing sink of dirty dishes.

Today I finally decided to patronize the nail salon downstairs. I've been living here for over a year and I never went in, choosing instead to pay $28 for a pedicure over in Union Square. I walked in and had my toesies done there for $10 less! And I didn't have to travel across the river to do it too! I was afraid at the kind of place it would be, thinking it would be dank and dingy. It was surprisingly clean, even cleaner than the other place on 6th avenue (and better massage chairs too). I may just go there every week now.

I went to Target today to buy toiletries but I made the mistake of first making a detour to DSW where I walked out with this in a camel color since it was on sale.

I was hungry when I got home and wanted something quick so I used some of Mica's olive bread to make bruschettas.
I'm trying to use up the slowly rotting produce before it really goes bad. I hate how basil goes bad so fast. I bought a bunch of them the other day and most of them have gone gray now. I had to pick through them to find a few good ones for this. And apparently, Mica had been buying produce to replace the ones of mine she's been using and here I was buying more stuff since I didn't want to use hers. So now we have double the number of tomatoes, green beans and bell peppers. A house of 4 people who love to eat will always have a pretty full fridge.


Benny also made a comment about him no longer having shelf space in the kitchen cabinets since I've monopolized one whole shelf solely for my baking supplies. So I decided to use up a bunch of them today by baking TWO UN-red velvet cakes. I didn't want to buy food coloring just for the sake of making it red hence the un-redness of it. I used my squeeze bottle to add an extra flair to cakes too just for the heck of it. If I find extra time tomorrow, I might tackle another batch of white chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies again.

I have to be up early tomorrow and head out to Ana's to take photos of Santi. I believe he's turning one month old this week and I've volunteered to take photos. I might just make a monthly thing of this. Next week, I will head out to Ifang's to take photos of the apartment she and her husband are trying to sell/rent and also to take photos of their baby, Koyuki, who's 3 months old now. I can't believe it's been that long since I took these.

Benny's self-produced show is tomorrow night so I'm also skipping over to the lower east side to watch it. I'm not sure if I've posted this before but the postcard flyers that were distributed to promote the event were designed by yours truly. I cannot take credit for the image though, that was taken by Benny himself. This is only the second material I've made that have been handed around NYC so I'm mighty proud.

Was informed by Lily this morning that I could take the day off. I baked another batch of red velvet, caught up with episodes of Heroes, did laundry, made dinner for me, Mica, Andy and Eisa. Andy had a thing to go to after dinner so us girls had the apartment to ourselves. I was in a creative mood so I suggested we do makeovers and headshots. I can't upload all the photos since a bunch of them contain sensitive material hehe. I bet the neighbors who bothered looking over our kitchen window (we forgot to close the drapes!) would be amused to see girls running around in their underwear.

Make-up on all three ladies by yours truly. My photos were taken by Eisa.

It's late and I should be sleeping but I just had to show these. Good night!

I haven't had the time to write and even properly read my mail for days. Been so busy and tired the past several days. We had a long night last Saturday night at the restaurant. I was home by 3am then had to be up again at 7:30am Sunday to go to the city to shoot for Mica and Leo's MOVE event. I will upload the full album when I've submitted the photos to Qua2d. I also took Benny's photos Saturday afternoon since he needed new headshots for his website and to submit for his dance company's member profile. I love being in the company of artists because it's opening doors for me to pursue my love of being behind the camera. I'm exhausted but at the same time very productive so I guess it all works out.

*click links above to learn more about them

Preview from the Move event:
Below are a couple of photos I took of Benny right here in our living room. The sun shone just right through our living room window and with Mica serving as an assistant holding my off shoe flash, I managed to take decent photos.
Mica and Leo asked me to take theirs as well. I am hoping to have enough money saved up by March to buy my own set of strobes. Must. Not. Shop.

Ok, it's past 2am and I have another early day tomorrow. Until next post! I should have proper photos then.

www.wingscareers.com
(if you click on the link now, the girl on the header is my sister)

Last year, I took photos of my mother-in-law's school when they relocated in Sucat. She wanted to update her photos yearly so I spent today taking pictures of her current batch of students. Niki was kind enough to tag along and help me as I was tasked to take photos AND video since I was requested to do a marketing video for the school as well. It was nothing fancy, I used Charlie to shoot everything and will just do my magic with iMovie. I managed to get started on sorting through the photos when I got home so here are a few of the ones I took from today. Watch out for Niki's cameo!

Thanks a lot to Paul S. for lending me his floodlight and also Pat M.'s reflector.

you can view the orders by clicking on this link.

this is my wonderful mother-in-law by the way

Niki, getting ready to jet off!