Birthdays and Israeli food

These past couple of days have held birthdays of a few people close to Chris and me. On the 28th, it was my parents' 28th anniversary and my aunt's 54th birthday. Last night, we celebrated our good friend Wes' birthday at an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia called Zahav.

Five of the six of us had never been to this place before, and we were all pretty much blown away by how good the food was. Plus, it was tapas style, so we were all able to taste a little bit of everything. My favorite presentation, though, had to be the starter salatim, which had eight different salads.



While the portions were small, we had so many dishes that we were all stuffed after the meal...but not stuffed enough to decline dessert! Cashew baklava, yum...



And here's Wes blowing out the candle from his dessert (the Halvah mousse):


Happy birthday!

Pam and Ray's wedding

This past weekend, we had the pleasure of flying out to California to attend the wedding of our two good friends, Pam and Ray. Chris and I met them in college (I was in a co-ed service fraternity with them and Chris worked in student government with Ray), and they were also in our wedding. Ray was Chris' best man and Pam was one of my bridesmaids. It made us so happy to see two of our favorite people start their married lives together!


Kiss from her dad...


...and kiss from her groom!


I love this photo of the two of them, mainly because we've never seen Pam look at anyone the way she is looking at Ray in this picture.


During the dragon dance


Classic Pam and Ray: Ray was laughing at her during their engagement video, and Pam puts up with Ray's shenanigans. :D


First dance

Lynn & Fred: Anytime

We shot our first couple today!

Lynn and Fred are our fellow Californians and Chris' pharmacy school classmates. They graciously agreed to be our guinea pigs for our first couple shoot, and while Chris and I know we have quite a bit to work on (such as posing people, haha), I think we did a pretty good job! Of course, it didn't hurt that it was a beautiful day in Philadelphia! Plus, Lynn and Fred are goofy as hell, so it really made things easy. :)

Thanks, Lynn & Fred!













I couldn't resist, haha


We were intrigued by the dingy alley we passed by after lunch.




She really loves him, I swear!

I thought it appropriate to end with these two shots, as it really captures the essence of these two. This is what we dealt with during the entire session: all smiles and jokes. In fact, we got a LOT more funny shots than we bargained for, enough for a blooper album for them! It was a very relaxed environment and they totally put us at ease!

around Philly and UPenn

Last weekend, Chris and I walked around Philly, scouting for places to take photos and places to take visitors. We ended up at the Art Museum (and Rocky Steps!) just people watching. I never realized how popular this place is for wedding pictures! In less than half an hour, we saw three different wedding parties take their pictures near the giant columns. I didn't snap any of these because well, I didn't want a confrontation with a photographer. They were hard at work and the last thing they need is some n00b taking pictures of their work!

Before we started our adventure, we stopped by Tbar to get, in my opinion, the best boba in Philly. That's a lot coming from a California Asian. ;)


We found some pretty good spots for portraits and whatnot. Here is Chris modeling them:




I love his cheesy smile here!
Then yesterday, my coworker Liz wanted to go to Locust Walk at UPenn to practice her photography. I also asked our other coworker Paige to join us because I wanted to get some portraits of her and her beautiful eyes.

There's a mini Love sign on campus.


There a lot of beautiful old buildings on Locust Walk, but since it was such a nice day out, SO MANY people were milling around! This was basically the only free spot of doorway I could get.
This last shot is my absolute favorite of any portrait I've taken (not like I've taken that many). This is one of those shots that look fab straight out of the camera and need very little tweaking. I think this is the first one I've taken that needed about 2 minutes of post production. I'm pretty happy about that. :)