Photography

Israel, 2023

Israel, 2023

My friends Yoav and Daniela got married in June, and we got to travel to Israel to celebrate with them. It was Hannah’s first time there, so we squeezed as much as we could in the 10 day trip. We spent time in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, but also made some time to see my family in Petah Tikva, and to relax in nature. The timing, sadly and luckily, like that of many trips to Israel, was just a few months before the current bout of the conflict started. Things felt normal. Continue reading...

H1 '23 Variety Pack

H1 '23 Variety Pack

It’s been a while since my last post. Here are photos from lots of travel, with a mix of film and digital from the first half of the year (plus a bonus last week of ‘22).

We start out in Chicago, go to San Francisco, then Yosemite, Austin, back to Chicago, then the North Bay, more SF, Phoenix, and more SF. I feel lucky I get to travel this much. More...

Winter in Yosemite

Winter in Yosemite

Since moving to California, I’ve been to Yosemite almost once per year. This time, however was the first time I’ve visited in the winter. Continue reading...

Oaxaca

Oaxaca

We traveled to Oaxaca for our friend Andres’ wedding. He was one of the few other Costa Ricans at Northwestern when we were in college, so to me his wedding felt like a strange mix of college reunion and a party with old friends from home. Continue reading...

Bogotá & Cartagena

Bogotá & Cartagena

In December, my friends Debbie and Iacov were getting married in Cartagena, so Hannah and I decided to make a trip out of it and work remotely from Bogotá a few days ahead of the wedding. Continue reading...

CDMX, Dos

CDMX, Dos

Just days after a short trip to Mexico earlier this year my friend Nathan got engaged, and gave me a good reason to go back to the city for his wedding. Continue reading...

Work Travel: Chicago and Columbus

Work Travel: Chicago and Columbus

A short post from two work trips to the Midwest this fall. We had a full company offsite at the end of September, followed by an engineering management team specific one in November.

There’s a mix of film (Fuji Superia 400, still too green for my taste) and digital shots. More...

Día de los Muertos, 2022

Día de los Muertos, 2022

An interesting thing about living in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco, which has a large Latin American immigrant population, is that people make a big effort to show how proud they are of their roots. Día de los Muertos is one of the holidays where that really shows. More...

Los Angeles, 2022

Los Angeles, 2022

On a whim, we decided to drive down to Southern California for the long weekend. I didn’t take many photos, except for our day at the Getty Center. More...

Berlin, 2022

Berlin, 2022

After a quick visit to Paris we flew to Berlin. A few of our friends moved there during the pandemic, and I am glad I got to see them in their new habitat. Continue reading...

Paris, 2022

Paris, 2022

Every time I travel outside of the US I am reminded of how much I love being immersed in other cultures. The art, the history, the food, the wine… it was amazing. We’ll likely be back soon. Continue reading...

New York City, 2022

New York City, 2022

Earlier this year I got to travel to New York to speak at KGC’22 and present some of the knowledge graph work we’ve been doing at Vouch to understand the startup ecosystem. Continue reading...

Time Travel Variety Pack

Time Travel Variety Pack

One of the curious things about shooting film is that it’s warped the way I think about time and place. Continue reading...

CDMX

CDMX

Taking advantage of the flexibility of WFH, we decided to go to México for a bit. We ate a ridiculous amount of excellent food off of street stands and in nice restaurants, and tried so many kinds of mezcal that by the end I wasn’t even sure which ones I liked most. Continue reading...

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz

Hannah had a “recharge day” off from work, so taking advantage of COVID’s work anywhere option, we went to Santa Cruz for the weekend. I worked from the hotel while Hannah wandered on Friday. More...

San Diego

San Diego

Although I’ve lived in California for almost 7 (!) years, I had never been to San Diego. This New Years, we planned a trip there. More...

New York, 2021

New York, 2021

After a weekend in Philly, our Thanksgiving trip continued with my family in New York City. My mom flew in from Costa Rica, while Max and Einat drove from Boston with Rollo in the back. Hopefully next time Danny, Caro and the kids will get to join us.

I also brought my film camera, so expect a few stragglers to come from that in a second post later on. More...

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

After briefly seeing our friends Annie and Michael in Louisville for their wedding party, we planned to meet them for a bit longer in Philadelphia. We had planned an East Coast trip to see my family in NYC for Thanksgiving, so adding one more city to the itinerary was pretty easy. More...

Camping in the Headlands

Camping in the Headlands

After far too long since our last camping trip, Hannah and I decided to spontaneously book one for the upcoming weekend. There happened to be an opening at Bicentennial Campground in Marin, a tiny 3-site campsite near Point Bonita. More...

Louisville, Kentucky & Washington DC

Louisville, Kentucky & Washington DC

As part of the post-COVID wedding marathon, we flew to Louisville and DC back to back. More...

Italia V - Positano Revisited, Napoli

Italia V - Positano Revisited, Napoli

In retrospect, I should have taken a lot more film photos during our trip to Italy. I still don’t fully trust myself with film, but there’s something that makes these feel very special. Continue reading...

Italia IV - Pompeii & Positano

Italia IV - Pompeii & Positano

After a few days in Rome, we drove South. We stopped at Pompeii on our way to the Amalfi Coast, where we spent a few days in Positano. Continue reading...

Italia III - Roma

Italia III - Roma

As the history nerd that I am, I could explore Rome and its historical sites for years, and not get enough of it. Continue reading...

Italia II - Firenze

Italia II - Firenze

When planning our trip, I was somewhat disappointed that we’d only spend a day in Florence. Knowing it’s a place that I’ll end up going back to on my own, I didn’t try too hard to convince my friends to change our plans - realistically the villa thing won’t happen again, but the museums will be waiting for me in a few years. Continue reading...

Italia I - Umbria

Italia I - Umbria

Many months ago, in the depths of COVID-times, our friend Maizie asked if we’d be willing to travel to Italy to celebrate her birthday if she planned everything for our friend group, assuming we could all get vaccinated by then. That was a pretty easy question to say yes to. Continue reading...

Chicago, Fall 2021

Chicago, Fall 2021

I went to Chicago for work, and took a lot of abstract building shots. You can definitely see the Angie McMonigal inspiration in some of these.

There’s also a couple of people in there. More...

Weekend Strolls

Weekend Strolls

After a long hiatus, I’m back with my street photography. More...

Vax'd Travel: Vegas, Boston, North Bay

Vax'd Travel: Vegas, Boston, North Bay

Fully vaccinated, and with most of the US reopening, it was time to get back on the road.

First, our friend group planned a trip to Vegas, then we went to visit my family in Boston, and lastly we went on a short road trip in the North Bay. I took photos everywhere. More...

Chicagoland, 2021

Chicagoland, 2021

Walking around Evanston, Highland Park, and Chicago always bring back memories. Continue reading...

Yosemite, 2021

Yosemite, 2021

Half an hour after my farewell happy hour at Apple, I hopped on a car and drove to Yosemite. I took too many photos. Continue reading...

Film, II

Film, II

Like last time, the full roll of 36 is below, only slightly edited. More...

Get Bent

Get Bent

At peak pandemic stir-craziness, our friend group decided it was time for a road trip. Since California was experimenting with COVID policies, we couldn’t get an Airbnb in California as California residents (of course, if you were coming in from out of state, that was not an issue 😒). By the time we actually planned this trip, that was no longer the rule, but the seed of going up to Oregon was planted and we couldn’t get it out of people’s heads.

I wasn’t super excited to drive up 10 hours for no good reason, but it ended up being a really fun trip. We worked from there a few days, and some of us took a couple of days off to hike and relax. Oddly, I have no photos of the house we were staying at. Most of the set are nature shots. More...

Film, I

Film, I

For fun, and to force a creative constraint upon myself, I bought an old film camera. This is the first roll I’ve shot on film since I was twelve, or so.

It’s an odd experience to not be able to immediately tell if a photo will be any good. Carrying a film camera made me think a lot more about what I was shooting. Usually, I’d take the same photo 10 times with slightly different settings, and cut down nine out of ten photos.

The full roll of 36 is below, only slightly edited. More...

Joshua Tree, 2020

Joshua Tree, 2020

In November, we rented a house in Indio with our friends, and drove down to Southern California. Oddly, I didn’t take any photos at the house, but I took a bunch on the couple of trips we did into Joshua Tree National Park that week. More...

San Francisco Hellscapes

San Francisco Hellscapes

In previous years, when fire season came around I took photos of the city skyline, complained about the raining ash, and marveled at how fires hundreds of miles away can impact our daily lives so much. Unfortunately, this is something I’m used to now, but yesterday was different. The air quality has been much worse than it was yesterday, even in recent weeks, but the sheer mindfuck of seeing the whole city shrouded in orange from dawn to dusk made it a truly surreal day.

I took most of the photos below around 1PM. There’s minimal postprocessing, and the little color correction that I did was to get the white balance closer to reality, instead of the reddish tones that the camera applied to the photos. If anything, these look a bit over exposed, brighter than reality. We’ve worked hard on making our cameras capture light to seem realistic under normal conditions, so it’s easy to forget technology does not actually capture reality. It’s hard to get this right. The map is not the territory. More...

Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay

The first weekend after I got back to the US, Amol and Annabelle invited us to drive down to Monterey with them. Because of the fires, and because of COVID, we weren’t sure the trip was going to work out, but it did, and I took a ton of photos. More...

Disconnected, Hood Mountain

Disconnected, Hood Mountain

For 4th of July weekend Hannah and I took a last minute backpacking trip to Hood Mountain, right on the border of Napa and Sonoma Counties. We had been looking for campsite permits in a bunch of different parks during the weeks leading up to the long weekend, but nothing seemed to open up. Luckily, Sonoma regional parks had had their reservation system closed due to COVID, and they opened it the morning of the 2nd. After a stressful morning trying to book something, we found this site.

This was our first time leaving SF since the shelter-in-place order started, and it was great to disconnect almost completely. Except for a couple of let’s check Alltrails moments, and a short call to my dad to wish him happy birthday, my phone was on airplane mode the whole time. More...

Crossing the Bridge

Crossing the Bridge

For Memorial Day weekend, we went on a hike that made it up for months of being locked down in our apartment. Hannah and I walked all the way from our apartment in the Mission to Kirby Cove and back, picking up our friend Nikhil a few miles in, near the Haight. Without thinking too much about it, we ended up doing a 21 mile day.

My feet hated me for it. More...

Sheltering

Sheltering

Everything is weird. In these strange times, I hope you’re holding up, staying healthy, coping, taking care of your loved ones, and trashing every single email that opens with any of the phrases above.

I have been mostly locked up in my apartment, occassionally going up on our rooftop, and taking my camera out almost every time I leave the building. At the top of my list of dumb purchases was a 2x extender for my camera, which effectively turns my zoom lens into a 140-400mm f8.0. It’s pretty ridiculous. More...

The Crosstown Trail

The Crosstown Trail

Back in November, when we could still go outside and interact with other people, a new trail opened in San Francisco: The Crosstown Trail, a 17 mile hike in the middle of the city hitting a bunch of neighborhoods and local businesses, climbing to many lookout points, and cutting through multiple parks, large and small. It wasn’t hard to convince our friends to hike it. More...

Europa V, Zürich MMXX

Europa V, Zürich MMXX

Last but not least, we headed to Zürich to finish things off, and then fly back to San Francisco. We only had a night there, so we tried hard to spend our time wisely. Continue reading...

Europa IV, Vitznau MMXX

Europa IV, Vitznau MMXX

After a great experience in the Austrian Alps, it was time to head to Switzerland and enjoy their mountainside. Continue reading...

Europa III, Bad Aussee MMXX

Europa III, Bad Aussee MMXX

Next up were the Austrian Alps. Initially, I wasn’t too excited about this part of the trip, since I wasn’t planning to partake in the snow sports, and it felt like we’d end holed up in our cabin without exploring too much. It ended up being one of the best parts of the trip. Continue reading...

Europa II, Wien MMXIX

Europa II, Wien MMXIX

After a few days in Prague, we took a train to Vienna, and hit the ground running. I was really excited to see the city for the first time, and enjoy all the cultural works it had to offer. Continue reading...

Europa I, Praha MMXIX

Europa I, Praha MMXIX

Thanks to a few really good planners (not me) and a lot of excited online research, this New Years our friend group managed to pull off one of the coolest vacations I’ve ever been on. We went to Europe for a bit over two weeks. We started off in Prague, went to Vienna for New Years eve, headed to the Alps, and ended up in Zürich. The big cities were waiting for us with a ton of cultural activities, historical spots to explore, and an unhealthy amount of great food and drinks, while the little towns in the Alps ended up being delightfully surprising. Continue reading...

Chicago & Indianapolis, MMXIX

Chicago & Indianapolis, MMXIX

Last year the holidays started off as usual, with a trip back to Chicago and Indianapolis to see Hannah’s family, and a few friends. What could have been a whole trip on its own merit ended up feeling like a tiny detour as we went on to many places in Europe. Continue reading...

Disneyland, 2019

Disneyland, 2019

During one of our many hikes, a few friends were saying they’d love to go down to Southern California for a Disneyland trip. Continue reading...

Seattle

Seattle

Our friends Hannah and Andrew were getting married in Seattle, which gave me a great excuse to go and explore the city. It was my first time there, so we did some touristy things, and we spent a good amount of time hanging out with friends from NU who had also traveled there for the event. I didn’t want to be the weirdo with the camera, so there are no photos of the wedding itself. More...

Half Dome

Half Dome

We hiked it. Continue reading...

Alaska

Alaska

This was all around an amazing and ridiculous trip, half work, and half fun. Continue reading...

Hawaii

Hawaii

A few weeks ago, Hannah had to go to Hawaii for work, and asked if I wanted to tag along. The tickets were cheap, so I said why not! I had low expectations, beacuse how much better could the beaches be than the ones I grew up going to in Costa Rica? I’d say they are different enough, and cool in orthogonal directions - the cultural and historical context are totally different. More...

San Francisco Walks

San Francisco Walks

This set of photos is a mixed bag. Some of them have been sitting in my archive for almost a year, and some I took just a couple of weeks ago. They’re also a mixed bag in terms of quality, but editing is not my strong suit - I have a really hard time cutting. More...

Boston, 2018

Boston, 2018

After a long time without visiting, I finally got to spend some time in Boston this past weekend with Max and Einat. We decided not to plan much, which turned out to be a great decision. More...

Outside Lands, 2018

Outside Lands, 2018

Another year in San Francisco, another Outside Lands. After a few years in SF, I’ve been to several of these festivals, and honestly this year I was less excited than for previous ones. We had purchased the early bird tickets, and were a bit disappointed when the lineup came out. However, being less excited about the concerts meant that we’d spend less time going back and forth in the park, and that we’d be less stressed about what concerts we’d miss because something else had overlapped. As the day got closer, I started looking forward to it more, and once we were at the festival I was glad we had bought the tickets. Continue reading...

Midsummer

Midsummer

This year is going by too fast. Somehow, it is already mid July. More...

Pride '18

Pride '18

Every year I’ve been in SF, I’ve looked forward to Pride to take photos. The set of characters that show up, the crazy outfits, and the overall level of happiness are not matched by any other event I’ve ever been to. At least in that sense, this year didn’t fail to surprise me. Continue reading...

Bay to Breakers 2018

Bay to Breakers 2018

Out of all the weird San Francisco traditions, the whole “let’s get drunk, dress up, and walk this race after the serious runners are done” one is one of my favorites. In the past, I have described the event to my friends as a city-wide Dillo Day. Continue reading...

Big Sur

Big Sur

Many months ago, when my brother Max was visiting, Rodolfo and Ciara told us they had gotten a reservation at a site in Big Sur in the spring, and invited us to go camping with them. We were excited to join in. More...

Land of Cleve

Land of Cleve

This year’s PyCon took me to Cleveland, OH. Unlike last year’s event in Portland, I was not too excited about the location at first, but I was pleasantly surprised. Continue reading...

New York City, 2018

New York City, 2018

When Max and Einat got married, we decided that instead of giving them a physical thing as a gift, we’d give them an experience that they could enjoy with us. This trip to NYC was it. Continue reading...

SF Cityscapes

SF Cityscapes

I have been making an effort to carry my camera with me whenever I take public transit to work in the morning. I usually bike, but a couple of weeks ago, my bike got stolen. The result? An upset Avy. The other result? More city photos from downtown San Francisco. More...

Q1 Hikes

Q1 Hikes

A collection from the last few months around the Bay Area.

Friends moving to SF, family members visiting, and great weather are all good excuses for day trips around here. More...

Los Angeles

Los Angeles

A couple of weeks ago we went to LA. The original plan was to go to the Grand Canyon, but it was going to be way too cold there for me to agree.

We had a lot of fun and ate great food, but overall, I’d say I didn’t like the city. It is way too spread out, and we spent roughly the same amount of time in traffic as out of it. After the fact, someone who was born and raised there told me that we should have just done one or two adjacent neighborhoods, instead of trying to hit Hollywood, Venice, Santa Monica and a couple of others all in a weekend. For me, that’s a deal breaker, but we’ll probably go back anyway. I still want to see the Getty, the Broad, and spend some time in Downtown LA, which we didn’t have the time to do this trip. Maybe we’ll pair that with a road trip down Highway 1, which is still on the to-do list. More...

Women's March, 2018

Women's March, 2018

It’s odd that large scale protests like the Woman’s March have become so mainstream. Sadly, I think they are more useful as cathartic exercises than as sources of political change, but I still think it is important to take part. When Hannah asked me if I wanted to join her and a few friends, I said yes right away.

Last year I was stuck at home without a visa, and could not attend. I’m happy I was there today, showing that I care. More...

Back to the Midwest

Back to the Midwest

We spent the holiday break with Hannah’s family in Indianapolis and Chicago, and got to see a bunch of friends while we were there, too. As expected, it was cold, and it was fun. More...

Tahoe, minus the skiing

Tahoe, minus the skiing

For months, Emily had been trying to make this trip happen. Lucky for us, she succeeded.

We had a great crew: Emily, Dakota, Casey, Dan, Zach, Hannah, and me. Somehow Casey and Dan ended up without making it into any of my photos. More...

December Begins

December Begins

December was a busy month. A lot of our friends hosted events, and it went by super fast.

Posting December begins on the 31st has its own kind of irony, I guess. More...

Puerto Viejo

Puerto Viejo

I was just in Costa Rica for my brother’s wedding. The trip was amazing, but somehow I only ended up taking photos when we went to the beach. It was my first time in the Caribbean side of the country, and we had a lot of fun. Continue reading...

San Francisco, Downtown

San Francisco, Downtown

Light can be instantaneous. You must be ready, and you must have the damn camera with you.

-Jay Maisel, Light Gesture And Color

I have been trying to take my camera with me more often when I go about my daily life. I usually bike to work, but when I take public transit instead, this is what happens: More...

Halloween 2017

Halloween 2017

This year for Halloween we went out in the Castro. It was a fun night, but to be honest the costumes were not as interesting or outrageous as I expected them to be.

I had planned to go to the Dia De Los Muertos event in the Mission a couple of days later, and post photos from both days in one set, but I messed up, and went to MoMa the day of instead, so you only get the Halloween photos. Sorry. More...

A long short month

A long short month

September flew by. Somehow I did not post a single article, or photo in the whole month. I got a lot of things done, but it still feels like it was an intellectually unproductive period.

On to the next one. More...

Fascism is bad

Fascism is bad

Not sure how we got to a point where the title of this post is not taken as a fact.

Over the last few weeks there was a lot of talk about neo-nazi and fascist sympathizers coming to San Francisco to stage a big rally. Knowing that the Bay Area is very left leaning, it is very likely that the goal of the event was to incite the locals, and to get some favorable sound bites on how there is “violence on both sides,” and such. The original protest was meant to be at Crissy Field and after getting some pressure it was demoted to a news conference in Alamo Square Park. The SFPD shut it down, closing the park and putting a big fence around it, so the Patriot Prayer people ended up doing their talk in Pacifica - a small town south of San Francisco.

At the same time, several counter-protests started around the city, and when I heard there was one coming down Mission Street, I knew I had to go photograph it.

One thing that stuck out to me about this protest was that it was really a ton of small protests all joined together: anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-gentrification, anti-Islamophobia, and more. More...

Eclipse

Eclipse

Yesterday morning, instead of going straight to the office, I grabbed my camera and took photos of the skygazers around SoMa. If you were trying to see the eclipse at 2nd street and Folsom, there’s a good chance I have a photo of you craning. More...

Outside Lands, again (again)

Outside Lands, again (again)

Outside Lands has become one of those San Francisco events that I look forward to all year for the opportunity to take portraits. Thousands of happy people pour into Golden Gate park for a weekend of music and fun. It is kind of crazy that this is my fourth time there.

Somehow, I took 1300 photos over the weekend, so curating and editing them was an impossible task. If you know I took your photo, and you can’t see it here, reach out and I’ll send you a copy.

You might have seen my 2015 and 2016 sets already, but if not, I definitely recommend it after you’re done with these! More...

Yosemite

Yosemite

After many months of planning our trip to Yosemite, it finally happened. Taylor and Zoë flew in for the weekend, and on Friday evening after work we took off. We picked up Amol in the East Bay, and kept going towards the Sierra. None of us had been there before, except for Hannah. More...

More Fatter + Sidewalk Chalk

More Fatter + Sidewalk Chalk More...

Pride '17

Pride '17

This year, my Pride weekend was very similar to last year’s. Saturday at Dolores, Sunday at the Civic Center Plaza. However, it was colder, and people seemed to be in a different mood. It was much tamer, and there were fewer naked weirdos, but there were other weirdos, like me, asking strangers for their portraits.

Sometimes, I am sad that these people will never see the photos I took of them. More...

Back in Chicago

Back in Chicago

There are always good reasons to keep going back to Chicago. This time, it was for Hannah’s cousin’s wedding. More...

Portlanding

Portlanding

This past week I got to travel to Portland for work, and took a couple of extra days to explore the city. I was attending a conference, PyCon, which took up most of my time, but I still got to travel quite a bit. For the nerds out there, here are some notes about my experience at the conference itself. Otherwise: Continue reading...

Carrizo Plain

Carrizo Plain

Although I hate road trips, I love traveling and seeing new places. It didn’t take much convincing after reading about the flower bloom in Southern California to get me excited about renting a car and heading down the highway for 5 hours to see it.

We clearly did not do things right, though. Between missing the fine print on the rental agreement, getting to the campsite after the welcome center had closed, and forgetting to get firewood ahead of time, we were pretty stressed on our ride there. Luckily, getting out of the city and camping in the wilderness has its way of soothing even the most restless of Avys. More...

April

April

For some reason, things have been quiet around here lately. I guess work has kept me busy, and I haven’t been too motivated to either take photos or share links on my blog. That’s how you get The Great Link Dump of April 2017.

I wish I had more to share of my day at the races, of my walks through the city, and of these black and white shots. Especially the black and white shots.

This post feels jumbled up. A collection of collections, thrown together due to lack of better options. I’d apologize, but its better than not posting, and I’m hoping it gets the ball rolling again. More...

Miscellanea

Miscellanea

Well, here’s a random set of stuff. Costa Rica, San Francisco, and México. More...

Surprise, you're in Costa Rica now!

Surprise, you're in Costa Rica now!

I had to arrange a last minute trip home to renew my visa in order to go to a different trip later this year. Now I am stuck here for a few days. Hopefully I won’t have enough time to do another set of Costa Rica photos, but who knows. More...

New Years in Chicago

New Years in Chicago

For the first time in several years, I did not go home to Costa Rica to celebrate the new year. Instead, we went to Chicago, and while we had packed expecting the polar vortex, the city welcomed us with warmth. So did our friends.

Oddly, this time around my photographs show way more of the city’s character than on my previous trip. Perhaps I’ve started to appreciate Chicago more, being away. More...

Trumped in SF

Trumped in SF

It has been a crazy few months. Yesterday and today were rough days. Continue reading...

Día De Los Muertos

Día De Los Muertos

Living in San Francisco means having a wealth of cultural events to enjoy. Due to the large Latin population, the Día De Los Muertos celebration in The Mission was one I didn’t want to miss. Since most people in Costa Rica don’t celebrate the holiday, the traditions were unfamiliar to me, and it was surprising to see how openly people honor their loved ones.

I went with the intention to stay for ten minutes, and ended up walking around for almost two hours. More...

Napa

Napa

Hannah’s grandma was in town this weekend and we drove up to Napa. The art, the wine, the landscapes, and the food, were all wonderful. We enjoyed our time there. More...

NYC

NYC

I spent this past weekend in New York. Each time I have visited the city, I have come back with more respect for it. I’d love to have more time to explore it in the future. More...

A collection

A collection

A collection of photos from the past couple of months. The first few I took for my photo class, but I never shared here, while the later ones are mostly tests of my new lens. Still getting used to it. More...

Weekend in Tahoe

Weekend in Tahoe

We went to Lake Tahoe. It was fun. More...

Up in the Redwoods

Up in the Redwoods

For my birthday, Hannah bought us a tent and a couple of sleeping bags. This past weekend we got to use them for the first time at Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It was a lot of fun.

In honor of the occasion, and because I am slowly contracting gear acquisition syndrome, I got myself a new 50mm f/1.4. The blur quality is amazing, but I am still not used to the focal length. Below is a mix of photos taken with that one, and the 24mm. More...

Outside Lands, take two

Outside Lands, take two

Well, “take two” isn’t really fair. I’ve actually been to the festival three times. I hope you’ll see a jump in quality from last year’s.

Pretty crazy how people are willing to be photographed due to the air of professionalism of a DSLR in ways that a smartphone camera wouldn’t allow. As I asked people to take their photos, they would constantly ask things like “Where will these be published?” or “What site are you taking the photos for?” and were oddly surprised when I told them it was for a personal blog. The camera is both a bridge and a barrier.

If you came looking for a specific photo, and it isn’t here, reach out and I’ll happily send it your way. 600 was a lot to post at once. More...

The Last Two Weeks

The Last Two Weeks

Summer in San Francisco is great. On most days, the city gets cold and foggy, so it is better to stay inside. Luckily, an hour or two away there are endless warm options to get away to. I definitely took advantage of it these past weeks. More...

Pride '16

Pride '16

It is amazing to live in a city like San Francisco, where people can be whoever they want to be, without worrying about what others think. It is sad that something that simple can set this city apart from the rest.

Our identities shape our lives. Might as well pick the ones that make us happy.

Be proud of who you are, whatever that may be. More...

Here and There

Here and There

It has been a while since my last post, so here is some random stuff from the last month and a half around San Francisco. More...

Back to Chicago

Back to Chicago

After four years living in Evanston, and a year away, returning to Chicago was strange. Very strange. I am sad that I didn’t take more photos of the city, with its architecture and its urban landscapes, but I am glad that the reason why I did not do it was that I had too many people to see. More...

Sausalito

Sausalito

One of my friends had a birthday party in Sausalito this past weekend, so we took the ferry and enjoyed the sun. You’ll find lots of blue in the pictures below. More...

More Mission

More Mission More...

SF Weekends

SF Weekends

Two weekends, one post. Mostly shot with my new 24mm 2.8f lens :) More...

Noe + Dolores

Noe + Dolores

I have been thinking of buying a new 24mm lens, so this weekend I challenged myself to only take pictures with that focal distance. Not zooming is hard, especially when taking photos of strangers you don’t want to get too close to. Here is the outcome: More...

A walk through The Mission

A walk through The Mission

Today we walked from Hannah’s apartment to Potrero Hill. More...

Hikes

Hikes

An old collection of walks around Muir Woods, Mt. Tamalpais and Alcatraz. More...

Glen Canyon

Glen Canyon

As you know, I am reading Gary Kamiya’s Cool City of Gray Love, which talks about all sorts of amazing places in the city. One of the first few he describes, in chapter 6, was Glen Canyon:

… not only the most peculiar geographical anomaly in San Francisco -a concave feature in a convex city- it is also the least known. In any other city, a deep, wild, rocky canyon with a creek flowing through it, in almost the exact geographical center of town, would be celebrated far and wide. But even most San Franciscans have never set foot in Glen Canyon. In a city of Mystery Hills, it is the Mystery Gorge. Glen Canyon is literally a tear in the city’s fabric.

-Gary Kamiya, Cool City of Gray Love

I am happy to say, I have set foot in it. More...

Outside Lands

Outside Lands

My second visit to the music festival. It did not disappoint. More...

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