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We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium this past weekend with Jeff’s cousin Andrew and his girlfriend Teresa from LA. We shot many weddings in Monterey Bay last year but haven’t  been to the aquarium for a while.  I was shocked when I saw the ticket price for adult cost $29.95.  I seriously thought I only paid $19.95 few years ago.

The aquarium was packed with people due to the yucky weather and the MLK holiday. I have been wanting to improve my swimming skills and certify for scuba diving in the near future.

After shooting around the aquarium, I would love to shoot a wedding here or at the Academy of Science or any aquarium.  There are some really unique shots to be had.

yellow tang

Dorie!!!

Moon Jelly

Egg-yolk Jelly

Lobed Comb Jelly

Sea Nettled Jelly

Crystal Jelly

Weedy Sea Dragon

Leafy Sea Dragon

Cuttlefish. I have eaten a lot of these guys and never knew what they looked like

Once we left Chengdu we were headed back to Hong Kong for a few days of rest and relaxation. Or probably more appropriately eating and shopping. There was some drama though before we left Chengdu since our plane had to sit on the tarmac for almost 2 hours due to a backup in flights leaving/arriving due to the poor visibility due to pollution. I was really happy to be back in Hong Kong with my cousin and her family.

Over the last few days in Hong Kong I did more than enough shopping with my cousin and her friends. Jeff got to sample a lot of different types of food that he never had before. One day my cousin Mabel took us to a Noah’s Ark theme park. Interesting but it definitely was not Disneyland. We gave up on part of the tour since it was taking forever to move from one section of the ark to another.

One of the best meals was at a seafood restaurant near my cousin’s place. Within about 10 minutes walk, we reached the restaurant and the cool thing was that you buy your seafood from vendors across the street from the restaurant and take it to the restaurant for them to cook it up. A whole bunch of different types of seafood that we don’t have here in the US and some really great flavors.

Alas we had to finish up our trip and made our departure towards the airport. Jeff was mad at the Hong Kong Airport since they had a second security inspection right after you hand over your boarding pass to board the plane. They confiscated his bottle of water that he just bought. Bummer.

Noah’s Ark 1:1 replica

Jeff loves sushi

my daddy

my aunt and cousin Mabel

I noticed there were a lot of black pepper sized ‘dots’ by my tomato plants. I had no idea what those were until Jeff told me those looked like caterpillar poop. I did not see any caterpillars on the plants until Jeff screamed right next to my ear (although he never admitted that he screamed..), then without knowing what was going on, I screamed out loud as well. Yes, he kindda freaked me out.

We found 3-4 these cool looking caterpillars on my tomato plants. The basil and the parley were unharmed since the caterpillars were not interested in those. Later we found out the caterpillars are called ‘tomato hornworm‘, which is a typical pest found on tomato plants. I quickly grabbed my camera and took few shots of this gigantic caterpillar.

Unfortunately Jeff thought it was not a good idea to keep them on the tomato plant as ‘pets’, so he threw them into our pond to feed the fish….

I was honored to attend one of the SEO and marketing workshop hosted by Lawrence Chan from Tofurious last Monday. He’s a super cool guy who’s also a Bruin (Go UCLA!). It was a very informative workshop about how to optimize search engines like Google and Yahoo, and I have been very busy trying to update all of my previous blog posts since the workshop. If you are a photographer but don’t know how to optimize your blog for search engine, you must take one of the SEO workshops from Lawrence.

San Francisco workshop attendees:

The Memory Journalists – wedding photography led by Jennifer Dunham Starr based in Folsom, CA
Tiffany Fosnight – Adeline and Grace are wedding and boudoir rockstars in Napa Valley
Marin Kristine – Bay Area boudoir and wedding photographer
{ WLQ } Photography – San Francisco based engagement and wedding photographer
Rebeca Wilkowski Photography – SF and Bay Area Green photojournalist
Jessie Cho Photography – SF and Bay Area wedding photojournalist (myself!)
Dave Shilling Photography – a tall white guy from Sacramento who shoots rad pictures
Lori Paladino Photography – SF and Bay Area wedding and lifestyle photographer
Jerry Yoon Photography – San Francisco wedding photographer woot
Kirstie Tweed – wedding and portrait photographer based in Banff, Canada

Chicago Workshop attendees:

Otto Rascon Photography – part graphic designer / part photographer – it will be the perfect marriage of art and photography
Kenny Kim – life style wedding photographer
Bob and Dawn Davis – celebrity wedding photographer
Kara – Chi-town wedding and boudoir photographer
Ray Pryor – Emotia photography
Jules Wiegand – quirky Louisville photographer
Jay Crihfield – Chicago wedding photographer who rocks Navy Pier
Kenny Nakai – once a teacher, now a rockin’ historian
Eclipse Photography – Toronto awesomeness
Molly Michel – a girl who titles her blog posts, “Wow” because it is expressive of her fun personality
Dan Georgia – a photographer who captures the one’s uniqueness