Have a wonderful week…and go take a pic of your kid(s)/car(s)/hot shoes!

Photog at the Pool
Taking some shots of the kids in the pool was a fantastic lesson on how different aperture can impact how water droplets look in the shot.  When I shot with a wide open apterture at F1.4, the water droplets looked more true to what the human eye sees.  When I closed down to an F10, the water droplets looked more like firework sparks.  Nerd tech talk (feel free to skip down):  I shot these with the Canon 50mm 1.4 on a crop sensor Canon T2i, which has proven to be a challenge lately.  I’m so in love with shooting with the 30mm lens that I don’t give Mr. 50 any love.  Shooting with the 50mm is forcing me to learn as if I was shooting full frame with a 78mm lens.  Its cool!

Anyway, when I said photographing at the pool, you probably didn’t think it was going to look like this one!  Here are some shots of Elise & one of her best buds, Ethan.  Or in Japanese, here are some shots of Harumi & Hiroshi <3.  The mixed up asian kids of the future.  Harumi: 1/4 Scottish, 1/4 Japanese, 1/2 Chinese.  Hiroshi: 1/2 Japanese 1/2 Filipino.  Mixed unite!

Walking the streets of Little Tokyo made me realize we don’t visit enough.  We send our daughter to Japanese school, yet seldom take her to Little Tokyo!  We’re Japanese at heart…its all coming back to me now.

Here are some pics of the HSUFAM in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles:

Up next, the new domain name for my growing photography portfolio.

One of the 1st shots of the happy couple…good job Handicapped sign!!

Elise & Kristy came with us!  Good thing they’re iPad fanatics!

Quail Hill is right near the freeway and buildings and powerlines…Marc positioning to leave all that out of the shot

This time of the year we’re learning there are plenty of snakes…even on trail.  To the right as we see the snake, we hear the bushes wrestling.  I run over a see literally a dozen wild brown bunnies prancing around.  It was a beautiful taste of nature…

our assistant Benson.  Thank you honey for lugging around that big reflector and all our lenses.  <3

The view behind Marc.  Amongst the field of flowers…

You would never know from the shots we selected from the shoot, but the cowboy is really not-so-serious.

Paper Diva Shoot
Today I’ll be attempting the shoot the invitations I’ve been working on.  Since the invite’s main color is ebony, its been a challenge deciding the right surface to shoot on.  Stay tuned.  Have a fab 4th!

I haven’t been shooting as much as I’ve been wanting to lately.  So I made up for it at Big Bear.  Here are some of my fav pics from the restful weekend:

(L) My daughter & my godson…bff’s; (R) Marc getting some footage

Chef B, BBQing on the patio, overlooking Big Bear Lake

Sunset after dinner…the view from the cabin’s dock

the best pic of the weekend, taken by my daughter Kristy.  She has the eye.

the first mate doing work on the lake!

what if every Sunday afternoon was like this?

BFF, life is so simple

Addiction
I work at a start-up incubator.  I’m surrounded by the latest and greatest stuff.  Emails are passed around the office with links to the latest and greatest on the internet.  I clicked the link and was instantly hooked.  The website is called turntable.fm.  Think of it as a new version of those AOL chatrooms, you know, like the “import racing” room except its by Music genre.  People gather and take turns playing songs.  You accumulate points when people thumbs up your songs.  The points accumulated are for bragging rights/cool avatars.  Its a beta version, so beware of bugs, but for the most part, its a fun, addicting, site to hang out in, esp with friends.

Photog V2
A new lens came in the mail for me.  I’ve been testing it out and enjoying every moment.  Hope to get some shots up soon.  Stay tuned!

Enjoy your week…make it simple!

Benson named this stray “Gary Busey.”  He likes to come and visit our outdoor cat Vera Wang.  He is TORE up.

As we prepare for summer break, we’re touring preschools for Elise and college prep courses for Kristy.

Another  advantage I have over the guys…I shop at craft stores with hot duct tape!

my daughter Kristy helped design my new sticker scheme…its multi-functional design ensures my bumper doesn’t fall apart!

(taken with my iPhone) the DriftQueen runs for the 1st time, in…2 years.  She starts on the 1st try with no problems.

I’ll see you after the car’s brakes are bled!

The lens is a Tamron 28-75 2.8, which so far has proven to be quite versatile.  I photograph mainly to capture my kiddies growing up, so it looks as if this could be one of the only lenses I will need.  I may want another in the future, but this is going to hold me over for a long time.  The lens is super fast and has made it easy to shoot tight portraits (with blurring the background) as well as wide landscape shots and everything in the middle.

500 shots in, here are some of the results:

As I work my full-time accounting job, run Drifting Pretty, be a mommy to my gals, be a wife, enjoy my hobbies, help take care of both my grandmas who are having health issues and somehow find time to write blogs and brush my teeth…I realize time is so scarce and so valuable.  Its been so difficult choosing what to spend my time on.  Right now its everything!  I think something has to give.  It certainly won’t be easy.  Maybe I’ll just stop brushing my teeth or doing laundry?!

One of the loves in my life…Drifting Pretty kicked off its 8th year of operation this past weekend.  Its truly amazing.   Tons of gals rumbling in with their noisy cars,  running around my culdesac screaming, laughing, flipping photos while carrying textbooks on car racing…all joining together for a good cause: learning how to race.  Its a pretty magical sight!  Congratulations to our 2011 students.  Can’t wait to race with you this year!!!

She Drifts Again…
I finally have plans to take my 240 back to the drift track.  Oh how I have missed you pink drift car.  As I slated up the 2011 Drifting Pretty schedule, I committed to driving a drift event with the DP gals.  My deadline will be May 1st to get the car back to working condition.  There aren’t major problems with the car, just faulty intercooler pipes that I warped when I drove last and ran over my own front bumper.   I’m going to have Elton @ Raceline fab me some new piping.  The only challenge is to get my car there…she has no tags or intercooler pipes.  So she needs to be towed.

After that, I need to work on the brakes.  I’m hosting a Drifting Pretty tech day to finally put on some StopTech brakes and Z32 rear calipers.  That feeling of having brand new parts sitting around un-installed is depressing!  I hope I can do that job in a day.  I also got a beautiful new Veilside hood (thank you to Benson, I love you :), so I need to install the hoodpins for that.  And I need a new battery and a fluid change and I ::hope:: that is all I’ll need to be ready for the track.  That’s all?!  Wow that list sure got long.   Here we go!!!

Photog
All the time I usually spend blogging has been dedicated to my new hobby of photography.  Benson & my friends got together and got me an SLR for my birthday last October.  I got a Canon T2i.  Friends have been so generous to lend me all sorts of lenses.  6,000 shots in, I’m possibly getting the hang of it!  This weekend when it was about to rain, I took Elise out for a quick Birthday photo shoot in the backyard with a borrowed 50mm 1.4 lens.   There is this beautiful magnolia tree in my backyard just covered in flowers!!!  Talk about photo opp.

Elise turns 3 later this month.  There are a few more fantastic photos, but you’ll see those if you’re lucky enough to be on her guestlist haha.

Happy Girl Scout cookie month and Happy Chinese New Year this Saturday.

See you soon!

Happy 4 year anniversary Benson

Our cars married each other too.  Happy Anniversary Cars