Anh & Uh's Wedding Album

Lately, I gave myself another small project. I've been gathering my thoughts in trying to update the look/feel of my homepage, so I'm still working on putting all of that together. I'm learning as I go, from Dreamweaver to Illustrator, to recently some Fireworks! I have wonderful help from people surrounding me, giving me tips and tutorials, so I'm a very lucky lady and appreciate everyone of them! In the meantime, bare with me. I know my homepage needs a makeover!
With that update, a couple of months ago, I wanted to sample a new type of album that came out and I received the book some weeks ago. I do oh so love it. Here are some of its features:
1) It's coffee-table type of book
2) Lays flat when open
3) Panoramic full spread binding (no cuts in the middle!!!)
4) Prints on photographic paper (not magazine type of prints)
5) Holds up to 100 pages
6) Comes in Leather, Faux Fabric, Faux Carbon Fiber
7) Quality is GREAT!!
7) Did I mention an amazing turn-around time? means you'll have your book in no time!

I am adding it on to my collection of books and excited to make it available to my future clients. I'll have some pictures taken of the album and share in the updated website. For now, I'll share with you some pages of Anh&Uh's wedding photos that I used for that book (from this blog post). Hope you Enjoy!



Ref: our blog for more photos

Long & Anh's Wedding cont.

A lot has been going on, one of which is the fact that our computer has been cleaned up to get ready for 2009! It was a tough decision between spending days wiping out everything or buying a brand new computer just for my own use - and that MAC PRO desktop was looking awfully good on that shelf). So all of the credit went to TT for his extra determination. He had spent days transferring files out of our computer, uninstalling, re-installing all of the programs, the whole way!! I can't imagine myself doing that because I'm one of those who likes to keep EVERYTHING. So I'm glad he was the stronger one to remove 'my' rarely used files, even some of my older .psd files that I still kept which took an unbelievable amount of space. I'll just have to bite it. I'm also trying to learn to maintain a clean working space. Which means I only keep the files that I'm currently working on in the hard-drive, and everything else off and out to external drives. I needed my computer to run as fast as I can. A new year, a new computer space!!! Let's see how well I can maintain this!

Here are a few album spreads of Long & Anh's Wedding (which came from external drives..woohooo for that)! Hope you enjoy!











ref: our blog for more photos

Đêm Nhạc Thiền - Tôi Đang Lắng Nghe

Happy New Year to all! I've been taking some time off to relax, rest and believe it or not, I dived into a couple of hongkong movie series that for so long I've tried to stay away from. I really enjoyed that mini break. Those of you who has watched those movies before, they are on your list of #1 addiction enemy, so try to stay away. Now back to photo work!

We started our New Year with a meditation session with Thay Minh Niem. It's been so long I haven't been to the sessions and it felt like home to come back to listen to his lecture with old and new faces. This meditation session had a twist for something different, it was formulated through a theme of musical lyrics interpretation. Đêm Nhạc Thiền với tựa đề, "Tôi Đang Lắng Nghe" - translated Meditate via Musical Lyrics to achieve the state of "Listening Deeply."

One of the greatest Vietnamese composer, musician, painter and singer-songwriter was Trinh Cong Son. Our teacher has chosen his songs, and lyrics to elaborate and study for this evening. With songs such as, "Mỗi Ngày Tôi Chọn Một Niềm Vui" (I seek one happiness each day), to "Tôi Ơi, Đừng Tuyệt Vọng" (Oh Dear I shall not lose hope), etc. All of these songs remind us of the fact that if we can Feel and see then we are living in the presence. Yet, we must not allow our sight to overpower our listening, because simply seeing will cause us to overlook the deep meaning.

How many times do we try to listen to others? It may not sound too surprising since I think we more likely find in ourselves a greater inability to listen. How many times have we mis-communicated simply because we didn't listen carefully? How many times have we judged a person before we actually engaged in a conversation and afterward found ourselves living with wrong perceptions and interpretations toward the person. Listening is an art and by practicing it, we will help people release their worries, fear, and misery.

So next time when you feel you are not being heard, patiently ask, "Have you listened to me deeply?"

This session was the first to be held at a place where our Cherry Blossom sangha friends greatly contributed their time and effort to renovate and have it turned to the center to hold more sessions to come.

Here are some photos of Thiền Đường Tĩnh Lặng, translated as "Still Meditation Hall".


Everyone had complimented the way everything is laid out, the color coordination, the paint color on the wall, together bring the mood we should achieve. Every little details was put together by Thay and the sangha. Notice the photo and the writing on the wall:





Entertainment group who sang the songs we studied on:



There was even a skit that's related to our studies:

A group photos of those who stayed for a post-event discussion session:


There is another event to celebrate the Lunar New Year so please contact us for details if you're interested.
Ref: Our Blog for more photos

Long & Anh's Wedding

Congratulations to Tuan and Anh!
A sneak peek at their wedding in the winter weather:



Ref: Our Blog for more photos

Cousinly Love

I've been totally missing for the past couple of weeks. And listen to this lame excuse...that's because I've misplaced my eyeglasses! So once I take out my contacts in the evening, I didn't want to put them back on for computer work ...so...now after 2 weeks, I have finally found the glasses. I was taking out kids' toys from under the sofa and found something that looked like my glasses, so yay! Anyways, let me do some catch up here:

Last month, my niece turned sweet 4, and had some portraits taken at our studio.

These are some of the album photo pages of my adorable niece who has such a soft-spoken voice (just like her mom's) that I wish my bbgirl could learn.

My niece and my bbgirl were playing dress up and found a halloween costume in bbgirl's closet that was too long for her but fitted my niece perfectly. My niece insisted on wearing that as her second change of outfit. And being a kid, she softly asked if she could borrow and take the dress home. Of course I couldn't say no to that! (when she outgrows it, she can pass it back to bbgirl ;)


While taking her photos, our little boy jumped in during my niece's switch of outfits time. Here he is, my little boy doing his own thing by himself and insisted TT to take his pictures:




I want to remember this: when bboy found I was going through these pictures, he pointed at himself on the monitor and identified which ones he was happy in and which ones he was sad in. My little boy is all grown up!

And of course, I can't possibly leave bbgirl out from the cousinly love:


Ref: Our blog for more photos