Archive for December, 2006

I’m looking to sell some of my equipment before I upgrade. I wanted to give my xanga readers a chance to pick some of these things up before I post them online for sale. I will have this up for 3 days and after that, it will go up on ebay/fredmiranda.

Friday night our small group got together for the last time to exchange gifts that were bought from Wal-Mart. The rule was to spend no more than $5 and had to be as creative as possible. The event turned out to be a successful one.

Forget spending 5 bucks. Dave and I had better idea… J/K.

Anna trying her best to finish shopping on time

Eunice is very secretive about her gift

Waiting anxiously to go to my place to open the gift

Ed is waiting impatiently to open his gift

Anna looks like a recovering cancer patient

Andrew is ready to get started…

Dave, our official small group masseuse, trying to relax Chris

Eunice got her princess wand…and she’s happy

I have no idea why I’m holding Karen’s head

Mike is shocked by his gift. Pearl got him a bottle of whole milk (Apparently Mike thinks whole milk is gross)

But he’s a good sport about it and takes few sips

Sungsoo: “Thank God I didn’t have to drink that milk”

The three elves sporting red green and white – the colors of christmas
   

Let’s get this party started!
   

sungsoo is now a ninja warrior
   

I have no idea what Anna is doing. Just looks very journalistic

I got candles!

David and his big feet (they got this for him b/c he’s the baby of our small group)

Best part of the night – Pearl receiving her gift. At first she’s really excited b/c she got coffee – something she LOVES!

Wait, what’s this? Oh no…

Anna cleverly got her an onion. See, if you don’t know Pearl, she despises onions just like a vampire hates garlic. But since she’ s a freshmen, we made her bite into it and keep it in her mouth as long as Mike kept on drinking his whole milk.

Never saw someone in so much pain!

Anna has no pity

Anna is congratulated by everyone for her brilliant idea

We can all be a winner at the game of LIFE!

Andrew is really excited about his stack of AOL Platinum CDs

Jess didn’t like her gift at first but after they explained what it meant, she really liked it

Lauren is happy that she got a plastic bag as her present

This is what I call Care Package Gone Wild – Thanks Karen & Chris!

In the end, everyone’s happy!

Sungsoo couldn’t wait. He busted out his ninja gift and started playing with it.

It was the most popular gift! Everyone wanted to play with it.

Finally Mike and I sporting Dee Brown’s shorts. Go Illini!

Do well on your exams and have a good break!

(Scroll down to bottom for edits)

Hello everyone. I’m out in LA California avoiding the freezing cold weather in Chicago. I’ve been hanging out with the Teter family and just enjoying the west coast culture and lifestyle. Just wanted to quickly to a recap of my trip so far.

Here’s a photo of the Teter family. Thanks for the great hospitality!

Got to check out the Lakers game – the luxury suite style.

If you look carefully, you can see Jack Nicholson

Yesterday I attended a one day seminar hosted by Becker. This was such a great experience as I learned a great deal about wedding photography from one of the nation’s best. He opened his house as well as his knowledge for photography. We got to spend the entire day going over pricing, marketing, shooting, photoshop tricks, work flow – the whole nine yards. I’m excited and pumped to implement some things I learned in to my business and also to share with you guys.

If you guys are serious about wedding photography, you should attend this seminar. Click here for more info. Here are some photos from the day

Here’s Becker going over samples of his work at his decked out studio (first two photos courtesy of Becker):

Then he treated us to lunch at Claim Jumper (huge portions!)

We also got to shoot a great looking couple (former client of Becker) out on Laguna Beach. They had their baby with them so we got to shoot some couple poses as well as some family photos. It was a gorgeous day outside and the beach was beautiful as the sunset behind us. Here are some of my shots. Go check out Becker’s shots on his blog.

Becker also promised us that he would use our photos if we took a good shot of him. So here’s a couple of him in action:

Then I quickly took couple shots of this awesome beach.

EDIT:
So I was able to weave through the LA traffic to find my way to Robert Evan’s Studio. There was an annual pizza party hosted there by Leather Craftsman (an album company) so I dropped by to meet and hopefully networkwith some other photographers. Fortunately i ran into some familar faces. Here’s a photo I took with Becker. He was a friendly guy going around talking and taking pictures with everyone. I managed to grab him for a second for a quick shot. The girl on the left – her name is Ellice Schwartz – another great photographer:

Here’s couple of shots from Robert’s studio:

And after shaking many unfamilar hands, I finally ran into the guys that owned the studio. L to R – Aaron, Me, and Robert Evans.

I had to ask them the question b/c the Inquirer minds wanted to know. And yes, it is true – They DID shoot Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston and Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes’ wedding. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to talk to them about it but he was really nice and cool and told me all the details. He was really humble about it also.

Any ways, tonight I get to check out John Teter’s college ministry before I had back home tomomorrow. Stay warm everyone!

This weekend was fun. We had the usual of cfc lock-in (for photos, go see danleedotcom, wayne, alex, well u know the usual suspects, etc.) Then I also got to spend lot of time getting together with old friends. Lot of my boys and girl (one chose to tag along his wife – does this violate the “man-law?”) trekked through the freezing weather to play in the AAA basketball tournament in the “comeback one more time” tour. Spending time with them was fun reminiscing about the good old days, etc. The tournament was not so fun. We were just like last year’s bears team – where we started out well but couldn’t finish well. We went 6-0 before losing to the same team that we beat in round robin. (They say experience is always better than youth, but if you give it enough time, youth will eventually catch up to you.)

Even though we played in the tournament, most of our time was spent doing some of this:

(I highly recommend this next time you go to the mall)

plenty of this:

And alot of this: (few whiff of this will clear up any sinus congestion)

I want to hang up the curtain and just relive the glory days of winning these tourneys instead of trying to create new ones. But our guys are like Rocky Balboa – they still want to win just ONE MORE TIME. So until next semester, be safe and stay injury-free. Team Old School (or Icy Hot) peace out!