Aloha!
First blog post in 2020! I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday time with your loved ones :) I have just returned from a month long travel in Japan - I am looking forward to having another awesome year ahead.
In 2019, I have had 118 photo shoots in 7 countries/18 cities, and 7 photo lessons in Hawaii, NYC and Japan. Most of my shoots were on wedding days and engagement sessions, but also had surprise proposals in Hawaii and Paris, Maternities and Family sessions, Headshot and other business shoots as well. It was definitely a fun year with meeting lots of new and familiar faces, and I have learned a lot about life/love stories from each shoot. 2019 was also my first year for offering photo lessons for people who wanted to learn and grow as hobby or professional photographers, and I definitely enjoyed sharing my knowledge, so I would like to keep offering classes as requested. Here are some of my favorite shots from 2019.
Some of my highlights of 2019 are that I have seen beautiful places before/during/after the photo shoots especially when I was out on business trips. The countries I shot in 2019 includes: United States (Oahu, Kauai, NYC, California), Japan (Tokyo, Hyogo, Nara, Okinawa, Kyoto, Shizuoka), Hong Kong, France (Paris & Nancy), Maldives, Spain (Barcelona & Madrid) and Jamaica. My top 3 favorite places I visited last year were Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia after the elopement shoot in Maldives with Ayano & Ryota, Death Valley National Park after the honeymoon shoot with Kei and Kenichi in Palm Springs, and Montego Bay and near by cities in Jamaica after Allison and Mark’s wedding shoot.
Kuala Lumpur was such a short layover for only about 12 hours. As soon as I arrived at the airport, I picked up a rental car and a highway prepaid card, I visited as many mosques as possible. I have an obsession with Islamic culture and designs since I first visited Morocco and Qatar, so I was very glad I could visit a few mosques there including Federal Territory Mosque, Masjid Jamek Mosque, Purta Mosque and Blue Mosque. Out of where I visited, I really liked the Federal Territory Mosque because I get to choose which gown I could wear, and I could walk around fairly freely within the property. Also across this mosque, there was a local food market, and I enjoyed delicious food with local people.
I’ve only been to handful national parks in the United States; however, I’d say Death Valley National Park is my top favorite as of now. For this California shoot, I flew to Palm Springs and decided to fly back from Las Vegas instead of getting a round trip tickets. Even though my first 2 years in US was in Arizona, I couldn’t get explore around because I didn’t have a car, time or money. I wanted to utilize my chance to be there to make a one-day trip to Death Valley. I departed Big Bear after lunch with my ex-co-worker Kyle, drove amazing dry land in California, then I arrived at a parking lot of the sand dune of Death Valley around 10pm. After a short nap, the starry sky woke me up in the middle of the night. I took out my camera, and set it on the parking lot with anything I could use to make the perfect angle, and snapped a few night sky photos with the Milky Way. After an hour or two, I took another nap and the light of the dawn woke me up. It was completely peaceful to view the sunrise there. As the sun rose, I started to walk to the sand dune, just to take a peak - then walked further and further to the point I don’t see others’ foot prints anymore. My little morning walk on the desert ended up over a few hours. I was juts mesmerized by the breathtaking view. The wind was blowing softly to touch my skin, the dry sound each step makes as I go up the hills - chilly morning quickly changed to hot sunny morning. The rest of the park was also amazing but my favorite was absolutely Mesquite Flat Sand Dune.
Lastly, Jamaica. I was lucky to be able to shoot one of the last weddings of the year in Montego Bay with a trusted videographer team Inspired Films Hawaii. We go to drive to Ocho Rios to check out Dunn’s River and Blue Hole together, but on the other day, my teammates were tired and sick, so I drove myself to the south near Negril by myself. Since I didn’t have a SIM card in Jamaica, I didn’t have any connection while I was driving - but luckily I managed to visit another Blue Hole on the south west of the island. It was just like Cenotes I saw in Mexico and Samoa but smaller and just with local people. They were very welcoming and kind, and one of the guy Rico showed me around the property and told me stories about his Jamaican life. I feel very fortunate when I get to meet genuinely nice people like him and share their time to to cherish moments like this.
Rico offered to take a photo of me with my cell phone. Amazing view to conclude my travels in 2019.
Through my photography job, I have been learning a lot about life, love, relationship and the world - my clients are kindly sharing their background stories, life stories, and their important moments in their lives. By hearing those stories and capturing those moments, I feel like every day I am growing as a person and learning so much about myself. I hope I will continue learning more in the future and I am very excited for the year 2020. People who I met in the past, hopefully I get to see you again in the near future, and people who I haven’t met yet, I am excited to learn about your life stories. Thank you very much for all the support and love, and let’s preserve our histories in the form of photography.
Thank you all.
Kay