2022

San Francisco, CA

This photo was created using a method known as Tracked Stacked & Blended. 15 frames of 90-second exposures were stacked with a foreground to create this image.

Feb 2017. Yosemite, CA.

For 1 week of the year, the sunset in the valley lines up with horseshoe fall and creates an optical illusion of lava flow. Make sure to get your parking permits....

2018. Big Sur, CA.

Midnight trip to Big Sur to see the glowing bioluminescence. As each wave crashed onto the beach, the water would become agitated and cause these tiny phytoplankton called dinoflagellates to emit a beautiful blue glow.

2020-2022

Astrophotography from the back yard during Covid. Each image is composed of between 6-16 hrs hours of stacked exposures.

Lightning electrifying the Golden Gate Bridge. Back Story: Having slept through the crazy storm the night before, I set my alarm for 3 am hoping for a round 2. Checked the radar maps; saw a storm coming. Drove as fast as I could to a location looking roughly that direction. I was about to lose hope thinking I either missed it or it didn't make landfall. Then, it suddenly rained, and then BAM, BAM! 2 strikes within a 30-second window! I lost my mind! This storm was the cause of 500+ wildfires around California in 2020. I was lucky to capture a more beautiful side of it.

Prints available.

2022

Alberta, California, & Nevada

Milky Way images were created using the Track Stack Blend method.

How chasing #Neowise has helped me rediscover my passion for photography in the #BayArea during COVID-19.

Fall colors in Eastern California.

2018. Southern England, UK.

A short visit to Eastbourne and Dover.

Attempts at taking the iconic Wanaka Tree photo.

When one uses the word dilapidated, you don't often hear it used in the context of "Beautifully Dilapidated." Habana, Cuba is that one such city. For 18 hrs, I got to experience and learn about this city, its history, its people and its architecture. While I was amazed at the use of pastel colors in almost all aspects such as cars, building paint, and clothing, I was more surprised by the level of preservation and adaptive reuse of the buildings. Since the 1960's, the Embargo has limited the development of the city. With no money and no way to import high-end materials, the city is composed of patchworks, mixtures of old and new, all working, and beautifully mismatched.

2017. Yosemite, CA.

Early morning fog in the valley.

2018. The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, CA.

2016. Maui, Hawaii.

Walking above the clouds, swimming below the shores and looking beyond the sky.

2014. San Francisco, CA.

San Francisco is gorgeous, but beyond that, it is even more gorgeous with low fog during Sunrise.  Everyone needs to see this in person once in their life. It’s one of the most gorgeous thing in the world. 

Here’s a timelapse too…. visit my Vimeo to watch in HD for fine details

I took it a few months ago and have been way too busy to upload this. Apparently Im more active on facebook than I am on my own website.

The diverse landscapes of South New Zealand

2015. Jökulsárlón, Iceland.

2013. New York City, NY.

A love letter to New York City

2015. Iceland: Monumental Scales

If there is one way to describe Iceland, it would be “Monumental Scale.” The country really boarders on the extremes. The entire country has a population of 320,137 (as of 2012), which is less than 1/2 of Boston’s and 2/3 of them live in their capital City – Reykjavik .

It’s north of NYC by almost all of Canada but it is warmer by about 10 degrees in the winter. 85% of the countries is on Renewable energy (Volcanic and Water) as compared to the 13.2% for the US. It exist at the intersection between the European and American Tectonic plates

This trip has been eye opening for me. In the 4 days I was in Iceland, we manage to do the Golden Circle, drive from Reykjavik to Jokulsarlon Lagoon (East coast) and back, climb into a glacier cave and see the Aurora. During this entire trip, I felt very very very small in the vast nature. I was often times the only person on the road, or next to 80 foot waterfall. The Glaciers were large enough to have caves in them and they were size of cathedrals!

2018. Asiana Art Museum, San Francisco, CA.

Installation Art make of numbers and characters by Liu Jian Hua.

2015. Los Angels, CA.

Angel Wings Mural on top of the US Bank by Colette Miller.

2015. Reykjavík, Iceland.

HARPA is a very pricey building in Reykjavík, Iceland. @ 200 Million Euros, it has some of Europe most innovative design and spaces. I’m not going to talk too much about it, everything can be found on wikipedia….

But what did strike me beyond the facades were the flexibility of the performance space. Almost all of the spaces were able to suited for more than one type of concert. There’s a performance room that was able to split into 2 in such a way that a mediation can be in one room while a rock concert is in another. Truly amazing.

Another thing is the atrium. It’s so grand and snaky, you can see all the way from the parking level all the way to the top.

Lastly, when the economy crashed in Iceland, the government stepped in and help financed this building. If only the US had such great support for good design.

2018. San Francisco, CA.

A year long project documenting a 1 second video of every day.

2013. Venice, Italy.

Negozio Olivetti is probably one of the smallest yet elegant museum I’ve ever Visited

From Wiki Italia :

“The Olivetti Showroom in Venice is a small room with two floors located in Piazza San Marco , designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa . After losing its original function for years, on 20 April 2011 the store was reopened after a thorough philological restoration that has returned the colors, the furniture and the collection of original Olivetti machines. The Assicurazioni Generali , which maintain the property, have entrusted to FAI – Italian Environment Fund , which takes care of the maintenance and ensures its use to the public.”

2016. Sonoma, CA

2011. Tokyo, Japan.

I spent 3 months in Tokyo interning for KKAA and staying specifically in Shibuya. While there I had the opportunity to travel and photograph. In addition, I used this opportunity to learn to shoot time lapses. These clips were pulled from a number of footages I've shot. Please view in Full Screen Music: Sweet Disposition-The Temper Trap

Gear: Benro 5'6" Tripod Cameras: one Nikon D700 Various filters

Locations: Rainbow Bridge Tiffany, Ginza Mori Tower, Roppongi Hills Metropolitan Government Tower, Shinjuku Ebisu Garden Place Shibuya Station Shibuya Crossing Asakusa Saitama Fields Gaienmai, Aoyama Shinjuku Park Hyatt Regency Omotesando

2011. Tibet, China.

I spent a week in Tibet where I got to see some amazing scenery. It was a good opportunity to try this sort of time lapse as cities often have too much light pollution.

2013. Venice, Italy.

Streets and Bridges.

2014. Redwood National Forest, CA

Impromptu 4th of July Trip.

I didn’t believe it at first, but I find the architecture in Dallas, Fort Worth to be extremely timeless. Granted that I know which time period each are from, I still really really enjoy seeing them attain a certain level of timelessness. They are so well preserved and the language of what the architecture was going for are super clear.

Images here include:

Fort Worth Water Garden by Philip Johnson / John Burgee, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth by Tadao Ando, Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn, Amon Carter Museum by Philip Johnson, an Perot Museum of Nature & Science by Tom Mayne Morphosis, Nasher Sculpture Museum by Renzo Piano

Philip Johnson’s Water Garden is very engaging. It makes you want to climb and look around the corner. There are 4~5 very distinctive zones in this park that made me few very differently about water. Some were in the form of waterfalls and other were in the forms of a still ponds and some were just elegantly designed spray fountains. I did hear that a few people drown here, but like all things in life, water is dangerous in almost all settings. In fact the more shallow the more dangerous.

The Modern Art Museum amazed me the most in the set. At first, I would not imagine a starchitect designed it. It was amazingly clean and the roof solution was quite elegant. I’ve never seen such heavy roofs represented so lightly. Also the the touches of water in the pond area really magnifies the size of the building allow you to really appreciate the simplicity of that roof line. The shear walls inside the building Frames the garden area reinforcing the importance of the world outside and bringing it into the building. Lastly, the simple arches on in the building ceilings inside the building nods at Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum Next door.

Kahn’s Kimbell Art museum was unfortunately covered up by the renovation and addition to Renzo Piano’s Extension. Kahn’s Details are absolutely Gorgeous here. The barrel arch roofs and the simple cuts in them that allow light to pour in along with the diffused light fixtures that reflect natural light back on the ceiling is just jaw dropping.

2014. Pamukkale, Turkey.

Calcium Carbonate Hot Spring Travertines

2017. Ancient Bristle Cone Forest, Yosemite, Mono Lake, CA.

2015. Singapore

2012. Arashiyama, Japan.

Long Exposure shots at Brixby Bridge, CA

2018/2013. England, United Kingdom.

A quick trip through London, Avebury, Stonehenge, & Eastbourne

Presidio. San Francisco, CA.

2015. Pu Chi Fa, Thailand.

2015. Los Angeles, CA.

2013. Venice, Italy.

Piazza San Marco floods daily. When it does, the only way to move around is through elevated platforms

Long Exposure Experiments

2013. Rome, Italy

I honestly think this is Zaha’s best project. It sits in a difficult site where there is a volume in open area connected to a small area crowded space around the corner. There are lots of interesting public space and the interior rooms flow from one room to another. I often find myself anticipating what level I will end up when I walk down a tunnel.

2012. San Francisco, CA

I’ve been obsessing this for a while now and finally I got a chance to try it out. So I’ve always wanted to create something that looked unrealistic that had a sense of speed in it. The shoot involved mounting a tripod to my Mazda MX 5 and shooting a bunch of pictures while driving to and in San Francisco.

There was a couple of things I should point out.

1. Unless you have a fish eye, many behind the seat shots has been done before.
2. Vibration and wind. My mount was rock solid. You’d had to break something to remove the tripod. I kept the tripod under the “wind zone” . the window on the right was raised 4 inches to prevent uplift winds.
3. I used my Ep1 because of lower risk. It only cost about 279 bucks for a replacement
4. I should have shot it at faster speeds. So more pictures at intersections when i stop and need to stop at more scenic places.

5. I was dressed in Black to try to hide from the camera. The usual assumption is that there’s someone driving, for one of the shots “Take OFF” It was just dark enough in one of the photos to hide me. So it seems the car is going in automatic flight mode. I was lucky enough to shot a few images on the BAY Bridge and it looked like the lights were rising creating this lift of effect. I think its more unique than a zoom one since a lot of people had tried it before.

In post, I overlay them and strategically removed ones that I didn’t want to appear in the photo. Here are some of the composites and my setup. It worked quite nicely and I was genuinely surprised at the outcome.

Timelapse- You can figure out what type of shot you’re gonna get by checking the speedometer within each Frame:

2013. New Orleans, LA

2012. Sonoma, CA.

2016. Chiang Mai, Thailand

Portraiture. 2009. MIT.

When thinking about architecture schools, one may think of the head that runs the department. First there was Yung Ho, now its Nader. Both I’ve come to know because I had to research them to find out if MIT was the right school for me. While their faces are clear to me, Architecture students have long been hidden away in their studio slaving away for their next studio review right behind the most social center of the campus; Steam Cafe. While we associated the school with Nader, I find that there are much to say about how much the school depends on students as well. In a way, architecture school uses student work as much as faculty or chair to draw in future students. In a way, the increasingly business-like structure of university makes me question the roles, priories, and dreams of students and Nader. This project seeks to uncover the struggle between running an architecture school and being in architecture school through portrait style photography.

2009. Portraiture. MIT.

In 2009, I started a project documenting the Class of 2013 at MIT Architecture. There were 22 students during the first semester. I wanted to take a class photo so I asked everyone in my class to participate. I also used this opportunity to learn more about them as this is the first time I met them.

As an update, I continued the project in 2010. As a premise, I asked them to hold something that would represent themselves and better show the world who they are. While most of them picked their architectural models, most revealed their personalities quite well through what they were holding. Also, I shot this entire set using Kodachrome because Dwayne Photo was going to stop processing slide photos.