Our day started on Baker Beach. We walked through the blistering cold to our “spot” and Rachel and Craig sported a traditional San Francisco fleece. (you are not ready for San Francisco weather without the fleece! - burrrr). Climbing on rocks, running through the sand, walking almost nonstop Rachel and Craig had so much energy and love that it expressed through the lens so naturally. We opted for something warmer, so we made a quick stop through the Palace of Fine Arts and landed at the Embarcadero. Gosh! I’m sure it was at least a 10 degrees difference (seriously!) just traveling a few miles into downtown SF. Rachel and Craig sported a new look and they were off to the second half of the session.

Throughout the Friday, we conquered the crowded Embarcadero, Ferry Building, Justin Herman Plaza, a rocket ship, a Cable Car, the TransAmerica building and jumped through the Port of San Francisco. We carried around our equipment like it was nothing because it didn’t feel heavy at all. Why? Because we laugh, told jokes and shared stories together. Anytime you have an awesome couple that naturally knows how to poise and are super chill, it’s a recipe for awesome pictures!

We had a great time capturing Rachel and Craig and wish them the best as they embark on this journey together. Enjoy the pictures!

Much <3 Wilson & Lelan

P.S. We love San Francisco. It’s the best city in the world. The food, the people, the weather. There is nothing else like it.

We had a killer time with full access to the venue. There were two bars, an entire staging band area upstairs, and TVs downstairs to catch the NBA Playoffs. We meet up with Jack Tung, Lions Riding Horses, (we heard of much, but never saw them play live) and United High and Johnny Hi Fi whom we shot at last year’s ARF at Slim’s.

Rockit Room
406 Clement Street
San Francisco, CA 94118-2318
(415) 387-6343

At this event, one can order drinks, food, and listen to the 4 amazing bands play! In addition to that, located at Clement Street in San Francisco, with plenty of access to food, and desserts afterwords made it very very worthwhile!

We even had a chance to stage the bands in our own private photobooth session at the end of the festival.

2+ hours of great music, awesome venues and a fabulous turn out. What more can you ask for? Special thanks to Stephanie Watanabe and Johnny Hi-Fi for setting this all up! We hope to shoot again next year. For now, enjoy the pictures.

The awesome Rock It Room venue in San Francisco.

Kyle from United High DJying before the show starts

Pre show interviews with Pacific Rim Video

Jack Tung starting things off with his hypnotic sounds.

Samie, Cliff and Reina of United High

Lions riding Horses rocking the RockIt Room (pun totally intended!)

Johnnie Hi Fi ending the night out with a bang!

Our favorite artistic picture of the night!

Last, but not least, the photobooth pictures!

We will see you next year at the Asian Rock Festival!

P.S. If there is any dog fans out there, stay tuned. Our next blog post will be about Cola, our new puppy!

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for “fifth of May”) is a holiday held on May 5 that commemorates the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. It is celebrated primarily in the state of Puebla and in the United States.

It was awesome to shoot this event as we had full access to run around and shoot the spectators. Enjoy the pictures and let us know if there are other events to shoot around the bay!

A woman stands proud holding the Mexico Flag

A boy with riding his lowrider bike

Jumping through the lasso rope!

A group of people posing with their horses

ROTC marching along.

Low rider flexes it struts

P.S. We recently got a dog and will be posting pictures of her soon!

Just wanted to give a shout out to our wedding book company for their outstanding flush mounted wedding album. We decided to switch over to this company for their incredible print quality, bind, and awesome customer service (super fast turnaround time!).

We are so confident about their craftsmanship that we wanted to share with you a few pictures from Amanda and Santos’ wedding album in the presentation below! Enjoy!

We love this company and enjoy giving our clients the quality album their photos deserve!

~Wilson & Lelan

P.S. Are you a sushi fan? Get ready for an awesome post next!

When we are not taking photos at events, engagements, and weddings, we like to engage in fun-filled adventurous activities.

Lelan surprised me a few weekends ago with a trip to iFly SF Bay in Union City, CA about 40 minutes away from San Francisco. We went to experience human body flight in a vertical wind tunnel that assimilated indoor skydiving. When I saw this iFly building, and heard Lelan’s bright laughter, a surge of excitement spilled out of me, knowing that this was no doubt going to be a very exciting and an adrenaline adventure!

iFly SF Bay
31310 Alvarado-Niles Rd.
Union City, CA 94587

What is iFly, some may ask?

Did you ever wondered or wanted to skydive, but couldn’t muster the courage to it?

Well, iFly SF is the answer to that.

iFly is not a roller coaster where you’re locked in for a fixed car ride and feeling free fall at certain points of the ride.  It’s a place where you get to ride wind and feel free fall the whole time while you’re in mid-air. You get to be flexible in the wind and you can fly up as high as 35 feet in the air and drop down to feel zero gravity.  It’s safer and I think it offers much more than sky diving. There was 4 huge wind turbines enclosed indoors blowing gusts of wind up to 150mph vertically. The wind was very powerful and we got to experience on different wind speeds from  98+mph to 120+ mph.

I was shaking with both excitement and a bit of nervousness, after I got suit up with a jump suit, goggle, helmet, and seeing Lelan already stoked up. We had a couple of briefing sessions, before and during our flight by our trainer (he’s like Peter Pan, as you’ll see why in our vid). My butterflies quickly disappeared after we both flew.

Lelan created this awesome video of us flying! Please enjoy our vid! The music is by Gigi D’Agostino called “L’amour toujours” (I’ll fly with you).

Now you know why we call him Peter Pan?

The instructor, the staff, and the entire experience at iFlySF was such a blast, we still think of flying even when walking on ground. This place gave us a lifetime of an experience which we hope to have shared with you. Fly with us!

Cheers,
Wilson & Lelan

P.S. We love to cook too!

We are back into blogging our events. This last week at Yahoo! we celebrated Holi - The Festival of Colors. It was the first time we attended something like this, but we saw a glimpse of this festival from the movie called Outsourced that we watched on Netflix . (fun movie to watch for the some slight India culture reference)

Granted, we were super excited to see all the color powder fly and participants literally covered with color splashes! Wow!

Next time, we want to get in on the fun, (although our camera would not be too happy to hear that.)

Have a glimpse at some of the action from the event.

You have been warned! (notice the little specs of purple on the left hand side)

A kid gets in on the action.

Color play!

Sequence shots.. looks like a innocent group pose right?

Here comes the colors..

Look at the guys teeth! Classic.

The guy in the back is gonna get these guys. They are too clean!

This picture pretty much quantifies what Holi embodies! Great vibes and great fun!

If you like to see more pictures, please stop by our flickr album entitled Yahoo! Holi Festival of Colors 2010 .

Aloha,
Wilson and Lelan

P.S. We love shooting colorful objects and people. If you have a colorful idea, please drop us a note.

P.S.S. Wilson had an orange colored car before!

Palmdale Estates located in Fremont, CA is a rare gem in estates for reception and ceremony venue around the South Bay in San Francisco. The 17-acre estate is gorgeous, full of lush gardens and mini pathways, where the lovely couple Amanda and Santos tied the knot.

We were able to capture Amanda and Santos’s Wedding ceremony thoroughly and it was exhilarating to see no one else held back for the celebration of the lovely couple. Kindly enjoy their smiles, laughter, and joy from the pictures. Feel free to comment on them.

We really enjoyed shooting this wedding. Congrats to Amanda and Santos! We wish you two the very best!

Hang loose! - {WLQ} Photography

P.S. We love going to Hawaii!

Here’s what you get…

• Unlimited uploads and storage
• Unlimited sets and collections
• Access to your original files
• Stats on your account
• Ad-free browsing and sharing
• HD playback for high-definition video uploads NEW

Good luck!

{WLQ}

Shot with an iPhone 3GS

We are nearly 15 days to the year 2010. Can you believe that?

It has been an amazing first half of the year! With May 2010 as our official first year anniversary, we have a lot of excitement in the air with plenty of surprises to come. And you wonder what that is? Well it’s a suprise, so you’ll have to keep stalking following our blog for more info.

Why we shoot?
I’m always asked this question by my peers: If you have a great day job, why go into photography?
Well, we will list this one out:

• passion
• joy
• love

Let me explain.

Passion - We have a strong desire to be there and capturing that unmistakable smile, laughing out loud laughs, and just being yourself.  Some photographers call this lifestyle photography. Some people call it photojournalism. We call it passion photography.

Joy - Passion ignites joy. Seeing the joy in our client’s eye when they see the final results is our main goal. You will be well taken care of and enjoy your special day and the results from the pictures for years to come.

Love - Those four little letters could mean so much. Without love, there cannot be passion or joy. We love love love (cannot stress this enough) taking photos and are not camera shy in doing so. Follow our Flickr, BestCam, Facebook . We are nuts about shooting. See the recent wedding shot for Grace & Kevin, and engagement shoots for Jennifer & Ryan, and Pauch & William.

We hope that gives the readers a little insight about us. We are pretty easy going photographers to work with and we hope to be able to talk with you over the phone or even in person regarding your special day. Heck, we will treat you for coffee just for coming out.

Oh! And that photo you saw above. We shot this with an iPhone 3Gs for the Flickr Yahoo Photo challenge and was selected as one of the finalist.

Thanks for reading!

{WLQ}

PS. Psst. we will be giving away something really soon! Tell your friends!

Diwali roughly translates to a row of lamps. According to wikipedia

The word दीपावली(Dipavali) literally translates as a row of lamps in Sanskrit^[1]. It is traditional for adherents of Diwali-celebrating faiths to light small clay lamps (or Deep in Sanskrit: दीप) filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil within an individual. During Diwali, many wear new clothes and share sweets/snacks with each other. Some Indian business communities start their financial year by opening new account books on the first day of Diwali for good luck the following year.

Enjoy these pictures and you can find more on our flickr site.

P.S. We love love love colors! Especially those that are bright and eye catching.