Tracy & Dave - A Forbidden City Wedding

I got a chance to snap a few photos at my cousin's wedding this weekend. It's hard to properly capture the milestones of a wedding day when you're not the actual photographer... I was probably getting in the way of (and annoying the crap out of) the two actual paid photographers, but luckily one of them happened to be another instructor at the school I teach with, so I got off easy and didn't get yelled at for intruding. :)

Photos below: Traditional tea ceremony at the bride's family, and some shots from the banquet at Forbidden City.

Not shown below: One photo of the ginormous bowl of Shark Fin Soup each table was served. Take THAT eco-activists!

Lilac Fest 2013

It was a weekend of food (what else is new) and festivities as we spent Saturday celebrating my cousin's wedding, and then soaked in the sights, smells, and sounds of Lilac Fest on Sunday. Photos from the wedding to come. For us, the highlight of Lilac Fest was seeing Chris Schaften, a contestant on this latest season of Top Chef Canada, grilling up sausages outside Blonde's Diner (see below). All photos taken on Fuji Instax or Instax 210 film. I love Instant Photography. The only thing more amazing and magical than watching an instant photo slowly develop before your eyes is seeing He-man team up with She-ra to give Hordak a severe ass kicking... yes, my niece was in town and we may have watched Teletoon Retro for hours on end. What of it?











  

  

"Smut from Around the World"

One of my favourite parts about travelling is that I get to send inappropriate postcards to Dean. See Dean's blog post, 'Smut from around the world' for examples. It all started when I went to Musee D'Orsay in Paris way back when, and came across a painting entitled L'origine du Monde, and I thought, wow, this would be an awesome postcard to send through the mail, if for nothing else than to have some mailman see it and assume Dean was a pervert (FACT). And with that, a tradition was born for every overseas trip we take.

Oh, one other funny overseas mailing thing. Whilst in Portugal, I sent a BB gun in the mail to Dean. Mostly because it was cheap and I wanted it, but was afraid of bringing it home in my luggage. So rather than mailing it to myself, I sent it to Dean with the reasoning that if it was a problem, he'd get in trouble and not me. I'm a great pal.

This photo is completely unrelated, but I love this odd sight of this dude just chilling on a tiny plastic lawn chair in the middle of a street in Ho Chi Minh, watching oncoming traffic. Actually, now that I think of it, this would make for an interesting postcard image too.



Photo taken with a Kiev88 CM and Arsat 80mm f/2.8 lens on Ilford XP2 Super400.

The Chinese Betrothal Ceremony

Some of you may have experienced a Chinese wedding before, but unless you are 1) a wedded Asian, or 2) relatives of someone who has gone through a traditional Chinese wedding, you may not have experienced a "Guo Dai Li" (or betrothal ceremony). Essentially, this is a pre-wedding ceremony in which the groom's family visits the bride's family and presents a series of wedding gifts - mostly very traditional and auspicious foods (whole roasted pig!) - and then the bride's family gives back a set of gifts in return. I'm not sure that these ceremonies are usually as boisterous and full of guests as my cousin's was this weekend, but it was definitely fun!




Today's festivities brought to you by the red letter 囍 (aka 'Double Happiness').








Can you tell who the father of the soon to be bride is?






Fathers of the Bride and Groom ham it up.








Trying out the various flavours of 'Wifey Cakes'.




And as you may have seen before from my previous posts, there's always incense and a head-on chicken as part of Chinese festivities.

YYC Sunday - Part II

Generic photo post. More shots from our Sunday photowalk. Kiev 88 and Arsat 80mm f/2.8, on Kodak Ektar 100.










Random dude that approached and inquired if we was Canadian folks.


Eric, shoving his face full of healthy McBreakfast.

Giant Heads, Steel Horses, and a Lion Mask - Just another YYC Sunday.

Scott, Eric and I went on a short photowalk this morning downtown. Scott suggested the rather heinous hour of 7am as our start time (F@CK!!!), so there weren't many people on the streets to photograph. Having said that, I did get a portrait of some random dude with a runny nose who asked us if we were Canadians or not. Portrait not shown below cause it hasn't been developed yet).






Looking out, from inside the giant head.








Stay!















All shots taken with a Leica M6 and Voigtlander Nokton SC 35/1,4 on expired Konica VX 400. This film yields really interesting orange and magenta notes. If you can find some (discontinued a while ago), you should grab it.