hi, hi, hi

A bit more than a week ago, I took a brief weekend trip to Maui to attend my mother's wedding (congrats, Mama :) ). Aside from the brutally long flights, it was quite a refreshing change from the daily life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first thing my brother and I noticed coming off the flight was how much slower the pace of life was on the island. We were used to the hustle mentality of the East Coast, and had to consciously take everything down a few notches (driving, walking, talking etc.). 

Our first stop off the flight was Choice, a raw vegan restaurant known for their acai bowls. 

Since the wedding was the purpose of the trip and we both couldn't stay longer, my brother and I had very little time to explore Maui. We managed to squeeze in some tanning, stargazing, and The Road to Hana.

Stargazing in Hawaii was quite an indescribable experience. Sitting in the convertible Mustang with the top down on a clear night with Gallant's Ology blasting on the speakers was something out of a dream. I don't really know what else to say about it, except that everyone deserves to experience something like that at some point in their lives.

“I was a pauper
Fickle and bruised
Wishing I could atomize these lonely lunar views
But with thorns in my ankles
And rocks in my shoes
I weather through”

— Gallant, "Oh, Universe"

Another Gallant song, but this one is my favorite: 

We parked in a roadside turnout and I made my first attempt at astrophotography. I had my Gorillapod and my X100T, but no remote shutter release so I had to hold the camera as steady as I could for more than a minute. Rain was falling sporadically, but the skies remained clear enough to capture this. 

Our next Maui experience was The Road to Hana. We got the GyPSy Drive Tour app which was worth every cent--we definitely would have missed a lot of subtleties of the journey without it. I realized this might have been my first rainforest experience. The rain came and went in seconds, drenching us within seconds and revealing the beautiful blue sky within the next minute. The intense heat and humidity didn't help the being drenched situation, but by the end of it, I didn't really care. Each viewpoint made me question reality, and made me realize (as traveling always does) how little of the world I've seen. 

As we were driving, my brother also mentioned "that Tumblr quote," which I will include here:

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.
”

— Isak Dineson

This is indeed a very "Tumblr" quote, but it still seemed relevant at the time. Maybe because I was in the ocean sweating from the heat and crying at the beauty of it all, or something like that. 

We encountered waterfalls, bamboo forests, an abundance of mangoes, and incredible coastal views. We also saw some large spiders and mongooses...I guess that's what you get in the rainforest. I'll let photos do the talking here. 

My time in Maui was sadly short, but I find it hard to believe that I won't return there at some point. For now, I'm back in good old Cambridge, excited for more summer adventures. 

Entire photo collection here

rediscovering, repurposing

I’ve been pretty AWOL from my blog (and photography in general) for a while now. Part of it was the chaos of schoolwork, part of it was the loss of vision. I haven’t been happy with my photos for a while now, mostly due to the neglect. I’ve been trapped in a bit of a haze, and I’m hoping summer will fix this. 

The discontinuation of FP-100C was unexpectedly disheartening. I had begun to view the world around me with a Land camera filter, almost. Despite the size and weight of those cameras, they were the cameras that I carried with me and ached to shoot with. I sold both my EE100s and Land 450 after the film was discontinued. I didn’t want to be attached to something that didn’t exist anymore. 

I felt like I retreated into a shell after that. I took photos now and then, but I stopped bringing cameras with me everywhere, stopped looking, and most importantly, stopped taking photos even when I noticed something worthwhile. I ignored my eye and my instincts. As a result, I ignored a big aspect of myself. 

I find joy in the little things, the very things that make me pause in the incessant flutter of time to inhale the present and exhale my worries. Photography is my form of expression, but it’s also my form of introspection. 

I have a lot of goals this summer—gain some more guitar skills, read a variety of books, become more confident in my sketching, and find myself again. Undoubtedly, that process will be closely tied to photography. I’ll be posting a lot more from now on—I’m excited, and I can only hope that you are too. :) 

A photo of a plant outside of my office for the summer. It's heavily underexposed, but I was trying to invoke the sense of eeriness and emptiness that I was feeling. 

A common scene on my 30 minute walk to/from work through Somerville. The sky was particularly beautiful today. 

motivation and purpose; memories are the best things i ever had

I've had a photo blog since the first day I decided I wanted to become a better photographer. This was 2010, I was a freshman in high school, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The blog is titled "Memories Were the Best Things We Ever Had", a mantra from Ben Howard's "Old Pine" that has resonated with me since the first time I heard it. 

Since its inception, I posted nearly all of my acceptable photos onto that blog. Some of my scattered thoughts made it onto there as well. Last week, I officially ran out of storage space on my Wordpress. I accidentally deleted around 40 images to make space for new ones, but I realized I was unwilling to replace my old photos with new ones--after all, memories were the best things we ever had. Therefore, I'm moving my blog to this little nook on my personal website. I probably will not be posting all of my acceptable photos anymore, but I am hoping to write more about product design, personal experiences, and the little things in life. 

I've always had a hard time balancing my love and appreciation for well-designed products and my desire to keep my life as materially simple as possible. Even though I'll be writing about cool products and objects, please believe me when I say that memories will always be the best things I ever had.