los angeles x long weekend

To go along with this specific post, I highly recommend reading this, because I haven't read anything better that describes the struggles of living in both of these magnificent, beautiful and absolutely ridiculous cities (New York is a madhouse at the moment because yes, it snowed, and yes, it's now all melting and turning the city into the most disgusting, slushy dump).

Los Angeles was beautiful. I genuinely enjoyed it - I'm sure it's very different when you're visiting vs living (as it is for New York City), but the flawless weather really spoke to me. IT NOURISHED MY SOUL. I know that's really aggressive, but I'm not sure if I'd ever get tired of waking up to perfect weather almost everyday.

We ate a lot, went to the beach, had car problems, got stuck in traffic, took a lot of pictures, saw old friends, and barely slept. I lost my voice. It was so relaxing and exciting all at the same time.

And if you have 3-4 minutes to kill:

CA in CA 2016 from Ariel Min on Vimeo. List of stuff that unfortunately did not make it into the video:
- colleen and me hanging in the jacuzzi
- colleen and me getting lost in skid row
- a tiny bird pooping on me
- colleen's fabulous mother and the mimosas/cookies she made us (camera died and cut out the footage, boo)
- the rest of footage of colleen's dog :(
- our numerous lyft drivers
- the most amazing brunch ever
- most stuff we ate
- MINA and NICK
Music: The Chainsmokers - Roses (ft ROZES)

Online News Association Conference 2012

Let's do some time traveling. (Which we're going to have to do a lot with film posts)

Back in September, I packed up my bags and left for San Francisco to attend the Online News Association's San Francisco conference (aka #ONA12) with hopes and dreams of meeting great online journalists and maybe performing some magical networking. I think I ended up just having more fun than anything though, visiting Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, getting to know some cool people, and getting a private tour of the Industrial Light & Magic office of Lucas Film by dad's old friend who works there. I also got to spend some time with cousins that I see maybe once every 3-4 years, so that was nice. 

But back to my film prints! I made a pretty bold move, in my standards, by taking only the iPhone and a film camera - the Nikon FM10. Now, I've always had pretty good experiences with the FM10 if and only when I actually latch on the negatives right inside the camera. I remember those painful days as a sophomore in college when I'd cry about my time and money gone to waste because I got a blank film at the end of the development. Making sure the film is loaded correctly is very, very important for a film amateur like myself, especially because the FM10 is completely manual.

I knew San Francisco was going to be beautiful no matter what - but I fought off the temptation to bring on the DSLR and stuck with this old and dinky camera for some authentic shots of the bay area. Turns out it wasn't a bad idea at all.   

The following photos were taken at the #socjourn #wjchat Meet Up at Sens restaurant in Embarcadero.  

So. Remember when I said I met some cool people? I may not have had the chance to talk to people like Marks Luckie (Twitter / 10,000 words blog), or Kim Bui (co-founder of #wjchat) or all the other remarkable people who probably attended, but I unexpectedly befriended a Canadian journalist from a no-name town when she walked up to me asking a question that I can't recall now.

We became fast buddies and walked to the Port market to grab lunch together, sat outside with the ocean view and talked about life, photography, journalism, gluten-free foods, boyfriends, etc. That was a quite weird yet refreshing experience. We exchanged business cards, Twitter accounts then headed different directions.

Meet my friend Liz :) Hope we could meet again, someday! Also taken on the FM10, but with the Tri-X 400. 

Port of San Francisco

This past weekend I had an opportunity to attend the ONA (Online News Association) Conference at Hyatt Regency in the financial district in San Francisco. I was there mainly for the job fair and the career summit, perhaps a little too blindly, but things turned out better than I had anticipated. 

But anyways, I decided against bringing my D90 this trip because I wanted to try something unconventional for myself - which's completely relying on my iPhone camera for the most part. I did bring one film camera - the FM10, but as the iPhone was obviously so much more convenient for me to bring around, I tried to maximize the use of this phone. 

One downside is though, that when you take all your photos with your phone, your phone WILL die in the middle of the day when you actually need it for navigation and GPS (or the original functions, like, you know, calling people).

Walking down the strip of eateries, cafes and different types of market (shroom shops and butcher shops! oh and biscuit shops too) made me really miss living in this type of environment, but I can wait.