We have a few late entries here at WHW, entries that should have been done before the summer ended. What can I say, but work and family obligations have precedence over my life for the most part so I had to put blogging in the backburner. It's now the night before Thanksgiving, and I found some time to catch up. Let's start with this.

Last August, we went camping with two other families who are friends of ours. It was a rather late planning, so we finally found some open camp sites at Plasse's Resort, which is off the 88 just south of Silver Lake in CA. Where is that? It's south of Tahoe. Reservation pricing wasn't too bad. Between 3 families and 2 campsites, we each paid about $40-50 for 2 nights.

There were outhouses for toilet needs, and I'll admit, I really sniffed the air in there because there was no bad smell. It's a well-kept campsite. (Sorry, sniffing the air in the outhouse does sound gross, but honestly, there really was no bad smell).

The lodge was a bit of a walk from where we were camped at. and it was your typical general and souvenir shop. The weekend we were here, there was a BBQ event going on, but we didn't really go near it. While that was happening, our family took a walk in the wooded areas (collecting rocks, taking pictures of insects, observing ants, etc). Plasse's Resort is a campground for long-term camping as this was obvious with the trailers and mobile homes that seemed to have people comfortably settled in. It started to rain on our walk back, so ran we went to the safety of our canopies.

It did rain on our first night, but nothing horrible. This is the second summer in a row our camp got rained on, but hey, that's part of the outdoor life.

Here are just a few of the photos taken from camp.

The kids enjoyed the wonders of hot ice

No post-processing with this

My son collected granite rocks to take home

Beautiful scenery at Plasse's Resort

Dad and daughter time on the granite rocks....stuff we will never get to do in the big city

My son insisted on playing in the mud and dirt with his construction minis

Our family has been camping together since our son was only 1 year old, and this is his 3rd time camping (our daughter's 2nd). We hope to keep this tradition going -- our camp gear is building up. As a child, I didn't get to go camping until I was 9 years old!

The (Earth) night that Curiousity landed on Mars, the family packed up and went to Chabot Space & Science Center to join a whole lot of people to witness the event in the planetarium. True, we could have stayed home and watched it, but well, we were at Chabot which seemed to be the right place to be for an event as such.

We got there quite early to ensure that our day was full alright. There was an activity for kids in the Pleiades Courtyard with some flour and marbles, exhibiting as easily as possible how craters can form on Mars. There were also electronic projects for older kids with Legos and motors and solar which my son really enjoyed. The photos below are from these activities.

The scheduled landing was set to be late at night, and both kids had fallen asleep I think. I'm not sure how we were able to contain them in satisfactory behavior for that long as they did, but being sleepy must have helped. Photography was not allowed in the planetarium, so sorry, none pictures here.

This was our first shot at product photography, for Auva Tea, a Taiwan-imported tea locally distributed by EnBoost Company. The studio photos--shot by Rio--were set with a white backdrop as shown, and I also decided to include the "clean" version of them for the client to use. We also took the tea bags to Stow Lake--shot by Egan--to get some environmental photos with the Stow Lake pagoda in the background.

Gallery opens with the image link for Auva Tea:




File under: commercial photography, product photography, stow lake photographer, golden gate park photography, san francisco photographer

Event: School Dance
Location: Hornblower Yacht in San Francisco, CA

This was a very busy night, with seniors from Lowell High School attending their first dance of the year.

Click the image below to open up the whole gallery!

File under: school dance photographer, school dance photography, sf party photographer, sf party photobooth, school dance photobooth, san francisco photobooth, san francisco event photobooth, sf event photobooth, hornblower cruises, hornblower events, hornblower photobooth, private photobooth, photobooth rental, photobooth for rent, photobooth for hire

On our way out, we explored around the parking lot and saw sunflowers. There were some good ops to take photos so that we did.
Well, we brought the pumpkins home and carved them the same day. I think it was done too early. The pumpkins were set outdoors, and got moldy within days. Both had to be trashed, and replaced.
The conclusion: The farm was a fun visit, but we shouldn't have carved our pumpkins too early. I had to replace them with store pumpkins.