This summer, I was on a mission: to take photos, hang out with friends and family, and have fun in general before med school consumes my life. Now, one week before I fly off to New York I must say… MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!

Two months, 29 days (50%) with significant shoots, 4000 snaps, 650 shots developed, 3000+ miles on the road, so many great memories. Sit tight, and let your computers buffer up, because this is a big post! 

6/1, 6/13: I did two paid family photoshoots. I keep on forgetting to ask permission to post shots, but yes! I do these on occasion…

6/3: Santa Barbara’s small but impressively diverse zoo. The highlight was definitely Pepe the armadillo. So cute rolling over his toy soccer ball. 6/5: looking for crabs and anemones and sand crabs and stuff at Arroyo Burro Beach. 6/9: the 64-mile bike ride. 6/11: we toured Lotusland, Montecito’s intensely private botanic garden. It was a foggy overcast day too, so walking around the dense and nearly overgrown garden where flowers are strangely absent felt mystical and almost otherworldly. 6/23: my brother and I hiked Inspiration Point (where the view was inspiring, the hike not as inspired), then went scrambling over giant sandstone boulders in the mountains at Lizards Mouth.

These were all places that I hadn’t visited yet all year, but getting there with friends/family was immensely more rewarding. Picture quality degraded a bit because I didn’t want them to wait too long, but that’s okay!

6/19-22, 28: My entire family congregated to celebrate my brother’s wedding. Err, more specifically, most of us celebrated; my brother and his wife came to get married… so CONGRATULATIONS! I had the honor of being best man and giving a speech (lots of fun by the way). I couldn’t be a prouder little brother. Meanwhile, I was somewhat preoccupied, but I did manage to photograph the first dance!

6/25: Post-wedding, it was time to move from Santa Barbara back to my childhood home in the Bay Area. To do it in style, my little brother (the not-married one) and I took a one-day roadtrip up Highway 1, passing through Big Sur and Monterey to do some light hiking and to visit the aquarium. I swear the aquarium was smaller than I remember it in the distant past, but that’s probably because it had seemed much grander to miniature Peter.

7/1: I woke at 2:30 am (typical) to drive to San Francisco and witness the morning fog at the 5:45 am sunrise. I grew up going to SF pretty often, but this was the first time ever I arrived without hitting a spot of traffic. Glorious!

7/3-6: Ahh, the big one: a lightning-fast four-day roadtrip into the Sierra mountains. For the first time in decades, My parents and I went to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. We’ve grown up around the ridiculously tall coastal Redwood trees, but we had forgotten how enormous sequoias are. Like seriously, they’re freaking huge.

Next, Mono Lake on the eastern side of the Sierras, a huge super salty and alkaline lake. It’s so salty that there are no fish; instead the ecosystem is based off brine shrimp and alkaline flies. It’s so salty that people can just float on the surface without moving. It’s made famous for photographers because of the strange limestone tufa towers that grow out of the water. In fact, it’s like a mecca for photogs to go shoot the tufa towers at sunset, and for good reason. The soft rainclouds were some of the most spectacular I’ve seen, and I get the feeling that they’re pretty common up there in the mountains.

To get over the mountains, I drove through Tioga Pass (and Yosemite without stopping, lol) on the way there, then Sonora Pass on the way back. I mean, I still hold driving in general disdain, but I have to admit mountain driving is pretty fun.

Last, we visited Devils Postpile, an odd geologic formation: a cliff of tall hexagonal stone pillars that seem to grow out of the ground. It was formed by cooling and contracting lava that fractured in regular patterns to relieve strain, which was then revealed by a passing glacier.

7/11-12: Tahoe! Earlier plans to go camping fell through, so my friend and I spontaneously decided to go hiking, paddleboarding, and camping at Lake Tahoe. First up: hiking up Mount Tallac, a 3000 feet ascent over 5 miles. Next up, grilling dinner and camping. Lastly, paddleboarding, kayaking, and swimming in the picturesque Emerald Bay. All in just a day and a half. It was fast and furious, but the spontaneity made it all the more exhilarating.

7/18: Bodega Bay and Point Reyes! We visited my friend’s old marine biology research lab at Bodega Bay, also enjoying some artisan bread, gourmet crab sandwiches, and pizza. We turned over some rocks and chased some crabs and other wildlife, and I went climbing on some boulders. Putting all that new gym climbing experience to use! On the way back, we accidentally took an enormous detour to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, almost 1 hour out of the way. Oops.

7/24: My parents and I took a ferry out to Angel Island, the state park right in the middle of the Bay Area. At the summit, you have a 360 degree view of the entire bay, a clear view of San Francisco, Marin, Tiburon, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond; the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the San Rafael Bridge. Like they all say, it’s all about location, yo.

7/27: My old high school friends and I set out to go bouldering at Sunset Boulders, these two 30′ rocks on the Sonoma Coast. The three of them go bouldering at gyms all the time, so they were rockin’ it. Pun so very intended.

Afterwards, at 7 pm, we drove down to Tomales Bay, the calm body of water that separates Point Reyes from Marin. Why this weekend, why so late? A new moon for the darkness, during the summer for warm water and overcast skies. Why at all? The dinoflagellates, microorganisms that glow blue when perturbed. When our paddles hit the water, the water would spark to life like little stars in the water, glow for a lingering second, then fade away. When our kayaks glided along the surface, we would leave streaks of blue behind us. When fish or bat rays darted beneath the surface, we could see them leaving light trails behind them. I would say it’s something straight out of the movie Avatar, but then I realized… Avatar is based off this stuff. Five thumbs up, would recommend.

7/28-8/2: Lastly, I returned to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles for a week to say a proper goodbye to the friends I didn’t manage to see earlier. Thanks to fortuitous timing, it happened to be the week of Fiesta, the annual festival celebrating Old Spanish Days. Performances and fairs all day, every day. People in costume walking down the street like it’s no big deal.

Next, I waded through LA traffic to visit Caltech, USC, UCLA. Together, we waded through traffic to play tourists in Chinatown, Olvera Street, and Little Tokyo, all in downtown. Afterwards, we headed to the Venice Canals (not the ones in Italy though), one of the most off-putting displays of affluence I’ve ever seen. Seriously, of all things, they chose to dig and flood some useless canals in the middle of LA? Everyone had a little paddle boat, but not a single person was boating. We paid a visit to Venice Beach just south of Santa Monica, and all was back to normal. It’s a nice beach, actually!

Thanks to my friends in Santa Barbara and LA and Sansum Diabetes for making the past year possible. Thanks to my family and old friends in the Bay Area for making this such a fun summer. It’s been wild.