On Saturday afternoon I packed up my camera gear and took Mike along to San Francisco’s Chinatown. I’m currently taking a class on San Francisco’s history and I needed to get some pictures for a presentation.

I always felt that there are actually two Chinatowns in San Francisco: one for tourists and another one for locals. I wasn’t interested in the kitsch of Grant Street with its stylized Chinese architecture and plastic Buddhas. Instead, I headed to the place where locals spend their time: Stockton Street. We started by walking without the cameras up and down Stockton, adjoining alleys and peeking into the stores and grocery markets while listening and looking at the people. We tried to catch the spirit of Chinatown, to understand it a bit better.

I was hoping that people in this area are so used to crowds of tourists armed with all kinds of cameras that they wouldn’t mind me. It was a pretty busy afternoon and luckily not too many people took notice.

I especially liked the markets: they were so full of life! It was getting close to the end of the day and in efforts to sell off the remaining produce the store owners were lowering prices and putting fruits and vegetables on the sidewalks. These sellers were also yelling out what seemed to be names and prices. While being caught up in this experience it wasn’t hard to imagine myself actually being in China: there were smells of unknown exotic veggies, fruits, and all kinds of unrecognizable seafood.

Natasha

Among our friends, it became almost a tradition to go mushroom picking some time right before Thanksgiving holidays. This year was not an exception: we rented a big house and spent 3 fantastic days overlooking Bodega Bay.

Mushroom picking is extremely popular and widespread in Russia; people are both passionate and competitive about it. Back there people call it a “quiet hunt” – you get all the rush of real hunting without killing anything.

It was pretty warm but really foggy there. The fog would come in several times a day and every time it would be very sudden and unexpected. We would look out of the window and see the bay and only 15 minutes later everything would be plain white.

We spent our days hiking, cooking, playing music and naturally taking tons of photos.

Our view of Highway-1 from living room windows:

BBQ coals warming up:

Our friend Stefan and his mussels :)

Jamming:

A giant Porcini:

Natasha

Now that we’re finished with our last 2007 wedding we are greatly looking forward to the holidays as well as to relaxing a bit, having fun, and seeing our friends who haven’t seen us in ages since we’re always busy on the weekends.

But we wouldn’t want our blog readers to think that these winter months will be spent just in leisure: we’ll be finishing the designs and printing of your albums, shooting lots of engagement sessions, and networking with our favorite vendors. We also have fresh new ideas and projects which we’ve been keeping in our heads throughout the busy summer that we couldn’t yet share with you guys.

Now that we have more time we are eager to start working on all of this so stay tuned for exciting announcements soon!

Mike and Natasha