Archive for the '[MNR]' Category

[2009.10.12] Monday Night Recap
- October 12, 2009 -

• [The Office] HILARIOUS!  The 1-hour wedding episode this past Thursday was absolutely hilarious.  The JK Wedding Dance topped it all off at the end too!  I’m very impressed with the consistency of the show, as well as how they stay current with what’s going on.
• [Fall TV] My current line-up right now (that I catch up on Hulu) is Modern Family, Glee, and The Office.  If I’ve got some free time, that I’m working in Lie To Me and Community, but I’m not currently sold on those two yet.  The wife has a whole different line-up: Private Practice, Grey’s Anatomy, Brothers & Sisters, and Desperate Housewives.  Lucky for me, She also enjoys Modern Family and The Office, so we at least get 2 shows that we watch together.  :)  If you could pare down this list, though, what shows would you cut out?  Or what shows are we missing out on?
• [My Best Friend's Wedding] Well, it was more my wife’s best friend, but this past weekend we celebrated the wedding of our close college friends, Ekta and Digesh, at the Waterfold in Elmhurst, IL.  My wife and I were the first two in our group of friends to get married 2 months ago (wow, it’s been 2 months already?!), and these two were the 2nd.  Come next year, we’ll have another 2 couples joining us as well!  Goodness we’re getting old.  But I digress.
  I got to attend this wedding as a guest, which was great because I was able to really get to learn and understand many of the details of the Hindu wedding ceremony from a different view.  It’s so fascinating to see all the different rituals and traditions that take part in it – one reason why I love cultural ceremonies!  My wife was there from the beginning with the ‘mehndi‘ on Thursday night, then I got to attend the ‘garba‘ on Friday followed by the full day of the ceremony and reception on Saturday.  I started Saturday at the ‘jaan’ on the groom’s side, where he is brought in by horse to the hall.  The whole time the ‘dhol‘ players keep rhythm while everyone is dancing away- such a celebration!  When they reach the hall, the bride’s elders are there to receive him.  Again, its an amazing wedding where the entire community takes part.  Here are a few pics taken with my trusty G10 during the ‘jaan’ and a look at the ‘mandap‘ from the ceremony (in need of a mandap?  let me know, my friend’s the guy who put this one together).  I’m definitely looking forward to actually having the honor to shoot more of these traditional ceremonies in the near future :)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• [Fantasy Football] We’re finishing up week 5 in my FF league, and I’m currently in third overall (though that will drop barring an amazing performance by Ronnie Brown on MNF…im losing by 40 points).  Like last year, before each week I post my predictions for who will win each matchup.  Going into this weekend’s games, I was an amazing 14-4 on my picks, but this week I might be 1-5 to bring things closer to even.  I had a rough week with a bunch of studs on a bye, but I’m fine with getting the L out of the way now and finishing strong moving forward.
• [iamsecond] I stumbled upon this site over a year ago, and it was such an inspiration.  From a creative standpoint, the entire concept and cinematography grabbed me and pulled me in.  Even deeper though, the stories and testimonies of all these people ring as a constant reminder to me.  It’s good for me to go back there every now and then and just get reminded of what my purpose is and where my strength came from, and what my position truly is.  I was listening to Pete Briscoe’s story and one line he said that jumped at me was “it’s exhausting having to succeed.“  His focus and drive was simply to succeed and be the best, and wore himself out.  How many of us have that drive to be the “best”…but for what?  I need to daily remind myself that my desires need to be driven by purpose, and constantly accept and cling to my role as “second”.
• [The Blender] For those who followed me for awhile, you probably remember I was doing a little video blogging earlier in the year, and it sort of went on hold for a bit as the madness of my own wedding started to take over and such.  But I’m still planning on putting more out there every now and then.  If you guys have any topics you want my view point on (photography, sports, life, religion, marriage, etc.) let me know!  I’d love to put out info that you people actually care about :)

be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.

natemathai | filed under: Personal, [MNR]
blender, ceremony, chicago, cinematography, fantasy football, hindu, iamsecond, jaan, mandap, photography, video, wedding

No Comments hide comments | add a comment

[2009.09.14] Monday Night Recap
- September 14, 2009 -

• [Da Bears] Wow, that was a rough one.  Cutler threw 4 picks (3 of which looked like he thought he was supposed to throw to Green Bay), Forte couldn’t really get anywhere, and to top it all of, Urlacher is out for the season.  But I won’t jump off the bandwagon just yet.   If there was an upside though, I’m pretty impressed with the speed of Johnny Knox.  And Devin Hester looks like a much better receiver than he did a year ago (though he still runs sideline to sideline on kick returns instead of end-zone to end-zone).
• [Fantasy] Seriously had a rough first week for my fantasy squad.  Every single player underperformed which basically lost it for me.  Here are some issues that I ran into:

1. Bernard Berrian has been out with a hamstring injury, so he has not practiced with Favre yet- he scored 0 points.
2. The Ravens D got me a total of 3 points…seriously?!
3. Adam Vinatieri didn’t even attempt a FG
4. it also didn’t help that I was going up against MJD, Tom Brady, and the Giants D the way they performed this weekend.

• [Budgeting] I’ve been using Mint.com for my personal money management for a few years now, and news just got out the Intuit bought it.  I’m still not sure how things will change yet- I’m not too fond of the Quicken online version, but their desktop software is great, so hopefully it blends beautifully.
• [Glee] The first season of Glee is FINALLY starting up.  For those who never heard of it, it pretty just follows high school students as they try to resurrect their Glee club, and they have some amazing cover songs already.  Definitely got it added to my hulu queue.  For the record, I’ve never been in any choirs or vocal groups (outside of the church choir that didn’t cut anyone when I was trying out, and an acappella group that I helped start), but this definitely made me wish I could sing iwth others again.  Oh well!
• [Kanye] Seriously?  The man puts out hits like none other, but his VMA stunt was a bit immature, if you ask me (yet on point with what we’ve seen from Kanye in the past).
• [Picture] You want one?  Check yesterday’s post from the weekend wedding!  :)

be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.

natemathai | filed under: [MNR]
chicago wedding photographers

No Comments hide comments | add a comment

[2009.09.07] Monday Night Recap
- September 7, 2009 -

• [Labor Day] Happy Labor Day!  Did you know the holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes?  Wikipedia has all the info! :)
• [Grill Off] Today I had a Labor Day lunch at my sister’s place, which was more than just a lunch.  We held a special grill-off between my brother-in-law, brother-in-law’s brother, and my dad.  Their job was to make burgers- starting with just ground beef, they seasoned and and designed their dishes as if they were competing a Top Chef.  The real joy: myself and my other brother-in-law were the judges!  Our burgers were specially made and plated, as they were going to be judged based on 3 criteria: Presentation, Taste, and Originality.  When all was said and done, my brother-in-law came away the big winner.  Looking forward to judging more of these events in the future. :)





• [Wedding Pics] Remember how 3 weeks ago I got married?  And last week I posted images from the honeymoon in Jamaica?  Well, it just keeps getting better because Kenny Kim just gave us our images this weekend!  I mean, seriously!?!  He is the man!  Big ups to Kenny, David Lai, and Abbie Carter for working with us and getting us some great images from the day- we are more than satisfied!  He’s posted a few on his blog and on facebook, so be sure to check it out!  You can see a slideshow of the images here, as well.
• [1frame] So I decided to start with another little personal project right now.  I call it “1frame“.  On my blog, in my galleries, up on facebook, I show so many images to tell the story of a day.  But to challenge myself and my creativity, I asked myself- ‘if I was limited to one frame and a few words, would I still be able to tell a good story?’  And that is what my goal is with “1frame”.  I want to continue telling a compelling story, but with fewer words and just one image.  So if you’d like to follow along on this little personal project, head over to my 1frame site: http://1frame.natemathai.com/ .

be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.

natemathai | filed under: [MNR], wedding
chicago wedding photographers

No Comments hide comments | add a comment

I’m Back!
- September 1, 2009 -

• [Vacation Complete] As most of you know, I got married this past August 15th, and so I took a break from photography for the month of August to give my attention to that.  I did take care of a few e-mails here and there, but that was about it.  I must say, it felt great to just let go of it all for 1 month, but I’m so excited to jump back in!  I start shooting again this coming weekend, and still have some shoots to edit/post and albums to design.  So clients, I’m back and ready to go!  I also finally have internet at my new place, so I’ll be much better at responding to inquiries and e-mails now, so keep ‘em coming. :)  I skipped a Monday Night Recap for the past few weeks, but this will be a long “Tuesday Morning Recap” instead.
• [Wedding] The wedding was great, but definitely flew by.  Massive amounts of props to Kenny Kim and his team for covering the event- he was up at around 4am with an early start at my wife’s place since we had a morning wedding, then pushed straight through the afternoon reception.  We’re so excited to see the images that he was able to capture that day, but now it’s just a waiting game.  He did post a quick teaser for us the day after the wedding, so here’s a pic of my beautiful bride during the ceremony:

  

  My wife told my I was not allowed to have my iPhone on me throughout the wedding, so once we were waiting at the church I gave it to my best man.  Prior to that, though, I was on twitter and fb all morning :)  Kenny actually tortured me a bit by twitpic’ing Nithya at her house, but specifically told me not to click the link- took a lot of self-control but I avoided it.
  We had a guest list of about 700 people, and to our surprise there were little to no issues!  Double props go to all our friends who coordinated the ceremony and reception without a hitch- we’ve been getting great feedback with how everything went that day, and it truly was because of all the help we got.  Thanks guys!  (you all know who you are)

• [Honeymoon] After a few days of family obligations and attempting to get settled, we headed out to Sandals in Montego Bay, Jamaica.  We got there right when tropical storm Bill left, so the first evening was a little dreary/cloudy, but everyday after that was beautiful!  We had a few cons with this location:  (1) being about 15 minutes from the airport, throughout the day you hear the planes taking off right over the resort- totally a mood killer when you’re trying to relax on the beach.  (2) a lot of the resort was constantly under construction; a main pool was never open, workers were always painting/cleaning different areas- just didn’t feel “finished”.  (3)  The room/beach was smaller than what we expected [but still great].  The internet just made it look so much bigger!  (4)  Some of the restaurants had meals on their menus that weren’t available.  Kind of a sad.
  Outside of those small things, it was great.  The service was amazing, we had our room cleaned like 3 times a day, the food was satisfying, beaches were nice, activities were a blast…what more could you ask for?!  The two main excursions we did were zip lining and riding the dune buggies through Jamaica. Both were amazing experiences. We also went tubing and (attempted) kayaking in the ocean. If you want more details on it, hit me up! Here’s a short glimpse at some of the images we captured from our 5 days there.  You can see more on my facebook page (personal, not fan page). Oh, and all images are taken on my new Canon G10- definitely my new favorite piece of gear!

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  They also had a live cultural show every night, and this one group blew us away! They were steel drums group, and they just played pop covers songs throughout the night. They had so much energy and were amazing, I was surprised with how many songs they did! Here’s a video of them doing Rhianna’s Disturbia on the steel drums…a bit long, but they start dancing at the end…

• [Getting Settled] Since coming back, we’ve been in a constant state of ‘getting settled’.  Many errands to run, a lot of details to set up at the condo, and responsibilities of meals with relatives now that we are married are taking up our time a lot, so things have been very busy.  In total, we’ve got almost all the major things we need taken care of to finally have a comfortable place to live.  The main thing now is I need to get an office desk and a comfortable office table- that’s the one unfinished room.  So if you are still thinking of getting us a wedding gift, something along those lines would be great! :)
• [Internet] One of the toughest things for us was not having internet at our place immediately.  It was one of those tasks that never got accomplished pre-wedding, so it was delayed until after the honeymoon.  After thinking long and hard, we decided that we would only get internet service, as my wife isn’t much of a TV watcher to begin with.  It was a tough call for me, as there some staple shows for me (sports on ESPN, CSN, TNT, America’s Best Dance Crew, Lie To Me…) that I won’t be able to catch anymore, but I figured I’d give it a shot.  Instead, I’ve set up a boxee/hulu/mediacenter box connected to the TV, so we’ll see how this works out.
• [Repurposing] First, I took a really old HP desktop (late 90’s) I had, completely wiped it clean, then just put an OS on it and connected my printer/scanner to it in the office.  I set this one up as a print server so we can run any print jobs through it from wherever we are at (my wife appreciates it).  I also set up a network drive for all scan jobs so they are available on all computers.  Little things like this make life so much more efficient.
  Then I took my old Vaio desktop (early 00’s), put Hulu and Boxee on it, and connected it to my TV.  I still have quite a few files/folders on there I need to backup, but this will soon become our media center.  I need to transfer all our audio files to it, and then it will be the hub for all audio/video.  If I start hosting clients over, I’ll have a direct link for client images for easy viewing on the big screen as well!  The hulu/boxee setup allows us to now catch up on cable shows, just a day or so after it airs.  This definitely will make not having cable internet easier.  So far, so good.  The only main issue now, is that I only get live sports on CBS, NBC, ABC, WGN, FOX…I get most bears games, but now only a handful of Cubs/Bulls games.  And no more World Series of Poker.  I digress, I think I’ll be able can handle it.
  Oh, I also brought along my old NES.  That’s right, the original Nintendo Entertainment System.  I went vintage with my entertainment.  I need to buy another controller and maybe pick up a few games here and there, but you can never get enough of the classics!
• [ABDC] Last night, the wife and I caught up on America’s Best Dance Crew (through MTV.com, as it’s not on Hulu).  I haven’t been as vocal about this season as in years past for 2 reasons: (1) I was too busy with wedding planning/marriage/honeymoon that I never really had time and (2) the crews this year are terrible.  Terrible might be a gross overstatement, but compared to the last 3 seasons, none of these crews jump out at me as being extremely creative and on point.  The two that I like the most are Rhythm City and Massive Monkees- but again, I haven’t been blown away by them.  Hopefully in future episodes, these crews will step up their game.
• [Fantasy Football] It’s that time of the year again!  This past Thursday, my friends held our Fantasy Football draft- 12 teams, 1 winner. I didn’t fair too well last year, but I’m feeling better about my squad now, as I was actually able to be at the draft.  What do you think of my current squad?
  QB:  Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers, Mark Sanchez
  RB:  Pierre Thomas, Ronnie Brown, Tim Hightower, Leon Washington
  WR: Calvin Johnson, Bernard Berrian, Chris Chambers, Justin Gage, Jabar Gaffney
  TE:  Visanthe Shiancoe
  K: Adam Vinatieri
  Def:  Baltimore Ravens
• [Cici's] Ever heard of Cici’s Pizza?  They do $4.99 pizza buffet- all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad, soup, dessert.  Drinks are an additional $1.79.  They just opened one up about 10 minutes from my place, so I dragged my wife with me to stand in line for the grand opening!  we got there about 30 minutes early, and the line was already huge (first 100 people got a free lunch buffet once a month for a year).  I started to lose heart but we did stay in line until the end…

  
  
  

  And for a $5 buffet, it’s good food!  I’ll definitely be there once a month (not sure if the wife likes it as much as I do, though…)

be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.

natemathai | filed under: Personal, [MNR], wedding
chicago wedding photographers, Personal

No Comments hide comments | add a comment

[2009.08.03] Monday Night Recap
- August 3, 2009 -

• [Wedding Planning] Yep, that’s pretty much where all my time has gone.  I have nothing else to write about, so sorry if you were expecting more :) It’s less than 2 weeks away, though, before I’ll officially be considered a “husband”. Doesn’t that sound crazy?!?!
• [Still Editing] Though I’m done with shooting until after the wedding, I’m still working hard to get past shoots edited and posted.  Don’t think I forgot about you all! :)  So here’s another tease of the last two shoots that I’ve been working on…they should *hopefully* be hitting the blog soon:

{Alphy + Sony : Wedding}



{Rolly + Ben : E-Session}

be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.

natemathai | filed under: Couples Lifestyle Sessions, [MNR], wedding

No Comments hide comments | add a comment