Kathleen McGivney

Chinese Garden in Vancouver

Lantern, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

Last year, we visited Vancouver for a friend's wedding. I'd been to Vancouver once before, but only for business, and hadn't really explored at all. We got a chance to do a little exploring while we were there, but the highlight was at the wedding reception venue - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

The garden is the first complete classical Chinese garden to be built outside China (and, we were told, the only complete garden of its kind in North America). It is a re-creation of a Ming Dynasty-era scholar's private residence. While we were at the wedding reception, it was too dark to tour the entire space, but the woman who runs the garden asked us to come back the next day for a private tour. She showed us around the garden and explained the different elements that are present in the garden and what they represent. She also gave us a colorful history lesson about life in China in the Ming era. It was an interesting glimpse into Chinese history and a beautiful, calm space to spend time in.

You can find a few more photos of the garden here.

Adventures in closet cleaning

After living in L.A. for a number of years, I decided to move back to NYC in early 2006, but I kept my L.A. apartment. I was bi-coastal for a while (with roommates, so neither place was sitting empty while I was traveling), then I was subletting my L.A. place, and now a new person is moving in. A new person moving in means that I not only have to have a bunch of household things fixed, I have to get rid of all of my useless crap, whether that means moving it to NYC, giving it away, or tossing it out. So, I've been in Los Angeles for a few days while I rid my old apartment of the crap I had in the storage closet. During the days, I have been working remotely while monitoring the contractors that have come in and out to fix various things, and during the evenings I've been cleaning out my closets. So far, some of the things I've found have been:

- A limited edition, signed CD single of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi is Dead" from their 1998 Resurrection tour
- My high school diploma
- My childhood immunization records (!)
- A Freemason's watch
- Three rosaries
- My test score from my first Notes R4 certification exam (86%, FYI. Scores on subsequent tests were higher)
- My California driver's license from 1993, with its giant red "turns 21 in 1995" stamp on it
- A Thinkpad 600X, along with its recovery disks
- A package of weightlifting gloves with a pre-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger on the label
- My first passport application
- Seven different Linux variants on CD
- A lot of old photos of me, all somewhat mortifying in one way or another

Of course, because I like to humiliate myself on the internet, I'll probably post some of the more goofy-looking photographs here once I get them scanned. But for now, it's back to closet cleaning.

Camera collection

Leica R, originally uploaded by Atom Moore.

Recently, we had a loaner of a Hasselblad H3DII, which is a high-end medium format digital SLR. My husband took the opportunity to use it to document our entire camera collection. He set up a little mini-studio on our dining room table and got to shooting. Now that I have recovered from the seizures I had from the dozens of times the flash fired, I thought I'd share them.

This photo is of two of my film SLRs. (Yes, I still shoot film sometimes. I'm super retro.) The one on the left is a limited-edition Leica R3 Safari with a matching 50mm f2 Summicron lens, made in the late '70s. The one on the right, taking an unauthorized nap break, is a Leica R4, the R3's successor, with a 100mm f4 macro lens. Both are manual focus cameras but have exposure meters and both manual and automatic exposure modes.

The rest of our collection can be seen here.

Los Angeles light

Teale, Los Angeles, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

One of the reasons why I loved my loft in L.A. is because it has northern exposure, which creates some very lovely soft light at almost every time of the day. This shot was taken in the late afternoon as our friend Teale sat in the window seat. She is looking west towards downtown.

Taken with the Hasselblad H3DII with an 80mm lens.

Sunday, in a Manhattan

Playing dominoes with friends on an overcast, lazy Sunday.

Wedding, part one: wedding planning ninja

It's been a month now since the wedding, so I figured it's about time that I wrote up a wedding recap. Unlike a lot of my friends that I've spoken to, I oddly remember quite a bit about my wedding, probably because I was so heavily involved in planning it, and because many of my friends blogged or Twittered the details, so they're on the internets for all eternity to help jog my memory. In any case, I start with part one: wedding planning ninja.

I'm a planner. I love planning things and being really organized, so when I set out to plan a 150-guest wedding in NYC in 5 months' time, I really didn't think it would be much of a challenge. And some parts of it weren't - in fact, most of the actual wedding stuff was easy as pie. It was coordinating the travel of a large percentage of the guests that took a lot of time and effort. I'd estimate that 75% of our guest list was coming from out of town, and a good portion of those had never been to the city before. I ended up negotiating and helping many of them book their hotel and travel reservations (again, something I love to do, as I am a travel ninja, but it was very time-consuming).

In the days leading up to the wedding, everything was running smoothly. Our friends had started to arrive - first, my daughter and her parents, then my best friend/bridesman and one of Atom's best friends. We had a full house for part of the week, and even though we had some last-minute things to do, we were still able to relax and spend time with our friends and family leading up to the wedding, which was nice and took my mind off the fact that American Airlines had grounded 300 of its planes, canceling hundreds of flights a few days before my wedding. Luckily, though almost every single one of our out-of-town guests who flew in flew on American, only a handful of the flights were affected. Unluckily, the people who were affected were my mother, my grandmother (who was slated to walk me down the aisle), my uncle (who was the minister officiating the wedding), and his son (who was the "team captain" of the ring bearers). So, you know. Awesome!

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

While we were in Florence, we went to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, otherwise known as the Duomo. (The word Duomo is a general term for an Italian church, so you will see many references to Duomos all over Italy.) Though it is beautiful and has a wonderful architectural history, much of its artwork and statues have been moved to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Duomo Museum) across the street. In this museum, we found many of the statues that are included in the Creepy Statues set, but this one stood out.

Made of polychromed white poplar wood and completed around 1455, this statue is one of Donatello's most striking pieces. The sculpture was captivating - Mary Magdalene made to look emaciated and nearly toothless, clad in tattered clothing and with ratty long hair, yet still raising her hands in prayer, she is a mix of desperation and hope. I was fascinated by this sculpture and decided that my images should focus on her hands since they appeared to be the strongest part of her.

Taken with a Canon 5D and a Lensbaby.

Wii-kend update

This weekend, we had some out-of-town guests come in for the NYC tattoo convention. We headed over there for a little while and met up with a few friends, but it was a bit crowded for my taste, so I bailed out early. Fortunately, our guests were able to stay the weekend, so we spent the rest of the time eating great food (with the obligatory trip to our favorite restaurant, Lan, for some tasty sushi and some Kobe beef tongue*) and wandering around to various toy stores looking for a particular collectible piece our friend was looking for (with no success).

Today, my husband went out and picked up House of the Dead 2 and a Wii Fit. So far, only Atom has had time to play either since I was on approximately one million conference calls today. I was able to watch him set up the Wii Fit during a half-hour respite from eternal phone-holding - I desperately need a headset for my home office - and it looks like it will be a really fun addition to the Wii. Of course, I'm fairly uncoordinated and klutzy so I'm sure my little Mii character will suffer a lot of injuries as I get used to it. (Or I will.)

This week, I plan to upload some more photos in the evenings, as my days are fairly full of the aforementioned conference calls. Perhaps if I have a long enough break between them I will pop out and pick up a headset. Without one, I either have to go with the speakerphone (no good when the cats are meowing, though I'm sure their contributions are appreciated) or hold the phone to my ear (which causes me to have an inquisitive, tilted-head look, much like Nipper, the RCA dog - a look that suited him much better than it does me).

I also have some more medical tests scheduled in what seems like a never-ending barrage of examinations that have gotten my doctor no closer to figuring out what the hell is wrong with me. My doctor promised that after these next two appointments and the minor outpatient surgery I need to have next month that I won't have to come back and see him for at least six months, but I'm not buying it. However, hopefully I will have some interesting photos of my innards to show you all in a few days. I know you can't wait, but try to contain yourselves.

* don't make the obvious cowlick joke. It's only funny with a LOT of sake.

Sandal weather!

See, I told you I couldn't stop buying shoes.

The family that shoots together, stays together

My husband and I are very much into photography (in case you couldn't tell already). He is a professional photographer who has just returned to freelancing after working for a pro rental house. I'm a hobbyist, but a pretty serious one. We share cameras and lenses, made easier by the fact that we both use the same SLR system (Canon). So, when we go on vacation, we don't just hit up the typical tourist spots and take posed photos - we walk around, soak in the beauty of wherever we happen to be, and take photos of whatever catches our eye.

And of course, sometimes we take photos of each other. Taking photos. Observe:

We took these of each other in the elevator inside the Duomo Museum in Florence. Atom is using a Sigma DP-1, a fixed-lens, wide-angle compact camera that uses the Foveon X3 sensor. (It doesn't normally have a viewfinder on the top; he attached a 28mm Voigtlander viewfinder to the hotshoe.) I am using a Canon EOS 5D SLR with a Lensbaby, which is a hybrid of a tilt-shift and a bellows lens that allows the photographer to create a selective focus effect. I use Lensbabies to create images like the creepy statue, and of course, the one of Atom above.