One of the highlights of our month-long summer vacation in the Philippines is a side trip to Vietnam and Cambodia.

If there is one place in Southeast Asia that I’d gladly visit again, it would be Vietnam. There’s so many places especially in the northern region waiting to be explored.

It was nice to travel here without the kids, we were able to do a lot of things that we probably won’t dare do with the little ones around. Food was great yet affordable. Transportation was not an issue as there are a lot of options: renting a regular bicycle, motorbike and taking the bus or a metered taxi. Lodging was clean and cheap. Shopping! Shopping was great. I could spend a couple of days in Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh City looking for bargains. To sum it up:

I love Vietnam!

We went to Cambodia by bus: from Ho Chi Minh City to Pnom Penh and Siem Reap. Travel time which includes a 45 minutes stopover at the Vietnam-Cambodia border is approximately 14 hours.

Cambodia’s countryside reminds me so much of my hometown in the southern part of the Philippines, in Maguindanao.

Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, is certainly worth revisiting with the kids when they are much older.

Carla

While planning for the trip, the first thing that popped right out of my mind is what lenses would I bring? I thought that with all the walking and commute, carrying my primes and telephoto would be like covering a wedding everyday for a week. Thus my decision to bring one zoom and nothing more, I brought my flash but didn’t get to use it and was mostly left in the hostels.

There were a few times I wish I had my 70-200 for people shots and my 1.4/1.2′s for those really low light situations. But most of the time I was happy with the zoom I brought and my back and shoulders were really happy about it too. One of the reasons, I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, ‘shooting light‘.

As a sidenote, I’ve added a new Google +1 Button opposite the facebook like. Feel free to experiment and give it a go.

Vince

I started the new year doing something refreshing; a pregnancy photo shoot. The last time I did this was with Carla. I will always remember that we almost didn’t do it. At the last stage of pregnancy, you’ve got a lot of things in mind and taking the time to do this could easily become the least among your priorities. Now, whenever I get a glimpse of the photos we did, I feel glad we took the time to do it.

This is Leslie and Peter’s ‘first pregnancy’ and I hope that they will feel as glad as I did when they see the photos.
Vince

We didn’t think we’d be doing another baby shoot, until a friend from work approached us for her baby’s photos..Although a bit apprehensive for the shoot considering the experience we had with jacob like ‘accidents’ that required several diaper changes; mikaela was just irresistible..

And it wasn’t as difficult as we expected..For a first time mom, Giselle was the calmest and most patient..

Special thanks to lisa for helping us out.

Carla

Although we were already in photography when Isabella was born, we realized that we didn’t get any formal and stylized photo of her. An oversight, that we vowed not do again. It was always in the back of our minds, but we didn’t do the maternity photos up until two days before Carla’s scheduled c-section.

As for the newborn shoot, our target was to do it on his 2nd week so we can capture him sleeping in a fetal position. Jacob was almost on his third week when he took his photo, he was showing signs of slowly stretching out of it. The exercise, turned out harder than I imagined. You really need a lot of patience and I guess the skill to know a newborn’s temperament. A task that I couldn’t imagine doing again. I now have nothing but sincere admiration for photographers who do this for a living.

And yes, Jacob kept us busy the latter part of last year. We kinda went on a short hiatus. Now we have adjusted and with a renewed fervor to shoot weddings.

Looking back, I’m glad we did what we did for Jacob. We know he’s gonna treasure them when he grows as old as we are now.

Vince
PS. I did another newborn shoot for one of Carla’s friend. Armed with our previous experience, it was easier, but still arduous. Plus the fact we had two more people helping me compared to our duo when we were photographing Jacob.