Las Vegas Wedding Photographer Emily Ku

Welcome to my blog and please take a look at my galleries above! I love capturing memories with my camera and I drag my camera almost everywhere with me. I love getting to know people and showcasing their personalities in amazing photos!

I am a portrait and wedding photographer who resides in Las Vegas. Every once in a while, I'll documenting my travels and my life on the blog.

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(photo by Binita Patel Photography)

Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Happy Holidays!

December 25, 2011

Wow, time flies! I can’t believe it’s the end of the year already and that we’re going to be ushering in the New Year next week! I am spending Christmas at my in-laws in Chicago this year and we’re having a blast so far. I hope everyone is staying warm!

This is my first time actually designing our own holiday card, and I was able to mail them all out a few days before Christmas, phew! Here’s how they turned out (they were printed on a flat card front and back) and the photo is from our anniversary shoot with Shang Chen Photography.

I saw this cute penguin photo ornament at Michael’s on sale after Christmas last year and I had to get it. I love buying ornaments after Christmas but you have to wait a whole year before you can use them! I get so excited about the holidays that I put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving…I would feel wrong putting it up any earlier. Yes, we have a fake tree. While I love the smell of a real tree, the air is so dry in the desert here that I’m afraid that a real tree wouldn’t last very long. My dream is to one day go to visit a Christmas tree farm and actually pick out a tree!

My husband and I are making another rare appearance on this blog! He doesn’t like getting his picture taken but I was able to convince him to take a photo with me after a Christmas party we attended. I hardly ever get my hair done for a special occasion (thanks to Daileny for my fabulous updo!) so I needed to document this! I bought a new Manfrotto tripod a few weeks ago and I finally had a chance to use it. I am seriously in love with it and taking pictures with it is a breeze!

Tags: Christmas, holidays
Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »

Retro portrait session – SMUG group shootout

November 9, 2011

Las Vegas has a very vibrant photographer community, and I am very grateful to be a part of it. Smugmug sponsors a monthly photographer group co-lead by Yasmin Tajik of Shalimar Studios and Scott Bourne, a legendary photographer. As a bonus, Scott is always giving away free stuff at meetings, and this time I won a Honl snoot/reflector for my speedlight. It is a bit flimsy to use as a reflector, and I prefer to use my Demb reflector instead, but Honl is handy if I ever need a snoot.

This month Yasmin and Scott organized a phenomenal shoot-out at one of the dry lake beds outside of Las Vegas. About 40 of photographers got together and took turns shooting Olivia and Kady, our beautiful models. They were amazing even though it was fairly hot outside and very sunny! Here are a few images from the shoot:

Tags: dry lake bed, Las Vegas photographer, pin up, Portraits
Posted in Lifestyle/Portraits, Personal | No Comments »

Weekend in Sedona

November 3, 2011

I’m finally blogging some personal pics! At the beginning of the summer, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary in Sedona, Arizona. I think it only took us about 4 hours to get there from our house. We had such a relaxing time there. I love spending time outdoors but when I am in Vegas, I feel like I am always too busy on the weekends to go hiking and spend time with nature. Sedona has really nice weather and isn’t as hot as Vegas. We were able to eat outdoors for a few of our meals and enjoy the breathtaking views of Red Rock Country.

We did an ambitious hike of Cathedral Rock. The beginning part was really steep and a little slippery. I was super scared and actually climbed back down after 10 minutes of climbing. It was too hard of a hike for me. There was nothing for me to hold onto, plus I brought my big DSLR, so the weight of it made me a little lopsided. I felt really bad going back down but my husband was very understanding and said we could hike an easier trail. As we were going back down, I see a guy holding a baby AND a DSLR coming down the trail, which triggered something in me. I thought, if this guy can climb Cathedral Rock with his baby and his camera, then I can do it too. So I told my husband that I am going to give it another shot. We went up the rock a different way and found it to be a little easier.

We made it to the top of Cathedral Rock! There was another couple that made it to the top just before us, and they started walking along the edge! OMG super scary!

Sedona is a very wealthy town and the houses in Sedona are ridiculously huge. Like this mansion with its own observatory. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, not all mansions that we saw were this big, but they were still very impressive.

It’s strange but I rarely see cacti in Las Vegas. There are much more different kinds of cacti in Arizona.

We went to a wildlife park near Sedona, but it was extremely windy the day we went and sand kept getting into my eyes.

We passed by the Cocinono National Forest on the way home and was a welcome surprise in the desert. I can’t wait to go back to Sedona one of these days!

Tags: hiking, Las Vegas photographer, Sedona, Travel
Posted in Personal, Travel | No Comments »

Red Rock Canyon :: my favorite park in Vegas

January 18, 2011

Red Rock Canyon is just ten minutes away from my home in Las Vegas or about forty minutes from the Strip. It is a hidden gem that is often overshadowed by its big brother, the Grand Canyon, which is just a few hours away. But Red Rock Canyon is totally different from the Grand Canyon, and I always encourage people to go to both when they visit Las Vegas! Most people don’t usually leave the Strip, so few actually know that there is a lot of great outdoors stuff to do here. I love Red Rock so much that I bought an annual pass because I want to do lots of hiking with my husband and anyone else that wants to go! I had several guests/family visit us during the holidays, so naturally I took them to Red Rock, and they loved it! One thing I recommend is that you wear good shoes because the trails can be quite steep and there are loose pebbles.

I took this panoramic when the sun was just starting to set, so you can see there is a sunny spot where the sun broke through the clouds. Breathtaking right?

These shots were taken on two different days, so that’s why this picture look a bit sunnier than the last one. But don’t be deceived! It was really cold and I had to bust out my gloves! We had record lows over New Year’s and the temperature was in the 30s.

It’s hard to tell on this panoramic because I had to shrink it down, but in person, you can see the lights from Las Vegas Boulevard. It is just beyond the red rock. If you look really closely in the picture, you can see a tiny yellow round dot. This is a really nice spot to watch the sun set over Las Vegas.

If anyone wants to do a shoot at Red Rock with me–couples shoot, engagement shoot, trash the dress..anything, I am up for it! It’ll be a ton of fun!

Tags: Las Vegas, Las Vegas photographer, Nature, Red Rock canyon
Posted in Nature, Personal | 5 Comments »

Across America in 3 days

November 27, 2010

I’m thankful for a lot of things this year. It’s been a really amazing year, and a lot has happened. The biggest change is that now we’re living on the other side the country. But strangely, my life on the East Coast seems so long ago, even though it’s only been a month.

3,000 miles is a LOT of miles! I’ve never done such a long road before, but I thought it would be really fun. Now that we’ve done it though, I am okay with not doing it again. We managed to drive across the US in 3 days, so each day was like 16-17 hours of driving..but we did take a break in Chicago to visit my in-law’s. I would have liked to stretch it out, but we had so many valuables in the car, I was a little scared to leave our car unattended. Also, we didn’t want to lose any time stopping, so all my pictures are taken from the car. Please excuse the dirty windshield! We washed the windshield every time we filled up for gas, but it was still crazy to see how many bugs got killed on our windshield.

My car hit 100,000 miles about 5 minutes away from my in-law’s house. Of course I had to celebrate by taking a photo.

So close to our destination! I commented how lucky we were that we didn’t hit any traffic, but I spoke too soon. In our 17th hour of driving, we hit bumper to bumper traffic in suburban Chicago because of road repaving. Booo.

Reflection of a skyscraper in downtown Chicago.

On our second day of driving, we crossed the Mississippi River. I used to live in Louisiana where the Mississippi is the color of mud, so I am not used to seeing the Mississippi River all clear and blue!

Then for the next 10 hours, we saw nothing but this:

Colorado has amazing geography, but the roads are very windy and a little scary to drive on. I’m glad we drove through here during the day.

We’re at the same elevation as the clouds!

The plateaus in Utah are simply beautiful, especially at sunset.

So now we are in our new apartment, and I am still trying to get settled in. It’s really nice to finally have a place Frank and I can call home for the next few years! Viva Las Vegas!

Posted in Personal, Travel | 1 Comment »

White Mountains trip

June 2, 2010

We decided to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Being Memorial Day weekend, we didn’t want to travel anywhere where we would be stuck in a lot of traffic, so the White Mountains were perfect because most people were heading on either I-95 or Mass Pike and not I-93. The mountains are part of the Appalachian mountains and are really beautiful, especially in the fall when the leaves change color. I was tempted but I did not lug my big prof camera with me because I didn’t want to hike with it, so these are taken with my point-and-shoot and my smaller DSLR.

Frank likes adventure type stuff, so I surprised him by booking a canopy tour, also known as a zipline tour at the Bretton Woods ski resort, and they operate year round. We had 8 people in our group and it took about 3 hours to go through 10 ziplines, 3 rappels, and 2 sky bridges. I am not really fond of heights but I thought it would be a neat way to see the White Mountains. Finishing the course was a major accomplishment for me!! Thankfully it was not a very windy day because you are on these tiny platforms up to 180ft above ground, so any breeze sways the platform back and forth.

The first half of our group was very adventurous and jumped up and down the whole time they were on the sky bridge to make it sway a lot. I asked my group if we could just walk normally and they were really nice about not getting crazy.

Yes that is me!

This one was the longest and highest at 800ft long and 180ft above ground. As I was zipping above all the trees, I felt like I was a bird!

The view from one of the zipline stations.

There were 3 rappels, and this was by far the highest. It looks scarier than it really is, but then again, I didn’t look down the whole time I was descending.

Then the next day we went hiking and visited some of the waterfalls in the White Mountains. There are a lot of really great hiking trails to choose from! We accidentally did a hard one (you may want to consult a tour book to figure out which trails are easy, moderate, or hard), and were pretty tired afterwards.

Tags: Bretton Woods, canopy tour, New Hampshire, waterfalls, White Mountains, zipline
Posted in Personal, Travel | No Comments »

A night out in Boston

May 10, 2010

My aunt gave me some Red Sox tickets for the second game of the season. They played the Yankees that night, so it was a full house and a very fun game to attend! Unfortunately Frank was actually out of town that day, so I brought my friend Sandy. Our seats were pretty good, but with her awesome connections, we were able to sit somewhere even better–in the first row of the Green Monster! It’s a great view of the field, and there was no one in front of me, so I could get a clear view from the field (the picture on the top left was taken from my original seat).

View of the stands from the Green Monster.

I am not one of those die hard Sox fans, so maybe one of my readers can tell me if this guy is the coach. It was a very close game (tied until the 9th inning), so perhaps is he praying for a win.

Okay, I actually took these pictures on a different night, but I wanted to put all my Boston photos together. I went on night photowalk with some friends. It was really fun! I’ve always wanted to take pictures of night, but just never felt comfortable. We had a big group of people, so I wasn’t scared to lug around all my equipment in pitch darkness!

I took this somewhere in Cambridge, near Kendall Square.

The sky was a strange purplish color, and I bumped my ISO pretty high to capture the color. The streak of light on the right side is the subway car.

I really like the Leonard Zakim-Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but there are purple skylights illuminating it at night.

I was practicing my handheld skills and managed to take this without a tripod.

The Citgo sign at night. I like the reflections the sign makes on the Charles River.

Tags: Boston, Fenway, photo walk, Red Sox
Posted in Personal | 6 Comments »