About
Born in money earnin' Mt. Vernon, NY and raised primarily in Scarsdale by my Korean immigrant parents which makes me a 1st generation Korean-American from NY. My first few years were in K-town: Flushing, Queens and my only memories of that were walking down to the corner store with my grandma to buy those plastic eggs with little dinky toys in them from a vending machine. Went through the chichi school system [K-12] relatively unscathed. I went down to DC for three years for college at American University. I just couldn't take it down there so I moved back to the 'burbs of NY to finish up college at SUNY Purchase. While finishing up school, I landed a primo job at Spring Street Networks as an account manager for their online personals service… until I [and 20% of the firm] was canned.
After months of being out of school and hopping from temp job to temp job, I moved down to Philadelphia; to start anew, fresh, in a new city for a new future in May of 2005.
I immediately landed a job at Philadelphia Weekly as a sales rep and hacked at that for a year, then I quit. I just couldn't take that anymore. My last day as a paid PW employee was April 15, 2005. I did document control / database stuff for a large general contractor out in West Philly for a little over a year until I got a new gig at the end of August 2006. I earned my paycheck from a relatively new non-profit called PhillyCarShare for the next year in their marketing department. Things didn't go as peachy as I would've liked and now, I'm no longer there. I'm currently freelancing as a photographer [portfolio].
To backtrack a bit, in December of 2002, I sent a message to a pretty young lady using SSN's service and many moons later, she replied. We played Dr. Mario, we ate poppers and we've had many adventures. She's still by my side and we're still chugging along, one state at a time. She's my buddy, she's my foil, she's (as Will Ferrell would say) my lovaaaah.
And unless otherwise noted, all the photography on the site is from yours truly. If you'd like me to take some photos for you, a friend or an event, just go ahead and ask, I'm a freelance photographer available for hire. You can see Philly as I see Philly on my photoblog.
I'm part of the team behind the scenes over at Philly Future, a citizen journalism site covering Philadelphia. Me and that very special Lady have also joined forces on a foodie blog: Messy and Picky so head on over and read up on some of Philly's eateries. I'm also a front page poster at Booman Tribune, a huge online community of progressives with members all across the world.
The story behind the name dragonballyee: In college, I used to have gigantic hair, about 4" long, which was gel'd like Yamcha from the Japanime Dragonball Z. So, that was my nickname. It just kinda stuck. The hair's all buzzed off now, but I do have the pictures to prove it once existed. It is [as of 9/05] growing out right now, for how long, nobody knows [Buzzed it again mid-11/05 and it's been buzzed since].
And no, that house in my header is not where I live. It's just a house I took a picture of on an exceptionally nice day while walking around South/20th Sts.
And below are my ego links. Some links may die behind a wall or expirations over time. Sorry.
Messy and Picky / dragonballyee PHOTOS / Photo Portfolio
Me and Lady in the City Paper for the food blog
Me in Daily News about Fumo & blogs
Me in Metro on Philly youth movement
Featured blog in Philadelphia Metro - profile
Me in Daily News on Philly Politics
Me in CP on Culture/Pizza
My Photo in the Daily Penn of PSP
Me in CP on Sony PSP
Inky - Live 8 / Blinq - Live 8
Me in the London Independent
Inky - Seth Williams
Candelight Vigil: AFSC
Me in CP: On W
This is Broken - Old Navy Sign
This is Broken - Burrito Claim
Me on ESPN Page2
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Camera Wishlist
