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Travis and Nina

Katie and I had a great weekend, we took a bunch of walks, which was not only great excerise, but just a great time to connect. My weekends have been so busy the last 6 months or so that having a free Saturday was GREAT! :) That night our good friends Amanda and Elijah came over and we got to hang out and just chat with them for a while. It was really good to just sit down and catch up with them, they're both such great people. I shot their wedding last July and I would have never guessed how good of friends Katie and I would have become with them since then. Elijah and I play try and play racquetball at least once a week and in fact Hani another groom whose wedding I shot in May has been coming out and joining us lately which has been so much fun. It's cool, cause Hani and his wife Katie have been becoming good friends of ours as well. I really never would never have throught that I would become friends with my past clients, but that has been perhaps the biggest surprise and also the biggest blessing of being in business.

Then last night I got to meet up with Travis and Nina, an awesome couple from Orange County who braved the traffic to come up to Santa Barbara. I got to hear a bit about their wedding and a little bit about their story. Travis is cousins with Brett (now married to Sara) I shot their wedding last August, you can see some of their pictures here .

And of course, we also got to go out and shoot some engagement pictures. Nina kept insisting that she wasn't photogenic, but I think the photos say otherwise. :)

It was so great to finally meet up with both of you guys, you guys rock!

Slideshows rock :)

I love shooting weddings and one of my favorite parts of the day for me is showing slideshows. We put them up cause the bride and groom love being able to see pictures that night, and in actuality it gets us a lot of our business as well, when engaged (or soon to be engaged) couples are at the wedding and they see the pictures we end up hearing from them later.

But one of the biggest reasons we do it is cause I like seeing the pictures too!! :) It's great to see the fruit of your labors so to speak. :)

Every once in a while someone will e-mail me asking me to do their wedding and then wondering how much of a discount I'll give if I don't do a slideshow....After I explain how easy it is (it usually takes about 15 mins to get it up and running) I tell them I would probably charge more not to do a slideshow. :)

I can't imagine shooting film and having to wait for the lab to send you back the proofs! Technology sure does make us impatient! :)

By the way to see the latest slideshow we just put online click HERE

The End of the Season...

Saturday marked the end of another fantastic season! Of all the weddings to do it with, Amy and Brandon's couldn't have been a better choice. I met Amy and Brandon for the first time in February when I shot their engagement session and knew right away their wedding was going to be amazing because of how cool they are. They are both such fun, positive, and energetic people to be around. (It figures they both met at their job working for the cable network Nickelodeon!)

Here's a few quick shots from their wedding...

Amy had one of the BEST dresses I've seen all year.



My ultimate goal in photographing people is to really capture a sense who they are in a single image. Amy has just such a great simple smile that really shows who she is.




I was lucky enough to have a little extra time to do some fun and creative stuff with Amy. Plus, being at the courthouse in Santa Barbara gives you such great architecture to play with. While I generally try to use all natural light as much as I can, I had fun experiementing with some off camera flashes with these shots.





This is one of my favorite images from this wedding. I love trying to capture things that I see at every wedding in a new way and I loved this shot of this bass player!



Again, this shot just tells so perfectly the kind of guy Brandon is. He's such a stud. :)

Windy City Wedding!

Yesterday my sister Jenna and I had a great time shooting Rachel and Ryan's wedding here in Barrington, IL. It was definetly the coldest wedding I've ever shot, but it was a ton of fun. Rachel and Ryan were such good sports and braved the cold to get some sweet shots.

It's so funny how connections are made, when I was in middle school Rachel's dad was my basketball coach! Her mom is still friends with my mom and that's how they found me. To make it even more strange, her twin brother Adam and I were in the same Russian class for 7 years (all through middle school and high school) and we went to Russia on an exchange program back in 1994. How strange is THAT?! I haven't seen this family for years, but it was so cool to be able to come back and be a part of their day. Congrats Rachel and Ryan, you guys were awesome! :)

Jenna grabbed this great images from Friday night's rehearsal



I loved this image of Rachel's engagement ring




Who says you can't get good shots in a dark church? :)



My friend DJ is famous for his "hill shots" where he puts a couple on a hill, and gets tons of negative space in the sky. As soon as we pulled into the country club and I saw all the little hills I knew I had to try to get a couple of my own hill shots in honor of my buddy. These aren't as cool as DJ's, but Ryan and Rachel liked 'em when they saw 'em on the slideshow! :)

BRRRR!

So I just got into Chicago Tuesday night for a wedding this weekend. I grew up back here and so it's fun being back. It's also about the best time to be here cause everything looks awesome in October. Generally, the weather is in the 50s or 60s around this time of year so I didn't even pack a coat.

It snowed yesterday. I'm freezing.

I'm used to shooting weddings in narly heat in southern CA, but I've never shot a wedding with weather in the 30s before. Hope it warms up for tomorrow!!

I'm also very excited about my sister joining me for this wedding! Jenna is in town from Colorado to come shoot with me. She's doing some great work at her school newspaper and wanted to get a taste of wedding photography, so I'm excited to have her along!



(Ok so it wasn't quite this much snow, but it did come down pretty hard!!) :)

Back to Bass Lake

Katie and I were back up in Bass Lake this weekend for what had to be perhaps the most beautiful outdoor wedding I've ever had the opportunity to be a part of. It seriously was like a photographer's dream, the most perfect location with the perfect lighting. To top it off Brett and Katelyn are two of the sweetest and most photogenic people I've probably ever come across. I usually include about 30 or 40 images in typical slideshow that I do at a reception and when we picked our initial favorites we had close to 100!!

The wedding was in a meadow up at Soquel, which is deep in the Serria mountains. The property is owned by our friends Steve and Sara who own YSSC , the summer camp that I try to make it up to once a year and shoot for.

Here are just a couple of the images from this weekend...












I was so glad that Katie got to come up with me to this wedding because she had never been to that area before. She got to meet a bunch of my camp friends who were up there and the next day we went into Yosemite Valley. Yosemite is one the most beautiful places I know of and even though I've been there probably 6 or 7 times I'm still blown away every time I go. We made the hike up Vernal Falls which has water flowing over it year round.

Here's a few shots from Yosemite...

It was cold...could you tell? (I think Katie was a bit more cold than me however!) :)








On our way back home we stopped at one of my favorite resturants on the planet. The Forks Burger. :) For those who have been up to Bass Lake you know what I'm talking about. We made it in perfect timing because this was the last day they would be open this year. They open back up in March. Katie had never been there before so I'm glad we were able to go. Even though the burgers there are great, it's really more of the atmopshere in there than the food. Can't wait to come back next year! :)

Congrats again Brett and Katelyn! You guys rock and I can't wait to get your pictures back to you!

The Hobby Part....

Another photographer asked a great question not long ago on a photographer's forum that I visit quite frequently. The question was this "what is photography for you? Your hobby? Your job? Your life? etc etc." I thought about it for a while, and I guess I realized when something is your hobby and then it becomes your job, it sorta ceases to be your hobby. By no means does that mean that I don't enjoy what I do, it just means that because I do it all the time, and I do it for a living, that it doesn't have that laid back quality that you often attribute to a hobby. It's rare that I go out and shoot for "fun", even though I have fun just about every time I go out and shoot. So I decided with this weekend being a weekend off for me in terms of weddings and also Westmont's homecoming that I would go and shoot a soccer game "for fun." Shooting sports has always seemed a bit more of a hobby for me, since I've never done it for income and because I really enjoy it a lot! When I was a student at Westmont I would shoot a lot of sports games for the yearbook and newspaper and it was one of my favorite things to shoot. I'm also always inspired by one of my good friend's Jerry Lai from high school who now shoots for US Newswire and Northwestern University. So, I decided to go out rent a 300 f2.8 and have some fun for the afternoon! :)






This is one of my mentors Brad who was there at the game. He's Westmont's campus photographer and one of best photographers that I know. He was my photo teacher in college as well as my boss for another job that I had for my four years at Westmont and I owe so much of what I know and my style to him not to mention the passion that I have for my craft. Brad is one of the hardest working people I know and yet he cares so much about people as well. He is a geniune artist and I look up to him in so many ways so I had to get him up here. :)





I couldn't stay for much of the girl's game unfortunately, but here's a cool goalie shot.

Carly and Jesse Rock!!

Ok, so believe it or not, I'm not dead! Just been incredibly busy, but I want to apologize for not updating this sooner! SO much has happened since I last wrote in, I've been all over CA (San Francisco, Orange County, Yosemite, Los Angles to name a few) as well as a quick trip out to Colorado to photograph a conference.

I'm really resolving to write in here at least twice a week so check back soon to keep me accountable!

This weekend was really fun. I had a wonderful wedding here in Santa Barbara on Saturday and then left immediately to go up to San Francisco to meet up with Katie and the rest of her family to celebrate her Dad's 50th birthday. I had a total blast hanging out with her family, they are such a great group!

The wedding on Saturday was so much fun. Carly was such a fun bride and had such a great time. We had a lot of time with just her and we were able to come away with some great shots.

Believe it or not, the getting ready part is one of my favorite parts of the day, because it's so much fun and there is rarely any pressure. Carly got ready at the Hotel Oceana right across the beach here in Santa Barbara. I loved trying to find an interesting way to show that! :)



Her girls had SO much fun getting ready, they were so relaxed and it was just a blast getting to hang out with all of them!



Like I said, Carly was ALL about the fun! :) It was so clear she was having such a great time and it totally showed in her images! One great thing about having an abundance of time was being able to really try new things and so we went under the warf and took these pictures and they came out so well!







Ceremony was at Elings Park, and because of the "Day Fire" the slight smoke in the sky made for perfectly defused lighting which was great for us! We couldn't have asked for better lighting!