Chris Humphreys

We're moving....

2007-04-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

The blog!

Sorry blogger you're too ugly! :)

We've launched a brand spankin new blog. You can check it out at

http://chrishumphreys.typepad.com/

You'll find a much cooler (and prettier!) layout, and much bigger images.

Enjoy! Join the party over there!!

Finally Made It...

2007-03-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

Back to Santa Barbara! :)

After traveling from SB to LA to Houston and then spending the night on the floor in Houston airport I turned around and came back home.

Literally about 10 minutes before I was to board for my flight down to Mexico I talked to the bride whose engagement pictures I was shooting this weekend (I'm keeping her name private for the time being) and heard the terrible news that her dad had passed away the night before. He was already in the hospital and this was somewhat expected, but just not now. So of course, she was flying back to the states immediately so rather than head down to Mexico I just talked to customer service at Continental and they got me on a flight back home. It was a tough trip back home. I was REALLY tired (probably only slept about 2 hours), I was dirty, and I was so heartbroken for this girl. (not a great combination!)

Katie and I are really praying for this whole situation, for healing and peace for this bride and her family. If you're the praying type, I know she would totally appreciate your prayers. If you're not, just send good feelings or thoughts her way, and I know those will be felt and appreciated as well.

Thanks guys. :)

Stuck!!

2007-03-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

So you know how they say Houston is kinda like the Guanajuato of Texas? :)

I was supposed to have landed in Mexico hours ago, but due to thunderstorms in Houston we've been delayed multiple times and been stuck on the runways several times. First before flying from LA to Houston we were stuck on the runway for about an hour and then once we landed in Houston the lightning was so bad they wouldn't let ground crews come to our plan so we had to sit and wait out the storm for about 45 mins before we could get to our gate.

Then we were delayed several times trying to leave for Guanajuato and finally we got on the plan and then....again waited. Finally the captain came on and said the airport in Guanajuato closes at midnight and at this point we wouldn't make it there in time so we had to go back to the gate and reschedule for sometime tomorrow. Luckily, I'm able to get on the first flight out tomorrrow morning, but unfortunately because of the storms all the hotels in the area are booked up and so I'm chillin with about 100 other people in a room by gate E1 in the Houston airport! :) I'm kinda lucky cause I got a cot (it's kinda broken actually, but I guess it's better than nothing!) :) Jesus slept in a manager so I guess I'll count myself grateful to have a cot. :)

I've definetly been grateful to have my iPod around for today! The airport has been SO loud with all the people around so the ability to drown it out and listen to music has been a lifesaver!

It's almost 1AM, but I'm really not tired. It's more one of those I'm actually really tired, but not sleepy kinda things! :)

I guess I'll go and cruise around the net since I haven't been on all day and then try to get a few hours of sleep before I have to be back at the gate at around 7:30AM.

I'll try to keep ya'll updated when I get to Mexico! :)

Our way home from Yosemite....and off again tomorrow morning! :)

2007-03-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

After we finished shooting Chris and Christina's wedding in Yosemite Valley we left to go home which turned out to be a bit of an adventure actually because going into the valley we were running pretty low on gas and their aren't any gas stations in Yosemite Valley. The way that I always have driven in the nearest station is 30 some miles away and that's on very windy roads which we would have been going mostly uphill on to get back out of so we were a bit nervous. Luckily we found out we could exit the park another way that would get us to a station much quicker (about 15 miles) and the roads were nearly as windy, which was an added benefit cause Katie gets car sick SUPER easily.

We were kinda blessed to have been low on fuel because the new way out of the park was SO beautiful! I had to stop and take a few pictures from time to time because it was so pretty. I'm sure we'll end up in Yosemite at some point this year and we'll definetly take this new way in and out of the park cause it's so much better.

Here's a few pics from the trip home....

We did find gas on our way home. About the most expensive gas I've ever bought!! This actually made me feel much better about paying $3.00 a gallon in Santa Barbara! :)

Pretty view of a river right by the hellishly expensive gas station.

Definetly much more of a scenic view than the other way.

Our 2006 Honda Civic rockin it on the mountain roads. :)

This was a crazy old sign outside of a crazy small town (I think it was Mariposa). I just thought it looked cool and photo worthy. :)

I'm always a sucker for a good shot of trees. I don't know why, but of any still life subject, trees are one of my most favorite to shoot. They're just kinda cool if you ask me!

Ok these weren't anywhere near Yosemite.... they're actually in our front lawn, but the light on them was really pretty when we got home, so I just snapped a quick picture. :)

I can't believe it, but I'm already leaving home AGAIN for the third time this month tomorrow morning. I'm headed down to Guanajuato Mexico to shoot an engagement session with Gloria and Mario. I'm so excited to be going down, but also really sad that Katie won't be joining me for the trip. It'll be a lot of fun and I'm so blessed to be able to travel to such awesome places, but I'm always bummed when I have to leave Katie. I guess that's a good sign though in a marriage when you're super sad to leave your partner. :)

I'm not sure what sorta internet access I'll have when I'm down there, but I'm hoping I'll be able to connect up at least a few times when I'm down there and keep you all updated on what's going on. I'm getting back late Saturday night so if nothing else, I'll have more then! :)

Be blessed! :)

~chris

Tori and Geoff and a LOT of snow. :)

2007-03-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

So before we shot our stellar wedding on Saturday in Yosemite we had the pleasure of meeting up with Tori and Geoff whose wedding we're shooting this July. They're living up in Washington, but flew down to meet Katie and I at a camp near Bass Lake, CA where they fell in love and got engaged. It was such a meaningful place for them, it was just so cool to hear them talk about it! I'm so glad we did the engagement session there!

Luckily they were able to borrow some snow shoes for us the 4 of us because there was a good deal of snow on the ground at the site where they wanted to shoot. The snow shoes were definetly a bit tricky getting used to. I think we all had at least one moment where we ended up on our butts! :) Holding two cameras and trying not to fall too badly was quite a task, but I somehow managed to do allright. :)

These guys were so fun to hang out with though. After the wedding we went out and grabbed some dinner and just talked to them about their relationship and their wedding and it was really just great to connect with them. It made both of us just look forward all the more to their wedding.

It's strange and I know I've said this before, but I got into wedding photography because of well....the photography aspect, but as I go on, it's really the relationships I've built with my clients that drive and motivate me to keep going. Tori and Geoff are just one example of that.

Speaking of photography however, here's just a few shots from their day. :)

This was a prime example of a moment after Katie totally eating it in the snow. :) She'll be upset with me for posting this, but it's funny enough that I had to do it anyways. :) I'm just glad she didn't get the camera wet. :)

This was one of Katie's killer shots from the evening. :)

Chris and Christina in Yosemite!

2007-03-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

WOW! What a crazy weekend! On Friday Katie and I drove up towards the Sierra mountains to shoot an engagement session on Friday and a wedding on Saturday.

The engagement session with Tori and Geoff was great! I've barely gone through the images, and I'll post a couple up tomorrow.

After meeting with Tori and Geoff Katie and I drove into Yosemite Valley and got ready for what turned out to be an amazing wedding with Chris and Christina! These guys couldn't have lucked out with have a more beautiful day. They were telling us that 2 weeks ago there was 3 feet of snow on the ground, but the temps have been nice and warm and so when were were there for the wedding it was beautiful, just enough snow to make everything look wintery, but it was melted enough that we never had to walk on it. Plus the temps were perfect, about 60 for most of the day. The day on the whole just couldn't have been better. :)

Here's a few of our favorites:

Christina and her 8 bridesmaids got ready right in the Valley. I'm sure they were probably the only ones with hair curlers in Yosemite this weekend! :)

The early morning light illuminating her dress in the window.

You could tell how happy Christina was to be getting married in Yosemite. Her family has come down here at least twice a year for as long as she can remember.

Chris and Christina literally moments after exiting the church after the ceremony. They were smiling at their wedding party who was trailing them.

Their massive 10 person wedding party hanging out on the bridge. :)

Chris and his guys chillin in front of half dome.

Chris and Christina were so great in front of the camera. The nice part about shooting in Yosemite is it's tough to take a bad picture there! We "just happened" to catch this great waterfall in the background for this shot! :)

The chapel where they got married is in the background behind the bridge.

Christina was just so beautiful on her day. She had no problem playing up for the camera. :)

Love the nice beautiful light towards the end of the day in the Valley. Amazing.

Made it Home!

2007-03-07T15:11:00.001-08:00

We just got back to warm and sunny Santa Barbara last night! We were supposed to get in on Monday afternoon, but Sunday night I came down with a terrible case of the flu. I seriously don't think I've ever been that sick before! Super kudos to Katie for taking care of me and staying up most of the night! (Another great reason why I whole heartedly support marriage!) :) After several calls totalling to about 3 hours on the phone with United Airlines to reschedule our flight we were finally able to get in last night. As much of a bummer it was to be sick it was nice to stay with Katie's parent's Beth and Bill an extra day! :)

Being sick wasn't so bad as well cause I was able to catch up on a lot of e-mails which was great. Plus, Katie was so sweet and rented me two of my favorite old school movies (Lethal Weapon 4 and Grumpy Old Men) which I got to enjoy on Bill and Beth's 91" big screen projector TV. (which is pretty much like having your own movie theater!) :) No complaints from me. :)

On another topic I feel like I had a bit of a reality check this morning in the car. I was driving downtown and thinking about all the things I've got going on in my life, upcoming shoots, travel arrangements I need to make, phone calls I need to return, etc etc and then I listened to a great interview on NPR's "Fresh Air". The interviewer was talking with Navy Cmdr. Richard Jadick who was a military doctor in the Battle of Fallujah. He just came out with a memoir called "On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story." It was pretty nuts listening to the interview and how he talked about treating wounded soliders.

He described at one point how he would handle catagorizing the soliders who came in. There were 1.) The wounded who would live regardless of what medical attention they did or didn't receive, 2.) Those who would die within three minutes if they didn't get medical attention and 3.) whose who would require more than 3 minutes of time to treat. He said often those that needed 3 minutes of time or more couldn't be treated because the time that it would take to treat them would be too much given the number of other soliders there were to treat who would die if he took the time required to treat them.

He also talked about what it was like often treating the insurgents who would come in and because he was a doctor under the hippocratic oath he had to treat any person, enemy or not who entered his area. Perhaps, the most compelling thing he shared was how difficult it was to choose who would have to go back into the battlefield and who had to go home, and how the Marines who would come in wounded always wanted to go back into the battlefield and rejoin their fellow soliders.

Amazing. Suddenly, all the things that I were worried about in my day didn't seem to stand much ground compared to what these guys were going through. It also made me a feel a little bad about sorry for myself that I was sick with the flu! Here are guys who have gunshot wounds and are begging to go back into battle and I think I've got it bad cause I've got a stomach bug!

Anyways, just thought I would share that. It's really put a bit of a different spin on my day thinking of how the reality of my day is so different from the reality of so many other people's days. Anyone who knows me knows I'm really not for this war that we're in, but regardless of that, I have the utmost respect for the people who go out and fight in it, particularly when I'm driving my nice car down a California freeway or sitting in front of my state of the art computer or complaining about how my hi tech cameras and lenses weigh too much! Just food for thought!!

You can listen to the interview HERE

Leigh and Jason: First wedding of the year!

2007-03-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Wow! What an action packed couple of days! On Friday we got up around 4AM to make an early 6AM flight to Denver, CO and spent the day in Denver with Katie's mom and that evening met with some amazing Colorado photographers, Jenna Walker and her crazy husband Matt and James Christianson and his incredibly cute (and VERY pregnant) wife Charlene. Both Jenna and James are INCREDIBLY gifted photographers and it was so awesome for Katie and I to be able to meet up with them and talk about all three of our businesses. James was the only one smart enough to bring his camera so if I can grab a picture from our dinner I'll post it up!

Colorado photographers, be sure to check out James and Jenna's fstopworkshop. It'll be a great place to learn from two amazingly gifted photographers, not just some of the technical tricks to creating great images, but some of the important lessons that will help you expand your businesses. This is a great opportunity!

Then on Saturday was Leigh and Jason's wedding. Both of them are two of the most genuine people I've ever met. It was really such an honor to be a part of both of their wedding.

Here's a few of the highlights!

Leigh's mom was SO sweet! You could totally tell she was so incredibly excited to see her oldest daughter getting married!

Leigh was so relaxed the entire time getting ready. It was so fun getting to capture her enjoying her day!

The boys having a fun moment before the ceremony.

The church was incredibly dark, but super neat, it's an exact replica of an old cathedral in England. Leigh is super into England and spent a semester there in college so that was sentimental to her to get married there.

Leigh's flowers against the backdrop of church. I normally take pictures of the bouquet in more "vibrant" light, but it was fun to take the opportunity do something a bit different this time around.

Leigh and her girls in prayer before the ceremony.

Loved the light coming in behind Leigh just a few moments before the ceremony.

Leigh and her Dad coming down the aisle.

I just loved the lighting coming in during the ceremony. Catching a bit of flare, particularly when it's so dark is always sweet! :)

This was such a cool emotional moment, right after the ceremony when Leigh's dad came up and gave his daughter a huge hug.

Leigh already so gorgeous, combined with some great side light made for a great portrait.

The grounds of the Colorado Springs School where the reception was held made for some exceptional images of both Leigh and Jason. These guys were so cool to brave the cold! Hopefully the images made it well worth the while! :)

Leigh and Jason ripping it up on the dance floor. :)

And them leaving the reception,showered with a rice toss. I think I was still shaking some rice out of my hair this morning when I got out of bed. :)

Leigh and Jason, I hope you both have a terrific honeymoon in Canada! We can't wait to show you your album pre-design when you get back! :)

To see a slideshow of more images from Leigh and Jason's wedding Click Here

Reddoor Rocks! :)

2007-03-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

So as some of you know, we've been totally revamping all of our logo branding stuff the last few months and we've been using the coolest company, Reddoor Creative. We've had the best time getting to know Tim and Erik who own the company. We couldn't be happier with how things are going with them.

One thing that has really surprised me about the process is that in talking with them and answering their questions, Katie and I have had to really think about what our core values as a company are and why we exist and do what we do. It's been an amazing process that we've grown so much going through!

We just got some sample business cards in from them that we'll be taking out to Colorado for our wedding this weekend. These aren't final, but we're so excited about the direction we're heading.

We can't wait to show you all the final product in a few weeks. I've had tons of photographers asking for info on who is doing our branding and so I thought this would be a great time to give a shout out to Erik and Tim! You'll be hearing much more about them in the next few weeks as we finaliaze our designs....

We bought a 5D! :)

2007-03-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

We just added to our already killer line of cameras! :) With Katie now shooting with me at every wedding (she was shooting only at some our weddings this last year), we really needed to get her a decent camera. She had been shooting with my 10D, which a few years ago was a great camera, but is lagging behind the current technology quite a bit. :) So, she'll inherit my 20D which is amazing and I'll be shooting full time now with my Mark II N and our brand spankin new 5D!

The images out of this camera are amazing! So sharp and amazing color, not to mention REALLY low noise levels at high ISO. (for those of you who don't speak "photo nerd language"...which by the way is the offical term....that basically means the pictures look clean even when you're shooting in low light! :)

We have our first wedding this year out in Colorado this weekend so I'm super excited to use it out there and really see how it does. :)

Here are a few test shots:

A nice lemon from the tree in our yard. :)

Some pretty flowers.... :)

And of course my official model, Katie. :) (for the record she didn't ask for this position, it was just granted to her.) :)

Lilit and Stephen....not soaking wet. :)

2007-02-25T18:09:00.000-08:00

So this past week I met up with Lilit and Stephen again for some "dry" pictures. :) At the end of January we got together and did a super fun shoot in the pouring rain down at the beach. I told 'em before that shoot that we'd do a "normal" session a few days later, and that's what this was for. Both of them met up at Westmont College (where I graduated from too actually), and so we did our shoot up there on a day when the students were gone on an extended holiday break.

Although I gotta say I kinda missed not being completely soaked and cold (can you really think of better conditions for an engagement shoot really??) :) This shoot, despite that, turned out incredible.

The more I hang out with these guys the more I can't wait for their wedding, because they're so photogenic and such incredibly sweet people.

So here's just a few of the highlights. :)

New Bag!

2007-02-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

This year we're traveling to tons of new locations, Mexico, Maui, Las Vegas, and Chicago, just to name a few. In fact, as of the moment only 4 of our 15 booked weddings are actually in Santa Barbara! Anyways, I decided it was long over due that I get some new luggage! :) My old solution was a big bag that had enough room in it for about 2 weeks worth of clothes, but most of my trips took me away from home for no more than a few days, plus my old bag was too big to carry on an airplane and the risk of an airline loosing my bag the day before a wedding didn't seem like a good one to take either so now, thanks to my buddy DJ who hooked me up with his solution I bought a great new bag from Tumi. I love this bag cause it's a backpack and a roller bag, can fit 3-4 days of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, and has tons of little zippers and compartments and stuff. I can't wait to bust this thing out and use it on our trip to Colorado in a few weeks for our first wedding.

Thanks DJ for the recommendation! :)

Andrea and Geoff!

2007-02-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, what an exciting day yesterday! I got to meet up with Andrea and Geoff whose wedding is at Angel Stadium this November. They're both huge baseball fans so we decided to go with somewhat of a sports theme. I got to shoot in a part of Santa Barbara I've never shot before and the pictures turned out great.

One thing I love about my job is getting to hear stories about people. It seems like everyone has a really cool story about their life. Geoff not too long ago did a 7 week trip with one of his best friends from HS and went to a baseball game at every single ball park in the country. They bought a Ford van just for the trip and put over 19,000 miles on it going across the country. Amazing! I told them it's too bad they didn't video the whole thing they could have made a movie of it and made millions! :) They are working on a book though, and keep ya'll updated when it comes out!

Anyways, here's a few of the pictures.... enjoy!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

2007-02-14T14:49:00.000-08:00

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Valentine's day!!

Here are two of my favorite quotes on love and friendship.... I used to send out these quotes once a week or so, I haven't for a little over a year, but maybe if enough people bug me in the comments section I'll start up again. :)

Enjoy!!

Dominick and Jessica!

2007-02-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

I had the great pleasure of meeting with Dominick and Jessica this weekend here in Santa Barbara to shoot their engagement session and talk with them about their wedding coming up this September in Maui. They're such a cool couple, and I left even more excited to be going out to Maui to be shooting their wedding! :)

Here's just a few of the images we shot. :)

2007-02-07T17:13:00.001-08:00

So the past few weeks I've had the total pleasure of getting to babysit for my our good family friends the Butler's! Steve Butler was actually a music professor at Westmont where I went to school and was my adviser my last couple years there. His family goes to our church and we see them every weekend and they have the absolute cutest kids in the world (no...seriously, they really do!) :) 3 of them were in our wedding as a matter of fact!

So what would babysitting be without me bringing along my camera? :)

Meet the Butler kids!! :)

This is John. Age 8 :) This is pretty much the pose John always makes when the camera is on him. :)

This is Elizabeth! Age 2.

She hasn't quite learned how to "work" the camera quite yet, but I've got hope for her. :) Now on to her sister Anna Grace...

Meet Nicholas. Age 6. This kid is a rockin chess player, he just won a big contest for his age group. The next Bobby Fisher I'm sure. :)

Anna Grace was loving the swing. :) Of course I had to put the camera down every couple seconds to push her.

Nicholas has one of the greatest laughs. He was being such a good brother hangin out with Elizabeth on the hammock or his brother on the swinging bench.

Elizabeth wasn't too concerned with sitting still. She was trying to crawl over to me the whole time I was trying to take pictures of her. :)

And then of course John, being John again....

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed me a Happy Birthday wish for yesterday! I had a great day, which of course just meant hangin low and eatin good food! :) Katie and I attempted to make leg of lamb last night and it actually turned out really good!! I actually forgot to take a picture of it and share it with ya'll ! Katie made an awesome apple dessert thing as well (SOOO good), but of course I forgot to take a picture of that as well so Chef Chris Part 3 will have to wait. :) My friend Matt (whose birthday actually was on the 4th) and I are going out to Outback tonight to celebrate! :) We joked that we would buy each other dinner....I hope my plate is more expensive than his! :)

Chris Humphreys Photography will be closed tomorrow

2007-02-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

To properly mourn the Bear's loss tonight.

We'll reopen on Tuesday.

:(

2007-02-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got to shoot a really neat baptism of baby Lydia. Orthodox baptism's are so great to be a part of. There's just a mystery involved that cuts so deeply though everyone involved, the child, the parents, the Godparents, and the rest of the church community.

Here's a few of the shots...

Lilit and Stephen....in the rain. :)

2007-01-27T20:55:00.000-08:00

I'm always up for an adventure, so when Lilit and Stephen called to ask about rescheduling their engagement session to a when it wasn't monsooning outside I told 'em no way! :) They were SUCH troopers to go out in the pouring rain, I couldn't believe it! They really wanted to do beach shots and while these weren't your "typical" Santa Barbara at the beach shots they turned out so well and I'm certain it's a day non of us will ever forget!

The funny thing was that I JUST got my Canon Mark II N back from Canon for some service and so of course literally just hours after I got it back all tuned up from the factory I go out and trash it in the rain! :) Of course, that's what these cameras were made for (I guess it's the equivalent of "off roading" for photography). :) It performed beautifully though, and we got some amazing shots.

Check 'em out. :)

Bears Win! :)

2007-01-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, while I don't talk much about it at least on here, I'm a huge Chicago Bears fan. Now must of my friends will point out that Katie and I don't have a TV and I live halfway across the country from Chicago so it might seem odd slightly odd that I would call myself a huge Bears fan, but I follow them the only way that I can....through the play by play feature on the NFL website! :) (it should be noted that Katie and I don't own a TV for personal reasons, not cause we can't afford one!) :)

Anyways, so the fact that the Bears beat the Saints today and are heading to the big game for the first time since I was 3 is a pretty huge deal. :) My mom called me up the minute the game finished and we had a mini celebration....it was kinda funny cause she said that she was at a church retreat that was supposed to start this afternoon, but because of the game they decided to send everyone across the street to a local bar to watch the game?! LOL!

After the game ended I was surfing around different sports sites and was super thrilled to find
one of my friends images up on ESPN's site.

Jerry and I have known each other since high school. He stayed in the midwest and went to Northwestern to pursue a pre-med program but somehow along the way got hooked into photography and is now shooting for US Newswire as well as a few other organizations. He shoots tons of pro and college sports games and even shot the world series this last season. It's so funny that we both left high school knowing next to nothing about photography and are both now shooting at the professional level, (obviously however in totally different areas!) :) Of course, Jerry is doing all this AND still is still somehow in med school! I try to make it out to Chicago at least once a year to shoot a Northwestern game with Jerry, but now that Jerry is getting into the big time I'm gonna have to push him to get me into a Bears game. :)

Check out Jerry's blog soon and I'm sure he'll have some sweet images from the game up soon!

Chef Chris Part II

2007-01-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

So I made my way back into the kitchen today for round two of Chef Chris! :) I did a similar dish to the salmon last week. Today was pan roasted steak sirloin. I brought back the wild rice since it went so well the last time and for the side I added a little roasted chicken, onions, and bell peppers to the mix. Add some coarse sea salt and rosemary for flavor and we were in business. :) I told Katie I really want to keep pan roasting things for my next few dishes just to really get that technique down. Think Like a Chef really has a lot of good simple recipies, that span a lot of different cooking techniques, but I think the best idea is to probably master one, before I move onto another.

Anyways, here's a few images from tonight's main course. :)

And of course some ice cream sandwhiches for dessert. :)

On a photography related topic, I had to bust out my old Canon 10D for these shots. Both my Mark II N and my 20D are in for service for some maintence at the moment, but I'm hoping I'll have 'em back at some point this week.

Becker's Party of 5

2007-01-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

This morning I got up super early and drove down to Becker's place for his Party of 5 workshop. I met Becker a number of months ago at a Poker game and have totally enjoyed following his career. He's been in the industry for about 10 years now and runs an amazing business, so I jumped at the opportunity to hear him talk a bit more about he runs things over at his studio.

He took us on one of his engagement shoots and we tagged along around him. It was a lot of fun getting to "2nd shoot" an engagment session and try to get a different take on the shoot than Becker and the other 4 people shooting. Here's a couple of shots that I grabbed of the session,

Check out Becker's blog to see some of his killer shots from the session.

Love these shots of Becker in action! :)

And of course his beautiful couple! :)

Kate and David!

2007-01-15T18:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon I got to go to Katie and David's wedding here in Santa Barbara! Kate and David are friends of ours from our church and I was just shooting the ceremony because Kate's dad is a professional photographer as well. I can't wait to see some of his images! Not only that, but I think most of Kate's family and friends were photographers as well! When I pulled up to the church I seriously saw probably 5 or 6 people walking around with pro cameras!

Here are just a few of the images I got....

I love the cool crosses outside St. Barbara's.

Kate was SO beautiful coming down the isle. My wife Katie was there and seriously cried!

Loved this quick moment when Kate looked at David during the ceremony

This moment happened immediately after the ceremony ended and they walked out of the church. I'm not sure if they knew I was there or not, but it was a great moment! :)

Chef Chris!!

2007-01-12T19:01:00.001-08:00

Ok, so for those of you who really know me or who have lived with me a while you know that I'm not a cook. For most of my life cold cereal has been my specialty dish. (i'm not kidding!)

Katie and I have gotten hooked into this show on Bravo called Top Chef and we really like the main Chef on the show Tom Colicchio. Unlike myself Katie really enjoys cooking and is really really good at it so for Christmas I got her a cooking book by Chef Tom called "Think like a Chef" it's got a lot of recipies in it, but more than anything, it's really a book that teaches you (like the title says) how to really think about food the way a chef does. I ended up reading most of it and thought it looked really good and down to earth. Plus, all the recipies in the book are SUPER easy (literally like 2 or 3 steps) so I figured the odds of me not messing it up couldn't be THAT bad, so with Katie home sick today......

I decided to run out to the store and try making a pan roasted salmon (the original recipie called for striped bass, but the store didn't have that). To make a long story short, I made the meal and it turned out SO well!!!! You really don't know how big of a thing this is for me, one time when I was a kid I made pancakes and threw up. (Again.....not kidding!) :)

Not only did it turn out so well (Katie kept raving over and over while we were eating it how good it was), I really had a lot of fun cooking it and now that I've done it once, I'd have even more fun making it again now that I kinda know what I'm doing. :) I was so impressed that I didn't burn it in the pan I took some pictures of it. :)

Enjoy!

Men, for those of you want to relieve your wife/girlfriend from cooking every night (she'll love it) go out and buy this book! It's seriously is easy AND kinda fun (or at least rewarding when you're eating the meal!). Or of course, if you're a bachelor and you're eating frozen pizzas 4 times a week this might be a good step in the right direction too! :)

This didn't help much....

2007-01-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

But it was kinda funny! Google it turns out amongst other things will translate stuff for you! Google Translator

However they didn't do too good a job with the above text! I think I understood it better with the Russian!!

"But if global free yes, it is their pens and then hosts the pay is ... Incidentally menalto galeri practically the same, only without the flush, who, in the willingness and knowledge of known words can be worked out Incidentally, polistal several of the galleries who have installed livebooks, so they are exactly the same per person, just as with any other template. By the wedding photographers : how will such packages?"

??? WHAT ???? :)

Anyone know Russian?

2007-01-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

So I was checking my webstats earlier today to see how many people had been hitting up our site and it's cool cause it even tells you where people are linking in from and I see that like 30 or 40 people had linked in from this online forum that I had never heard of (http://club.foto.ru/forum/) and so I follow the link to see where it goes and it's this photo forum in Russia! Some guy had linked livebooks in one of his posts and then another guy linked my site specifically. I have NO idea what they are saying so if anyone reading this is fluent let me know! (You can click on the picture to see a bigger version which is easier to read....or maybe just easier to look at). :)

The REALLY funny thing is that I actually studied Russian for 7 years all through middle school and high school, but that was a long time ago and I really don't remember much. Hopefully, my old Russian teacher won't stumble across this blog. :)

Hopefully, judging from this guy's avatar he won't be one of my future grooms! :)

Have a great day!

iPhone

2007-01-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited about this new announcment from Apple. As sick and tired of my old flip phone I've been hestitatnt to get a Blackberry or Palm because I've been waiting out for some word on the iPhone.

It's pretty interesting when you think what kind of marketing and buzz Apple has created. Think of Microsoft, they spent millions of dollars promoting their Zune player and had a huge marketing campaign for it and the response to it has been minimal at best.

Apple on the other hand never even officially acknowledged the iPhone existed before Tuesday and yet the buzz and excitement about it was at pretty much unprecented levels. Apple without spending a dime on marketing had created a huge buzz within their user base.

Amazing. :)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about here to see this revolutionary product! Unfortunately, it won't be available till June.

Hanging with Yvonne and Gavin!

2007-01-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Last night I got the awesome pleasure of hanging out with Gavin and Yvonne. They're in town from Peru where they're studying and working with infection diseases. I don't think I've ever laughed more during an engagement session these guys are so goofy!

They're actually really good friends with
Robin and Mike . Mike and Gavin were roommates in college for a few years and were at their wedding last June and saw the slideshow and contacted me a few months ago when they got engaged.

After the shoot we went to Palazzio's one of our favorite Italian places for dinner and just talked about their wedding which is gonna be a two day deal out in Las Vegas! It'll be quite the international affair with Yvonne's family coming over from Korea and a lot of Gavin's family coming in from the UK and then friends from all over the country. I can't wait!!

Here's a few shots!

If you didn't get my E-mail....

2007-01-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!

I can't believe it's already 2007! I hope you all have had a WONDERFUL 2006. This year has been an absolutely fantastic one for me, as I've been blessed in so many ways. Just over one year ago I got married to my best friend, Katie. Marriage has enriched my life in so many ways, and after being in my own wedding, I've gained a whole new perspective on shooting weddings for other people!

In terms of photography, it's been an incredible year of growing. We shot over 20 weddings this year in amazing locations all over the country; we've visited the grassy fields of Sisters, Oregon, the sandy beaches of Waikiki, Hawaii, the chilly suburbs of Chicago, IL, and of course been all over northern and southern CA. More importantly than the places I've been able to go to, are the people that I've been able to meet and the stories I've been blessed to enter into. 2006 has been a year of incredible blessings, and I can't wait to see what 2007 has in store.

One of the biggest highlights of this year has come in the last few weeks. We've launched a brand new website and gotten incredible feedback on it. If you haven't already, go check it out at www.chrishumphreys.com . You'll be able to see images from some of our favorites weddings this year, as well as see a whole new bio section, so you can read more about me! :) I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear some of your feedback on it.

If you want a real quick glance at some of our work from this past year, I've posted my top 18 favorite wedding images from 2006
HERE. Go vote on which one you like the best. :)

I hope you all have had a great 2006 and a wonderful Christmas! Be blessed in 2007!!

Top 18 images from 2006!

2007-01-03T09:12:00.002-08:00

To put it simply....

2006 ROCKED!

I tried to make a top 10 images of 2006 list, but realized that was way too hard! :) (I can't narrow things down that much!) So, even though it's not your typical list here's my top 18 images from 2006!!! Leave a comment to vote on your favorite!

(In no particular order....)

Server...

2006-10-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

Sorry we're having some server problems, the images here should be restored pretty soon....

Sorry guys!

Travis and Nina

2006-10-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

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 :)

2006-10-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-10-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-10-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-10-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

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....

2006-10-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

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!!

2006-09-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

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!

250 gigs in a month!

2006-08-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

So my general practice when it comes to storing my data is to put things on to 250 gig Lacie drives. I choose 250 gig cause I usually fill that up in about 2-3 months and then when I'm done I buy another one. (I also back up everything that hasn't been uploaded to Pictage to another backup hard drive as well). I figure that if a drive is going to fail, it probably won't fail in the first 2-3 months that I'm using it, and so far I've never had a problem. Last month though, I had so many weddings as well as being up at camp that I went through my whole 250 gig hard drive in about 4 weeks!!

I went to Mac Mechanic where I usually get these drives and they were all out of 'em!! So was pretty much every other place in Santa Barbara. So I had to settle for a 160 gig drive instead. :( Bummer, but hopefully that will last me at least a month cause this month isn't as busy as last month was.

I still remember when (like 10 years ago) my parents upgraded our computer hard drive to a 2 gigabite drive and my dad was laughing saying we would NEVER fill that much storage space up! I generally shoot about 18-20 gigs of images at a wedding and all of my cards are 2 gig cards. Can't believe how things change that fast!!

Fun in Hawaii!!

2006-08-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

So as I said in my last post, Katie and I had a last couple days of a much needed vacation. We went to a Luau (their word for party) which had it's fun moments, but was kinda cheesy. We also went snorkling at Hanauma Bay which was incredible. The last time we were in Maui and we went snorkling which was my first time ever and I was blown away at how cool it was so I definetly wanted to go this time out there and I'm so glad we did. I really don't know why I get such a kick out of how close the fish come to you. I seriously almost could have touched them. SO COOL! :) I wanted to get an underwater camera, but they way overpiced 'em so I didn't. :( Next time I go out there I'm gonna figure out a way to take my Canon Mark II N underwater. That would be sweet. :)

We got back into LAX at like 5:30 Tuesday morning and then came back up to SB and just crashed the rest of the day. Sorry for those of you who I'm a little behind on with e-mails, I'm trying really hard to get caught back up and I shouldn't be too far from getting a bunch of weddings from July released as well, so thanks so much for your patience!!

Here's a few pics from our last couple days in Hawaii! :)

The dancers at the Luau were AMAZING.

This guy was seriously unreal with all the things he did with fire. He touched it to his tongue! Of course, Katie still freaks out when I pass my finger through a candle flame! :)

Ahola Kevin and Tiff! :)

2006-08-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Katie and I got into Honolulu very late on Thursday night and have been having a blast here in Hawaii!! After taking a great little visit to the beach Friday morning we shot Kevin and Tiff's rehearsal and dinner and then their wedding yesterday. It was so fun to be shooting here, Kevin and Tiff were amazing, and the setting here was just gorgeous.

We had such a blast getting the "getting ready shots." Tiff and her girls were so relaxed and SO FUNNY! Plus Tiff looked so beautiful. That always makes things easy! :)

Tiff made all her jewlery herself!! Amazing!

Kevin was so excited to be finally getting married. Tiff and Kevin have been dating since their freshman year of college!

The ceremony was right next to the beach and the wind was crazy! Tiff's vail was flying all over the place!

Now that the wedding is over, Katie and I have the next few days to relax and have fun! It's been such a crazy last couple months that this is a much desired break from the action! :) We'll be flying back to SB late Monday night. :)

I'm gonna miss Matt and Jess!

2006-08-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

I'm SUPER bummed right now cause two of my best friends are moving! :( Matt and his wife Jessica are moving up to the Portland area in a few days. To make matters worse, I've barely been around the last few weeks to hang out with them. They're moving on the 12th, and I'm leaving today and won't be back till the 8th and then I'm leaving again on the 11th for a wedding on the 12th and then another on the 13th, and then I get back and of course that's when I basically stop traveling for a little while (right after he and Jess leave!) Matt and I were both in each other's wedding parties, and we've been friends since our Freshman year in college and this year we've started playing racquetball once or twice a week (Matt always wins cause I pretty much suck). I'm really gonna miss him and Jess a lot! (which means I'll just have to pursue more weddings in the Portland area so that I have an excuse to go visit!) :)

They were so great too, cause they got engaged right around the time I was getting into wedding photography and they let me do their engagement session which was the first one I ever did! I think I shot it with the Westmont yearbook's 10D and my only lens that I had at the time. I told them the other day that I wanted to do another shoot with them as a going away gift and so we did another "engagement session" type shoot even though they've been married over two years! :) This time they brought their little puppy Oliver which made the shoot even more interesting! :)

End of Camp....

2006-08-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ok so I guess I should explain the last post a bit more....but actually now that I think about it there isn't much more to explain! That was pretty much it! A few of us at camp went up to Soquel, which is this amazing ranch type property that the camp owns up in the Sierra Mountains. We got up there to set up for a group of kids who were going to be up there with us. When we got there there where a bunch of stray cows in a meadow and Goulet (which was his camp name....nobody goes by real names up at camp....my camp name is Snowball...long story which I won't go into now). Anyway, Goulet starts chasing the cows and of course I decide to follow him and so we chase this one cow which was the most incredibly massive cow I've ever seen up a small which has a fence at the top. When he got to the top and realized he was trapped the cow came CHARGING back down the hill right at us which promoted us to quite literally run for our lives. :) I'll never forget running out of the forest and coming around a corner towards our video guy who was jogging towards us with the video camera and yelling "RUUUUUUUNNNN" right as the bull comes out behind us. The video guy's face was CLASSIC as he turns on a dime and heads back towards the ranch. We had a good laugh about that one and luckily nobody was hurt. :)

The rest of camp was super fun. I'm definetly glad I'm back home and with Katie though. Even though I was really distracted by being so busy while I was up there I still really missed her a lot. And I'm VERY excited to be leaving in a few hours for Hawaii! The last few months have been so crazy and July particularly was nuts! I definetly spent more time on the road this last month than I did here in Santa Barbara and Hawaii will be such a nice time to relax with Katie and catch up. Of course, we'll be working on Saturday shooting Kevin and Tiff's wedding, but seriously I know this wedding is going to be so much fun it really won't seem like work! Kevin and Tiff are two of the coolest and most laid back people and I can't wait to hang out with them on their incredible day! :)

Anyways, here are few shots from the last couple days while I was up at camp....

This was the kids hiking up Fresno Dome.

We took them mountain climbing as well and so for the 4th time that week I got to put on a harness and strap my cameras on and go climbing so I could get a good shot! :) Someone asked me when the last time I hard to use a carabiner for a wedding was. I started to get inspired....just kidding. :)

While I was up there I offered to do some shots of the director's kids (cause they're so cute!) :) This is Sasha, Nick, and Jake. :)

The last few days we were up at Mammoth Pools which was amazing! It's a pretty big lake, but because it's so isolated we were seriously like the only boats on the lake!

I was chased by a massive 2000 pound bull through a forest with a guy named Goulet!!

2006-07-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

I'm completely serious.....

story to come later.....

:)

I can't believe in less than 3 days I'll be out of the woods and in a nice hotel in Hawaii!! :) Crazy!!

Last Day at Camp

2006-07-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

Well last day for the kids for this session. I'm still here till Tuesday. Yesterday was the last full day with the kids and I was able to grab a few last activities that the camp directors wanted. In the afternoon I got to hang out with this prodigy skateboarder kid whose been skatboarding since he was FOUR?! He was amazing!

I got to also shoot some mountain boarders. The kids here are so talented at this stuff. I swear I would KILL myself on a half pipe or on a mountain board! I'll just stick to taking pictures. :) I took both of these pictures using a technique called "dragging the shutter." You use a fairly slow slow shutter speed (for this I think both of them were in the 1/80th of a second range and then set your camera flash to fire "rear curtain" which basically if you think of how a flash works, you click the button, the shutter opens and the flash fires and then the shutter closes (all super fast). With rear curtain flash, the same thing happens but your flash fires right before the shutter closes as opposed to as soon as it opens and so you get some of that movement like that. The flash "freezes" your subject and the longer shutter speed (with me panning the camera with the movement of the subject) makes the background motion. Hope that made sense!! :)

Anyways, last night was the traditional candle light ceremony where all the kids line up in a huge circle in which there is a cross in the center. They are handed candles and one by one the candles are lit until everyone in the circle is holding a lit candle. The analogy is of the light of Christ in a dark world. Then different groups of kids go to the middle and put their candles in the center until all the candles are in the cross. It's a really cool ceremony and a lot of the older kids were really emotional, because this service happens every year on the last night of camp and for many of them they have been here five or six (or more) years and this is their last year.

Then this morning, I got up early and drove up to this high place that overlooked the lake and got some scenic shots of the lake.

Then the kids ate breakfast here and then boarded on buses after saying goodbye to their friends and counselors that they have been with the last two weeks.

Then last but not least after all the kids left the directors wanted a group staff shot. In the past we've just done traditional shots, but this year I suggested we make it a little creative. :) They ended up harnessing me into this contraption called the "King Swing" which basically pulls you up and backwards about 100 feet in the air and then the release you and you free fall for about 2 seconds and then swing out (think like a pendulum). The staff all grouped together and then I took a bunch of pictures as I swung over their heads! Looks cool huh?! :)

Brett and Katelyn

2006-07-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Brett and Katelyn work here at the camp and I'm blessed enough to be coming back to this area to do their wedding in October so we took a little time to get away from camp and get some engagement pics for the two of them last night and then enjoyed a good "Forks Burger" afterwards to talk about their wedding. For those of you who have been to Bass Lake you know what I'm talking about with the Forks. For those of you who don't it's almost worth driving up here just to check it out! :)

Can't wait for your wedding you guys! :) This area in October will be AMAZING!

Back at YSSC

2006-07-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

The last few days I've been up in the INCREDIBLY HOT region of Bass Lake. This is my 3rd year taking a mid summer break from weddings to come and shoot campers up at YSSC . It's been a crazy last couple of days capturing water sports, high ropes climbing, and other camp activities. As much as I love weddings, it's a fun break to come and shoot somethin just a bit different.

Here's a few of the highlights! :)

This kid was amazing. He climbed up this 40 foot "tower of power" blindfolded.

Yosemite is an hour and a half drive from camp and I got to drive down to take some scenic shots of the park since the camp drives kids down there a couple times during their trip. This is half dome right by Mirror Lake.

This cabin of girls were super cool and got up at 6AM to do a morning war canoe trip.

Some more water shots on Bass Lake...

Tovi and Becca! :)

2006-07-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

I seriously don't know how time goes so fast! It seems like JUST the other day (really a little over a week ago) that we were shooting Becca and Tovi's wedding. I'm seriously having a hard time doing it justice describing just how beautiful every detail of it was. I'm such a fan of big details and the details in their wedding were amazing! Becca and Tovi you guys are amazing and I can't wait to get together with you guys when you get back!

Becca's dress was SO beautiful! It was handmade by a designer in Spain!

Becca and her dad practicing their dance that morning....

My wife is beautiful. :)

2006-07-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, I convinced Katie to come down and go to the beach so I could take some pictures of her. I should stress his took QUITE a bit of convincing.....I think the argument that finally got her was "what if she was killed in car accident and I didn't have any other good pictures of her... (which is of course not true).....actually she didn't really like that argument that much :) She really is the the most amazingly kind and sweet and definetly the most beautiful girl in the whole world to me and I'm so glad I get to wake up every morning and have her there.

Anyways, we went down to the beach by the Bacara (a super fancy resort just north of Santa Barbara) and I took down the 200mm f1.8 lens that I had rented for the weekend and had a bunch of fun photographing my super beautiful wife. :)

Kevin and Tiff!

2006-07-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I got to meet up with Kevin and Tiff and shoot some engagement pictures. Kevin and Tiff are getting married in Hawaii and we'll be flying out to shoot it! Obviously, I was already looking forward to going out there for obvious reasons, but after I saw how photogenic Kevin and Tiff are it made me even more excited about their wedding!

Thanks so much guys for having us join you out there! Can't wait!

Three Weddings in a Row!!

2006-07-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

As some of you know I just finished my crazy weekend of three amazing weddings in a row! I could talk so much about how amazing each wedding was, but it would take me all day to write about it! So I'll do my best to give good summary's! :)

Megan and Josh were AMAZING. I used to work for Megan way back in the college days when I was pretty much the only photographer for the school yearbook and she was the editor. Megan pretty scheduled her wedding around days that I would be available....SUCH an honor! (It's really making me strive to have all of my clients e-mail me first before they book a reception site to see if I'm available!) :) I couldn't believe during the reception when I got the slideshow up and going, it was right after she and Josh had cut the cake and they were sitting down at their table to enjoy it and I mentioned (cause I knew Megan would want to see it) that I had the slideshow ready and she literally RAN (as fast as a bride in a wedding dress can run) over to see it! Josh was like, "can't we eat the cake first?" but even by then she was out of earshot! I want more clients like THAT! :)

Thanks Megan and Josh for such an INCREDIBLE wedding!

Josh and his boys....

Megan had this incredible smile on her face the ENTIRE day! It was seriously impossible to take a bad picture of her! It was hard for me to figure out which ones to post because we had so many! :)

One of Josh's guys were checking out his ring after the ceremony....

We had such great lighting at the end of the night. I loved it! :)

Meg and Josh had such a great exit with everyone lined up with sparklers! I hope you guys have such a great honeymoon! Can't wait to see you after you get back! :)

Next was ANOTHER Meghan (but spelled differently!) :) and her super sweet husband Ray. Meg and I also go back all the way to our Freshman year at Westmont college. Meg has been one of my biggest supporters since I started my business 2 years ago. She's passed numerous engaged friends my way who have ended up being clients so it was such a pleasure to be a part of her day. It's kinda a long story, but when Meghan was in college she developed an extremely rare disease and was in the hospital for months. All the doctors agree that it is a miracle that she is alive today and I had that in my mind the whole day I was shooting. It just made the day that much more precious that she is here getting married when just a few years ago death was quite literally at her door. Praise God! :)

Super cute flower girl getting her hair done.....

Meghan and Ray had such a cool ceremony which Ray's youth pastor officiated at. It was his first wedding and it went so well!

I can't say much more without talking about my new friend Rudy Arpia

who came up and shot both of these weddings with me! I was so lucky to have such an incredible 2nd shooter with me. He is so talented and such a great guy! I really enjoyed his company and can't wait to go through all of his amazing images. Here are just a few from the weekend.....

He grabbed this shot of me shooting on his Nikon gear. Now he thinks it's because I'm secretly in love with Nikon, but really I was just making sure that Canon had way better gear.....and yep! I was right! :) Actually, the Nikon D2X is a SWEET camera, and the images out of it look amazing. If I were starting all over I might invest in Nikon, but at the same time, I'm very happy with my Canon 20D and Mark II N. :) I think too many people make too big a deal out of the different camera companies. The truth is, you can get great images out of either, and it's really the person BEHIND the camera not the actual camera that makes a great image. :) Thanks so much Rudy! I can't wait too shoot with you again! :)

The LAST wedding was yesterday and that was with Thomas and Rachel....again friends from Westmont! :) (No, I swear I don't just shoot friend's weddings!) :) Their wedding was so much FUN to shoot! Thomas is just about the sweetest guy a girl could ever find and Rachel is so lucky to have him! He has such a heart for God and for people, it's amazing to be around him.

I love this shot of Rachel peaking out the doors leading into the church before she came down the isle! So cute! That's Thomas in the foreground....

During the ceremony Thomas and Rachel played this hilarious video of how they met and how their relationship grew. It was so funny listening to it and seeing everyone's reactions. This was Thomas's old pastor from Chicago cracking up with his groomsmen in the background.

Again, I'm so blessed to have awesome 2nd shooters. Kristin Shaparenko joined me and did such an amazing job at yesterday's wedding.

Here's a quick shot I grabbed of her.....

Thanks for your amazing shots Kristin! :)

I wish I could take the next few days off before my next wedding on Saturday, but I have over 8,000 images from the last week to edit!! :) Even though, I'm pretty exhausted, this whole experience has taught me really how much I love wedding photography and how lucky I am to be able to do it! Getting to be a part of the most important day in these people's lives is such a blessing that I never want to take for granted. I really do believe I have one of the best jobs in the world and this last week only reinforces that sentiment! :)

Sweet Rehearsal!

2006-07-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Just about to get ready for our first of three weddings in three days! :) Last night I was able to shoot a great rehearsal and dinner that Josh's parents put on. It was so cool to watch Megan and Josh at the church and at the dinner last night. They are just so obviously in love and it's really sweet to watch. :) They'll be an extremely photogenic couple so I'm really excited to hang out with them and be a part of their wedding! :)

Marcus and Kerry!

2006-07-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

What an insane week! My dad travels all the time and I feel like I'm getting just a tiny glimpse of what his life is like! At the end of June we were out in Colorado visiting Katie's parents, we got back and then a few days later flew to Oregon to shoot Marcus and Kerry's wedding. We got back on Tuesday and now today (Thursday) I'm in San Francisco for the first of three weddings in three days starting tomorrow! :) Being on the road is nuts, but it's super fun to see new places.

Oregon was amazing. Not only does the Portland airport have FREE wireless, the state has no sales tax, and it's illegal to pump your own gas. How crazy is that?! We were in Sister's Oregon which is super small, but what it lacks in people, it is plentiful in beauty. I was seriously convinced I wanted to move there just flying into Redmond (near Sisters). We had a great couples days filled with river rafting, BBQs, touch football and of course the wedding! :)

Those of you who know the area up there know it's known for it's rain and unfortunately it didn't just rain the day of the wedding....it poured. :) Combine that with the fact that the ceremony and the reception were outside and it wasn't the best circumstances we could have had, but as he always isy, God was good and even though we delayed the ceremony 20 mins or so we were able to get through it, as well as the pictures of Kerry and Marcus and their bridal party after the ceremony without getting too wet. It rained the first 20 mins or so of the reception as well before the sun came out and we had a beautiful reception. :)

On our way into Redmond, Oregon the pilot flew right over Mount Jefferson. I couldn't help but grab a few shots out the window. :)

Kerry and Marcus could not have picked a more beautiful spot to have as the backdrop to their ceremony. Behind them are the mountains known as the "Three Sisters."

My wife Katie was the maid of honor at the wedding and it was so cool to be able to photograph her. Usually she hate it when I try to take pictures of her, but at least this weekend I had an excuse!! She looked so beautiful!! (Of course Kerry did too!!) :) This was a great moment she and Kerry had right after the ceremony finished.

I love this shot of the guys. And yes, Marcus really is that much of a stud. :) The camera doesn't lie. :)

When we were taking the shots of Kerry and Marcus I could just tell any moment it was going to start pouring again. We were out in this field and I see lighting striking all over the place in the sky (I know I know....big open field and me standing in it with lightning....probably not the smartest thing ever, but......well..... Ok I have no good excuse.) :) Luckily neither myself or Kerry or Marcus died, but we did get some good shots!! :)

I love Free Wi-Fi! :)

2006-06-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the Portland airport right now and I can't even express how happy I am that Portland's airport has free wi-fi! Katie and I are on our way to shoot a wedding in Sisters Oregon which should be SO much fun! Kerry, the bride is one of Katie's best friends (Katie is the Matron of Honor). I've really been looking forward to this wedding because Kerry and Marcus know how to have a great time! Tomorrow as a pre-wedding activity we're going river rafting, and then the wedding itself is on sweet ranch surrounded by mountains. Plus, they're favorite holiday is Thanksgiving cause they love that kind of food, so the reception is going to be a big Thanksgiving type dinner! How cool is THAT?! It should be a blast!

The only downer, is that we're without e-mail and internet for the next few days so I'll be sure to post up some pics when we get back on Tuesday!

Albert and Alyssa in the OC!

2006-06-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Wow! Seriously, where does my week go?! I seriously felt like I just got back from Albert and Alyssa's wedding like 2 days ago! Today is already Friday and I have another wedding tomorrow! Unreal!

Anyways, Mark and I had an awesome time in the OC capturing Albert and Alyssa's beautiful wedding. As you can tell from the pics, I had quite a fun time with the fisheye and Mark's 5D. :) I was sad to have to return the fisheye to the rental store....Katie told me I should buy one, which is very unusal for her. Usually, I'm the one having to beg her to let me buy something! :)

Alyssa was the most amazing bride, just so beautiful!

This flowergirl was an absolute doll! I don't know why, but when I look at this picture I just think she must have been like an angel out of the Garden of Eden or something! :) LOL!

Here's a few of Mark's killer images!

Blessing of the Land

2006-06-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

Mark and I got home late last night from Albert and Alyssa's wedding down in the OC, and then Katie and I went to church this morning. After the ceremony, we had a "blessing of the land" service on a piece of property our church has owned for a LONG time (I think about 10 years?). Getting building permits and approval from the county is no easy thing in Santa Barbara and so progress has been slow, but the chuch has prayed consistently that God will provide a way for us to be able to build there and it looks like it's finally going to happen at some point soon in the near future.

The piece of land right now is this vacant field (pretty much the ONLY vacant field in all of Santa Barbara....) :) and so when we went to have the service there it stired up all these bugs, which brought all these birds swooping around to eat the bugs. Here are a few shots from the service....

Hangin in the OC! :)

2006-06-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

My assistant Mark and I are down in Orange county getting ready to shoot what is looking like it will be an incredible wedding for Albert and Alyssa. We got down here around noon today to shoot an amazing prewedding Korean ceremony held at Albert's house. This wedding is gonna be super cool because he's Korean and she is Vietamese and they've designed their wedding to form around their familie's wedding customs and rituals. It was so cool to witness this ceremony which was completley new for both Mark and I. Everyone wore the most incredible costumes and after the ceremony they were so kind to insist that we stay for lunch which was of course incredible authentic Korean food! :)

Here's a few images from the ceremony....

Love this shot Mark got of me shooting some family shots....

We finished shooting around 2:30 and got checked into our hotel and then we decided to have a little fun. :) Mark has a full frame 5D camera (for the non photo people reading this....that basically means his camera allows for wider angles than regular digital cameras) and I decided to rent a fisheye lens for the weekend as well....which while will be great for the actuall wedding use turned out to be just as useful to have fun with goofing off. :)

Two Killer Weddings!

2006-06-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

This past week has been absolutely incredible AND crazy busy at the same time! :) Last weekend (Memorial day weekend) we were in Visalia, CA for my good friend and old roommate's wedding. Zack and Ellen are such an amazing couple! They've been dating pretty much as long as anyone can remember (I think about 6 years?....which is about as far back as my memory goes for the most part) and so their wedding was defiently past due. Of pretty much all the people I know who have gotten married I think I can confidently say that they were more ready as a couple to be married as pretty much anyone. They are two of the sweetest people I've known and my semester rooming with Zack my senior year was honestly one of my favorite things that I'll look back on when I think about my college years at Westmont.

Anyways, enough with sappy stuff..... Their wedding rocked! :) Visalia is sorta in the middle of CA, in between Bakersfield and Fresno, which for those of you who have had to travel anywhere near that area, you know how incredibly hot it can get, yet the gods were definetly looking out for Zack and Ellen cause they had the most unbelievably perfect weather I've ever experienced for a wedding. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the tempature could seriously not have been any better. It was a PERFECT day to have a wedding. Katie came up with me, but unfortunately she caught the bug that I had the previous week (see the post below) and spent most of the day in the hotel! Luckily she was able to come for the end of the day. Despite the fact that she was sick, I realized how much I enjoy traveling with her. Usually when I'm in the car for long periods of time I usually just plug in my iPod and listen to an audio book, which is pretty much what we did for the majority of the trip up there and back, but still for some reason just having her in the car made the trip 100% more enjoyable. I'm constantly amazed at just how much I enjoy being with her. She is without a doubt the best friend I've ever had and I'm so glad I get to share so many of the experiences I have in my business with her. What can I say....I love my wife! :) She's the best (even when she's sick). :)

Here are some pics from Zack and Ellen's wedding. Congrats you guys! I can't even being to express how happy I am for the both of you!!

Ellen's sister is an amazing harpist and she played at the start of the ceremony. I've never heard a harp at a wedding before and it was great!!

I seriously almost got tears in my eyes when I saw how emotional Ellen was during the ceremony. It was so sweet!

On Saturday, we had another simply incredible wedding with Robin and Mike who I unfortunately don't know as well which is really too bad cause I can already tell they are such amazing people and will have an awesome marriage. I'm really bummed they're going to be living out East when they get back from their honeymoon cause I would love to spend more time with them! Speaking of their honeymoon, I asked Robin where they were going and she said she didn't know. Mike was surpising her! All she kne was to bring a passport!! How cool is THAT!! (she told me she would e-mail me when they got back and let me know where they ended up going.) Robin just glowed the entire day and was all smiles! It was seriously hard to take a bad picture of her! I'm going to have such a hard time editing down this wedding from the 2,500 images or so that my assitant Kim and I shot cause they're seriously going to look great with how this wedding went and with how happy everyone was!

Mike is such a stud. He had a dozen roses delievered to Robin's house while they were getting ready! So cool!

What can I say....I love dress shots! :) It's so fun to be creative with them and you can make almost anything (like in this case a living room window) look great with a little imagination.

If I learned anything from this wedding, it was that I need to be more bold in taking risks. At one point while we were shooting some shots of Robin and Mike downtown I had this idea to have them stand in the middle of State street (which is the main street through downtown Santa Barbara) and just let the cars go by them. I almost didn't even ask, but I ran the idea past my assistant Kim and she though I should at least bring it up to the couple and so I did and they were like, "Oh yeah! For sure!" So we ventured out in them middle of the street, prayed no cops would drive by, and I guess you could say we played in traffic. :) This is probably one of my favorite shots from this year so far cause it's so unique and different. Plus, Mike and Robin totally loved it when they saw it on the slideshow so it was definetly worth it! :)

This wedding also marked the first wedding of the year that I shot with my assistant from last year Kim Fisher . We had such a great time last year shooting together, and unfortunately we probably won't be able to shoot together nearly as much this year because she's booking a lot of her own weddings which is no surprise cause she is super talented. She came up with some absolutely amazing shots that just blew me away when I saw them. Here are just a few....

This was a great moment right before Robin was about to turn and enter the chuch and see Mike standing in the front. I love the dramatic lighting and the sweet expression on her face...

Shooting under the Weather and the Power of Friends

2006-05-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, under the weather in more ways than one!

This weekend started off a little scary, Friday night and Saturday I found myself in bed with a 101 fever and pretty much no strength (except to whine to Katie my wife!) I got pretty nervous about my wedding for Sunday and really called the two guys I trust the most, David Jay and my photo teacher, mentor, and still great friend from my Westmont days Brad Elliott. These are the two guys I completely trust would do an amazing job covering for me if I were ever too sick to shoot. When I called Brad was in the middle of shooting his own wedding, but luckily DJ was available and super gracious to step in.

Luckily I woke up Sunday morning the day of the wedding and was feeling quite a bit better so I called DJ and he agreed to come by and hang out anyways just in case I wasn't feeling great later in the day. Being the genius he is, he had the great idea to bring a video camera and grab some footage of me shooting. Luckily, we were further covered cause I had another buddy of mine Mark Kuroda along with me shooting, so I was feeling extremely covered in case anything went wrong.

And really, nothing did go wrong the whole day! Despite the rain, it was one of the smoothest weddings I've probably ever shot! Kate and Chris had such AMAZING attitudes about the rain! They totally made the most of it and brought along these black umbrellas that worked out SO well! So well in fact, I kept wishing it would rain harder so we could see the drops bouncing more off the top of the umbrellas!

It was such a beautiful wedding, and I can't wait to go through the shots! It was such a great wedding in fact when I came home, I was so excited from the day that I could barely sleep and despite shooting a 13.5 hour day only got about 4 or so hours of sleep that night and the next day..........

woke up sick again. :( Fever, headache, and general "sick" feeling a little worse than it had been before! Luckily now, I'm just about all better, the only bad news is Katie has it now! Hopefully by the end of today we'll have both completely recovered and be ready for our next wedding....tomorrow!! :)

Here are a few killer shots from DJ on Sunday.....

I love this shot Mark got of them coming down the isle after the ceremony!

Here are a few of my favorites....

Katie and Hani!

2006-05-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's so cool watching friends get married! Months ago when I first met Katie and Hani, I really didn't know them besides the fact that they went to our church, but over the last few months I've gotten to know them a bit better and Katie and I have started getting together with them (along with another couple from the church) every once in a while as newly married couples to discuss life. So it now puts a whole new perspective on watching them get married and being able to be a part of the day by shooting the wedding!! :)

Congrats Katie and Hani and I can't wait to see you guys when you get back! :)

I'm REALLY in love with this last image from the Father/Daughter dance. It was right at the end of the dance and Katie's dad gave her a big hug.... So cool!!

Albert and Alyssa

2006-05-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

I had a blast with Albert and Alyssa on Saturday night! They are such a cool couple and have been engaged for just about a year and a half. I don't think their June wedding could come soon enough for them! :)

We lucked out with some unreal lighting. It was totally gorgeous! I love it when everything works out so well! :)

Here are just a few of the over 900 images we shot! :)

Season Kickoff!! :)

2006-05-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Wow! This first wedding for the year was AMAZING! It was in such a beautiful location up in Felton, CA (near Santa Cruz). Absolutely beautiful! For those of you who have been to the roaring camp site, it is an awesome place for an outdoor wedding. Ginger and Brian had such a gorgeous wedding, the weather and the lighting seriously couldn't have been better! :)

Trading Spaces!

2006-04-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

How funny is THIS! I'm walking Katie out to her car this morning (cause I'm such a great husband!) and we look down the street and the TV show Trading Spaces is filming 2 doors down from us!! I don't think I was really supposed to take pictures of them, but I was extra sneaky and grabbed a few! :)

Maybe I'll see if these people want to come and help fix up our place when they're done with fixing their neighbors!

Katie and I don't have a TV, but maybe we'll try to find out when it's gonna air and go to a friend's house to watch! :) It was really funny though cause a few years ago I was home for the holidays and my mom was TOTALLY into this show and I kinda mocked her for being so into it and then I started watching it and then I kinda got hooked too! (that's why we don't have TV.... we would get addicted to too many shows!) :) I haven't watched it in years, and I don't think it's as popular as it used to be, but I thought it was so funny they were filming two doors down from us!!

Website and E-mail....

2006-04-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hey gang, I'm switching web server companies and so if you send me an e-mail or try to access my website you may get some wierd messages. We were having quite a few problems with our other hosting server (lightning servers....yeah....I don't defiently don't recommend them!) and this new one will be WAY better.

Should be up very soon!

One Red Paper Clip...

2006-04-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Ok this has absolutely NOTHING to do with wedding photography.....or even photography in general, but I thought it was stinkin cool so I had to post it up!

I'm always a fan of creativity, and I think that the power of creativity, coupled with the the community of the internet will bring a ceaseless stream of good ideas. This is definetly one of them.

This guy Kyle McDonald decided he wanted to try trading one red paper clip for bigger and better things until he eventually got a house. So he traded the paperclip for a pen. The pen for an E.T. shaped doorknob, the doorknob for a BBQ, etc etc. As of today he is up to one year's free frent in a house in Phoenix, AZ. Pretty amazing huh?!

You can check out his website HERE

Greydon and Lynn!

2006-04-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last week I met with another couple in from out of town. They were one of the first couples to book for 2007 so while I was so excited to get to know them a bit, I was really bummed that I was going to have to wait a YEAR until I get to shoot their wedding!

After we were done shooting, Katie and I went out with Lynn and Greydon as well as Greydon's parents for dinner at Palazzios. It turns out Greydon's dad owns a landscaping company that has done tons of work throughout Santa Barbara including one of the parks that I often take people to shoot engagement sessions at. (They've also done lots of estates in Montecieto, as well as parts of Westmont, and most of State Street.) It was really amazing hearing some of the stories from 30 years of working here in Santa Barbara, different floods that have damaged the area, how they got started, etc. It was actually really inspiring, hearing just a little bit about the path one man's business has taken over the course of 30 years. I feel like my own business has so many stories and learned lessons after just 2 years! I can't imagine what it'll be like after 30! :)

Anyways, here are just a few of the 680 images we captured from the shoot! :)

Ginger and Brian! :)

2006-04-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting too many wedding pics up here...cause we haven't had any yet! :) Things are actually looking great for this year, we have at the moment about 17 weddings booked for the season at the moment, but oddly they all come after April 30th......which is coming up soon with Ginger and Brian's wedding! They made the treck down from San Fransisco to Santa Barbara to hang out a little bit, shoot some engagement pictures, and talk about the details of their wedding. It sounds absolutely phenominal I can't wait. They're getting married in a redwood forrest, and the wedding party and all the guests are being brought up by train up to the site! It sounds like it's going to be amazing and I can't wait to see it!

Exodus!

2006-04-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

WOW!

What a wild week it's been! I shot the engagement session with Shannon and Trevor last Saturday got on a plane flew to Chicago had a couple of intense days of shooting for Exodus came back and shot another engagement session and life has FINALLY settled down....for the moment! :)

This was my third time shooting for Exodus and everytime I do I'm completely blown away by what this organization does. They help refugees who have fled persecution from their home country and have come here to seek a better life. However, their lives in their home countries were much different from what life is like here in America. They need help learning American culture and how to function in America. From things as simple as how to turn on a light switch, to how to use a yellow pages, to how to shop in a groccery store.

So Exodus helps place American volunteers into these people's lives to not only help them get started here with learning the essentials, but ultimately to befriend them because often these people have left their communities and come here knowing nobody, and often not even speaking English.

It was really amazing to me to see the Americans interacting with the refugee familes. Not only to see the adults becoming friends, but the children of both families becoming friends as well.

By far one of my favorite things to shoot when it comes to refugees are their faces. With weddings, you can often say SO much about the joy a bride is feeling just by capturing the expression on her face.

The same is true for refugees. When you really look into their eyes you can see their stories. You see their past. It's truly a sight to behold.

One little side story....

One of the towns we were shooting quite a bit in was Wheaton, IL. I actually grew up in Wheaton until I was in the 5th grade when my family moved to another suburb. It's not often I'm in Wheaton so during on our breaks while we were shooting, I asked Julie (my AMAZING guide from Exodus) if we could stop by and see some the old house I lived at which we did. We were driving around the neighborhood and I remembered this super old candy store that was really tiny. I asked Julie (who when to Wheaton College) if she knew about it and was like "Oh yeah, the popcorn shop!" We drove by it and went into it and it is truly an amazing store!! :) They basically built a itzy bitzy little candy store in an alley between two buildings. I totally remember my parents taking me there after my little league baseball games! So funny! We saw the owner and talked to him a bit. He told us it was built in 1921!! UNREAL! I love living in Southern California, but cool little things like this you'll really only see in small towns in the midwest! :)

All in all, I can't wait till the next time I can go back and shoot for Exodus again. Hopefully sometime this fall maybe if I can find a break in the wedding schedule. Oh yeah, speaking of weddings, when I finish editing through the engagment session from Saturday I'll throw a couple up here. Stay tuned! :)

See ya!

Just arrived!

2006-04-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

A super busy last couple days! I JUST arrived in Chicago for a SUPER quick trip to help shoot some images for an amazing organization called Exodus. We'll start shooting in a couple hours, but I wanted to quickly update you guys to the last couple days! :)

My wife Katie's parents were in town for a few days this last weekend to help celebrate Katie's sister, Annie's 20th birthday!! :) It was the first time we've seen both of her parents since the wedding in December, and we had a GREAT time. When all 4 of them are together in one place they are QUITE the group. :) I'm so grateful to have married into such a COOL family! Katie's parents and her sister are amazing people and I learn so much from all ofthem.

I also shot a really neat engagement session at the Santa Barbara Courthouse on Saturday. The courthouse is a place I've only shot at one other time, but it's an awesome spot that I will definetly have to come back to. Shanon and Trevor were an awesome couple and I'm so glad they suggested shooting there!

Our slideshows are moving up.....

2006-03-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my buddy David Jay and the new version of his ShowIT software our slideshows are REALLY gonna really start rockin!

We'll be updating the website with all new slideshows coming up soon, but in the meantime here's a little somethin to enjoy!

This program is WAY too much fun!

Fun Engagement Sessions!

Hanging with Robin and Mike!

2006-03-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy weekend! My parents were in town visiting, the first time that we've seen them since the wedding back in December (gosh has it already been 3 months?!) While they were driving up from LA however, I got to hangout with Robin and Mike. They're in town from Philly. Robin grew up here and she and Mike decided to return here to get married (who can blame 'em though!) Santa Barbara, really is just about the perfect place to have a wedding! I had such a great time hanging out with them and learning about their relationship.

I couldn't believe how photogenic these guys were!! My intial "favorites" folder after going through all the pictures the first time had over 100 images!!

Here are just a few of 'em!

Lucy got BIG! :)

2006-03-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

6 months ago, I took some pictures of an ADORABLE baby in our church, Lucy. 6 months later, she's only gotten more cute and BIG! :) I can't help but wonder if people kept growing at the rate they do in their first year how big they would be by the time they were adults! I think I would weigh a good 5,000 pounds! Thank God that's not the case! :)

I really don't do many baby pictures, but Lucy definetly made it easy. I should hope my child someday won't be as photogenic as Lucy is or I for sure will get NOTHING done during my days. :) I definetly hope if I have a little girl her eyes are as blue as Lucy's! They are SOOO cute!

Check out Lucy! :)

Kate and Chris! :)

2006-03-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I love it when I leave "work" and I'm more excited then when I started! :)

Last night I met with Kate and Chris who I knew as kinda friends of friends, but after hanging out shooting and then having dinner afterwards I feel like are good friends that I connect with on a deeper level! They were amazingly photogenic, and the lighting was absolutely perfect!

Afterwards we got dinner and had an awesome conversation about everything from how we both came to be dating our significant others, to our families, to the Meyer's Briggs test (a personality indicator....I'm an INFP for those of you who know what I'm talking about!) :) I left dinner just so amped and so thankful that I get to do what I do! I just feel so blessed in my life to work with such great people and play such a cool role in their lives.

One of the cool things working with Chris and Kate was they were so spontaneous. I had them go stand in this little archway and then I walked back behind the fountain that you see blurred out in the foreground. When I got behind the fountain and turned around Kate had just jumped up on Chris's legs and leaned over and kissed him like that. I could barely start shooting fast enough. :)

Michelle, Scott, and Sawyer! :)

2006-03-13T11:31:00.000-08:00

Most of us have mentors who have impacted our lives in one way or another. I've been so blessed to have several who have formed me into the person that I am, and Michelle and Scott are definetly two of those people. I met Michelle in college, she is an incredibly gifted songwritter . She and Scott have both done so much to shape my views on art, faith, and the way the two of those interact together in changing the world. Going down to their home has always been a retreat for me, a pilgrimage to a Mecca of sorts. :)

Three years ago they were blessed to introduce their son Sawyer to the world. That is a story unto itself, suffice to say that he had numerous medical issues surrounding his birth, and the fact that he is alive today and as healthy as he is is nothing short of a miracle. Last Friday I went down to Pasadena to help Scott out with some images for his Natural Walls business and afterwords hung out with the three of them and got to capture them being....them! :)

I couldn't come all the way down without getting to hear a little bit of Michelle's music.....and of course, I couldn't go more than 5 mins without grabbing my camera and getting some more shots. :)

Of course, after a few mins Sawyer heard the music and needed to get a front row seat! :)

Towards the end of the day Scott and I were talking and Michelle was giving Sawyer a bath and Michelle came in and told us that Sawyer only wanted one of us to shampoo his hair! This was too good a photo opp to pass up so I grabbed the camera again! :)

After the bath, I got to do the honors of reading Sawyer a book before bedtime (about all the differnt kinds of "big trucks" and Scott was sly enough to catch a picture. :)

Can't wait for next time!! :)

SJDA

2006-03-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

While the majority of my photographic time is given towards weddings, I love being able to do other things as well. One of the organizations I get to help out on a semi regular basis is the St. John Damascus Acadamy. This is an exceptional school run through our church and once or twice a semester I get to run over there and shoot brochure type stuff for them. I'm blown away by the quality of the program they have over there. I wish I would have been able to go there when I was younger!! :)

Recent Engagements!

2006-03-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Wow, things are starting to get underway for this year! We've been meeting with tons of couples lately and I'm super amped on the weddings we have coming up this year. I can't believe how blessed I am to get to work with such awesome people on a regular basis and how I get to be a part of one of the most important days of their lives. It just never gets old!!

Here are some images from a few of the couples that I've been meeting with lately.

This is Amy and Brandon, I can't wait for their wedding in October.

This is Dylan and his awesome bride to be Cathrine. I've gotten to know Dylan the last few years up at Yosemitte Serria Summer Camp, a fantastic camp up near Bass Lake, CA. I worked up there a number of years ago when I was in college and return when I can to shoot brochure images for them. I'm super bummed I'm not gonna be able to do their wedding, but it was awesome to get to see them again and to hang out a bit last weekend!

I'm Back!!

2006-01-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Howdy Everyone!

Well quite a bit has happened in the past few weeks and months! First and foremost....

I GOT MARRIED!!!

Now, the question that I've been asked probably about 100,000 times is who shoots the wedding of a photographer... Only the best! :)
David Jay , my biggest mentor in the wedding photography industry, was gracious enough to come hang out with us for the day and lead a group of a couple other AMAZING photographers, including DJ's assistant Tim Halberg and one of my assistants Kim Fisher . They did an absolutely phenominal job in capturing our day. You can check out a slideshow of our wedding

HERE!!!

Thanks so much DJ, Tim, and Kim for making our day one of the best ever! Katie and I can't thank you enough!!

We then honeymooned in Mendocino, CA. We got off to a slightly rocky start with Katie really hurting her foot the first night we got up there (tripping on a wooden step), which ended up in a trip to the ER a day or so later. (Good stories to tell the grandkids right!) :)

Despite a weather forecast that predicted rain EVERY day, we ended up having pretty decent weather and had a great time relaxing and resting from a few extremely busy months of wedding planning and lots of traveling and shooting on my end.

Of course though as expected I took my camera and had fun trying to be a nature photographer for a week!! :)

Katie and I have been having a great time being back in SB getting accustomed to married life. It's been awesome to be on the other side of this whole wedding experience!! :)

Gotta run, but have much more to update you all on soon!

Slideshows!

2005-11-17T14:08:00.001-08:00

I'm SOOOOOOO excited to announce that we have a VERY new cool feature to our website....

SLIDESHOWS!! :)

Some of you may know that we've been posting slideshows to our recent weddings on the web, but they haven't been linked in from anywhere. Now you can see the same slideshow that we show at the reception of any wedding on the web hopefully the next day.

Annie, my beloved web helper (and my fiancee's sister), and I have been slaving over this for a little while now (she really did all the work, I just watched), and it's just about good to go!

This is so cool because now couples can share their wedding pictures with people who weren't able to make the wedding the next day. PLUS, since I've been so behind on updating the blog about a few of our recent weddings, now you can see what we've been up to the last few weeks! As you can tell....we've been busy. :)

Soon, we'll have a direct link from the website to the slideshows as well so you can check them out from there.

Check it out!!

www.chrishumphreys.com/slideshows

Chicago!!

2005-11-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm hoplessly behind in updating this, but I have some awesome adventures to share!

I've been in Chicago the past couple days and it's been action packed! I came out here because I had a good friend from High School who now oddly enough shoots Northwestern University Football games and invited me out to come by and shoot with him. I couldn't pass up that kind of opportunity so I jumped on a plane and came out. The game, while a bit colder than I would have liked was incredible. I've never shot a football game before in my life, much less a Big 10 Game so this was a new experience, but super fun. For those of you who watched the game on TV you know how close it was. Northwestern came back and scored two touchdowns within a about a min and half at the very end to win the game. It was amazing!

Here was my buddy Jerry shooting.... (ladies, he IS available....)

And Jerry caught a shot of me as well. I think I don't look too happy cause I was cold and wet! (it rained) :(

The celebration after the game winning extra point.

The next day my dad volunteered me to shoot some pictures of his neighbor's two year old daughter. Julian was such a cutie! We had a blast putting her outside in the bright yellow and orange leaves, something I don't get to get to do a lot out in California!

The next day my mom and I took a nice walk through a nature preserve close to our house. It was one of my favorite places to escape when I was living at home in High School, and I still try to get back there whenever I'm home. We saw some deer as well!

Last, but certainly not least, I got to hang out with my dad for a good portion of the day shooting for an non profit organization called Exodus. The organization helps refugees from other countries get started here. This was one of the families that we visited. They were from Russia. Their son was super cute!

It's been quite a trip the last few days, I'm really excited to go home though and be with Katie. She's been moving into our new apartment and it's been a lot of fun putting the place together. It's hard to believe I'll be married in less than 2 months!

And don't think we haven't been busy with weddings! I'm just really behind on posting about them! I'll put up some highlights from the past month when I get back tomorrow!

Hope you all are doing well!

WOW!

2005-10-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm really behind on updating this! I still haven't posted about the wedding from last weekend, (which was awesome by the way, images to come soon!), I just HAD to post this up tonight though cause it was so cool!

A few weeks ago this guy calls me asking me if I'd be interested in shooting him proposing to his girlfriend. Honestly, at the time I thought it was sorta an odd idea, but I went along with it. A few phone calls and last minute schedule changes later and we were on for tonight. I met Steve for the first time over by the Biltmore wall overlooking the ocean earlier this morning and we talked a bit of strategy as far as where they would be and where I could get some cool angles. A few hours later I showed up and got to capture this amazing life changing moment. It was such an amazing experience and I'm so glad I could do it.

I couldn't believe that Caitlin never heard me as I moved around them and grabbed all these shots. I stuck around and played paparazzi for about an hour moving around behind them. Luckily the ocean provided the perfect amount of noise that she never heard my shutter going off.

The best part for me was at the end. I had taken about 400 images and figured I was pretty good so I decided to take off. Steve had his arm around her and as I drove by them he took his arm off her shoulders and gave me a thumbs up. It was the perfect signal for the night. I've haven't left ANY shoot feeling this good in months!

On the way home I wanted to do something more for them so I called and left Steve a message telling him I wanted to give them something that night. He called me back and told me the name of the resturant that they would be hanging out at for the next several hours. I went home picked about 13 images and printed them out on my little Canon Selphy Printer and printed 13 4x6 prints and pasted them into an album for them and then drove up to the resturant to give it to them. It was such a great reminder as to how doing something nice for someone else is such a joyful experience. It was wonderful to meet Caitlin (offically) :) and to talk to both of them a little more about their experience. Funny how we can start a day being perfect strangers with a few people and end the day feeling like close friends. :)

What a blessing to be a part of that story!

In addition to the couple of pictures I posted here, I made a little slideshow so you guys can see more pics!

Enjoy!

Steve and Caitlin Slideshow

Lucy Speier!!

2005-10-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

Wow! I'm not a baby photographer, but they sure are cute to photograph!

Lucy became a new addition to our church family 6 months ago, and when her parents asked me if I wanted to spend a little time photographing her I couldn't say no. :) She's just so darn cute! And not in the least bit camera shy either! She'll make a great bride in about 22 years! :)

Marieke and Nathan

2005-10-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been a little absent here the past week! A TON has gone on and I need to get caught up! :)

Last week started off with a really cool engagement session I did with Marieke and Nathan. The three of us ended up hanging out quite a bit, having dinner before hand and then shooting for a few hours and I can't remember the last time I've laughed so hard! My intern Alison came by and joined us halfway through and we seriously couldn't stop laughing! Nathan, you have the best sense of humor ever! :)

I also got a new camera, the Canon Mark IIn about a week ago and have been playing with it. It's such a great camera and will really allow us to do some really exciting things.

Check out some of the images from the night....

Matt and Julia!

2005-10-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Matt and Julia who had a BEAUTIFUL wedding up in the wine country of Sonoma, CA. My assistant and I both were fighting colds and the flu for a bit of the day, but I think the adrenaline of the day kept us going. Plus, being around such cool people always brings your spirits up. :)

Here are a few of the pics from the day! :)

Plugging Dane Sanders....

2005-09-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

So Dane Sanders is a good friend of mine, and is seriously one of the smartest and most gifted people I know. First of all he's an INCREDIBLE photographer. Check out his awesome stuff at www.danesanders.com

Second and really more importantly he's an inspiring teacher. I've been sitting in on his leadership class at Westmont and it's been so life changing. I think it'll end up being one of the most helpful classes I've ever taken at Westmont...and I'll have taken it when I wasn't even a student! :)

Thanks Dane for giving so freely of your time (he sits with students over coffee all the time), and for really believing that the world can change one person at a time. :)

I got the chance to take some pics of him during our class today. Check it out!

Jessica Ballew

2005-09-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I so much fun shooting senior pictures for Jessica Ballew. Despite shooting at Chase Palm Park for the 3rd time in about 5 days, we came up with some really fun images. Usually, I don't like shooting at the same place so many times, but this week it's been really good to try to come up with new angles and fresh ideas! I kinda hope the next client asks to shoot there as well so I can keep working on this exercise of coming up with new shots! :)

Here are some of the images from last night...

TWO Engagement Sessions....

2005-09-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

We had SUCH a busy week last night preparing for the class and editing I'm a little behind posting up here! We've had TWO great engagement sessions 2 days apart from each other. Both couples were smart enough to pick an awesome location (Chase Palm Park) and that gave me a chance to really try to keep creative and keep things fresh. I end up shooting there a lot, so it's always a good exercise in trying to be creative and come up with new things.

Katie and Hani were SO much fun to hang out with. I couldn't believe how natural they were! I'll admit I was a bit nervous shooting these guys. I had taken her sister's engagement pictures a few months before and they had turned out really well and her whole family (they go to my church) has been telling me how great those look, so when her sister came to me wanting do some engagement pictures and at the same place as her sister I felt a little pressure. :) I shouldn't have though, because Katie and Hani were so natural it made it easy to come up with great images.

They were also really open to trying new things. A few mins after the sun set it was starting to get kinda dark and I suggested we use State street to get some cool night city shots which they were up for so I grabbed my monopod and we headed out. I had a lot of fun experimenting with dropping the shutter down and getting some cool motion from passing cars and people. I've never had the chance to shoot stuff like that before and it was so cool taking a step outside the box to try to come up with something new. So much fun! Thanks you guys!!

Drew and Nick were just as fun to shoot with on Saturday night. The weather wasn't as nice as we would have hoped for, but we made it work and grabbed some great images. Again, it helps when you have people who are SO photogenic! I can't believe their wedding is a month away in San Diego. They were telling me some of the details about it over coffee before we started shooting and it's going to be so beautiful.

Comments...

2005-09-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

After getting a lot of comments about people wanting to leave "comments" on the blog I decided to turn them on. (Actually, I didn't even know it was turned off till I checked.) So now if you want to leave a comment about something feel free! :) If you have a question about how I got a specific shot or exposure info this is a great place to ask it! :)

Look forwad to "chatting" with ya'll. :)

Thomas and Rachel!!

2005-09-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

It's rare I have this much fun when I'm soaking wet. :)

As most of my friends know I'm not a big fan of swiming in the ocean, but I had such a great time shooting with Thomas and Rachel late last week...in waist deep water. :) When Thomas told me they wanted to go shoot down at the beach I don't think either of us were thinking the tide would be as high as it was, (basically all the way up to the Biltmore wall for those of you from SB.) We all just smiled tossed off our shoes and got in! Thomas and Rachel were such good sports with getting wet I couldn't believe it. They just charged right in! I think I definetly speak for all of us when I say we had a blast! :)

Mariaelena And Jared!

2005-09-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

WOW!! WOW!! WOW!!

Katie and I just finished the several hour treck back from Palo Alto to Santa Barbara and I'm still on a bit of an adrenaline rush from the wedding last night. This was probably one of the most rewarding ones we've shot all year I think. The best part was when we got to show Mariaelena and Jared the slideshow. As soon as the first image came on the screen tears welled up in her eyes. After about 10 images she came over to me and gave me a huge hug and through her tears she told that seeing the images from her wedding in the slideshow was "the best part of her wedding day!" She I couldn't believe it! That just about made my month!

Even though I just met them for the first time that morning, I really feel like they are close friends of ours now and that's such a great feeling. It's such a privilege to be trusted to capture someone's wedding day and when a bride rewards you by crying at the slideshow it's one of the best feelings ever! (at least for a wedding photographer!) :)

Here's a few images from the weekend...

Thanks for Visiting....Come Again! :)

2005-09-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Wow! As the owners of most websites do, I periodically check our webstats to see how many people are coming to our site. The trend this year has been a steady increase month by month. This month we broke our previous "record" of unique visitors by 25%.

Which prompted me to go check out our site. (I admit I hadn't even been there for a while!) I realized our galllery section was SOOO old! Almost all from last year. So, I went through and updated it and I'm really pleased with the results.

Go check it out at

www.chrishumphreys.com

Just click on the gallery section.

Enjoy!

As a teaser, I'll let you know as well that this is a "temporary" fix in our minds. We've got some plans for the upcoming weeks/months that will TOTALLY change the way the gallery section on our site works. Stay tuned! :)

~chris

Easy Ways to Take Better Pictures!

2005-09-01T23:30:00.001-07:00

Thanks so much to Judy Braun for bugging me for so long to actually get my act together and get this organized!

Over the last few months, I've gotten quite a few resquests to teach some sort of a class and I'm happy to announce that it is finally going to happen later this month. So for those of you who are in the Santa Barbara area read on!

This 3 hour class is designed for photographers of all skill levels; we will cover topics ranging from exposure, composition, lighting, to basic techniques as and will discuss topics that come up from your questions.

The goal of the class is simple...to help ANYONE, no matter what their skill level or experience, to take better pictures! Regardless of whether you have a point and click film camera or a digital SLR, if you take your camera out once a week or once a year, my goal is that you will leave the class with a few practical tips that will help you end up with better images!

If you've always wished you could take better pictures of your kids, or wondereed why your pictures at family outings never come out quite the way you had hoped, then this class if for YOU! :) If you've been shooting for years or been too scared to take your camera out of the box this class is for YOU! :) Basically, ANYONE who wants to just sharpen their skills is more than welcome to come. On that note, if you have friends or know people who might be interested feel free to pass this along to them as well.

The class is tentatively scheduled for the morning of September 24th. Please respond by sending an e-mail to chris@chrishumphreys.com to let me know if you are interested. There will be a $25 fee for the class.

Also, let me know if you would like to take the class, but can't make it on September 24th. If a lot of people want to take the class, but aren't available on that date, we will try rescheduling the class for early November.

Happy Birthday DJ!

2005-09-01T23:10:00.001-07:00

Gosh, sorry I haven't posted on here for a while! I've been so busy with a bunch of small stuff!

A few days ago though, I got the AWESOME honor of helping throw David Jay a birthday party at Bogarts, our local hangout place. I really didn't do nearly as much work as most of the other people in the group, Dane, Sarah, Amy, Deyl, and Tim were the main players. I just cheered 'em on. :)

For those who don't know, David is one of the most talented photographers I've ever met. This wouldn't be THAT impressive if it weren't also for the fact that he's one of the smartest business people I've ever come across. This wouldn't even be all that cool, if it weren't ALSO for the fact that he's one of the nicest people I've ever known. The combination of all three of these traits and you see why David is quickly becoming one of the best wedding photographers in the United States. If you haven't checked out his stuff go to www.davidjay.com to see it. (He's also got probably the coolest website I've ever seen!) Whenever I think I'm good and need a good dose of reality, I check his stuff out and it puts me in my place!

The night was amazing. His mom sent us all this stuff from his childhood, Ninja books as well as a bunch of magic stuff, all things that he was into as a kid. I think the highlight was a video that he made when he was real young. Something about a magic gene. I'm not sure, I was laughing too hard through most of it! :)

Here's some pics from the night. If you look hard you'll see me in the first one. My buddy Dane took that one.

Notice the Krispy Creme cake. Espessially fitting for DJ. I think everytime I'm over at his apartment he's got at least one box sitting there in his kitchen!

What a night!

Congrats Bret and Sara!

2005-08-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Gosh, seemed like just a few weeks ago I was shooting these guy's engagement pictures! (actually, it was a few weeks ago!) :)

Whoever says you can't plan a wedding well in four months needed to see Bret and Sara's yesterday! It was so beautiful and in the perfect location too! The wedding and reception was at the Fullerton Arboretum, with beautiful trees, flowers, bridges, and everythnig else that would make the perfect setting for a wedding.

Bret, quite the ladies man, hanging with the bridesmaids.... :)

The lighting the whole day was just perfect. That mixed in with the setting of the arboretum, plus the fact that Bret and Sara are just a beautiful couple in general made for some great moments! Check it out!

Look at us!

2005-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Look at this shot that Brad our second shooter at a wedding grabbed a few weeks ago.

I think Katie and I make a great team! What do you think?! :)

Brad grabbed this shot earlier in the day too!

This was the shot that I was taking at the time....

Hangin with Kate!

2005-08-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

Got to hang with Kate Retzer, a "friend of a friend" who is quickly just turning into a "friend." :) She wanted a few senior pictures, so we headed up the hill to Westmont, where the light just always seems to be perfect. Thanks for hanging and chating Kate! Can't wait to do it again! (maybe this time without the camera!)

On the drive home, I saw a BEAUTIFUL sunset in the rear view mirror. I immediately pulled over and ran up to a good spot and grabbed a few shots of it. I hope I never get sick of photography to the point where I don't bother grabbing some shots of a wonderful sunset.

ANOTHER Engagement Session!

2005-08-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Well, as if shooting a wedding yesterday wasn't enough, I got the chance to shoot another engagement session with another great couple day. This has been my third engagement session in the last nine days!

It's actually times like these that I'm really relieved! Relieved, that even though I've been super busy lately, and it seems I've been shooting (or at least editing!) non-stop, I'm not sick of my job yet at all! In fact, I'm more stoked about it than ever! Yesterday, I got to have a blast shooting with Trevor and Jenna at their wedding, this morning after church I was blessed to meet with another super cool couple, Heather and Phil to talk about their wedding for next May, and then tonight I got to shoot with Rose and Brad! And even after all that, I'm not even close to tired of doing this! (Actually, I am a bit tired....just not of my job!)

I get to meet so many cool people, hear so amazing stories about of the different journeys that couples have been on, and be a part of such important events in people's lives. Next to the head product taster for Krispy Creme, I think I probably have one of the best jobs in the world! :)

Thanks Rose and Brad, you guys were a ton of fun today!

Trevor and Jenna's Wedding!

2005-08-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a weekend!! Yesterday Kim (my awesome assistant!) shot an absolutely beautiful wedding here in Carpinteria. And it couldn't have been for a nicer couple. Jenna, being from Ohio had a great midwest flare about here that I rarely get to see now that I live out here. It made me remember how much I love the midwest! I've actually known Trevor for a couple of years now, and he's one of the most gentle guys I've ever met! (As well as a killer frisbee player!)

Ok, so I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for good details. I love it when people plan out little details that most of the people at a wedding would never even know about, but it's still special to them anyways. The bridesmaids were telling me how Jenna went way out of her way to try to find a bunch of matching sandals for her bridesmaides with these little flowers on them. SO COOL!

Speaking of details, I thought this shot of Jenna's necklace was pretty sweet...

The church we were shooting in had a cool balcony so I had my assitant go up there when Jenna and her dad were walking down the isle. I love this great shot she got from up there! Way to go Kim! (That's yours truly crouching up front by the way!)

After the ceremony I caught this shot of Jenna looking over her shoulder as she was going around the corner of the church. I love capturing little moments like this...

We stayed around long enough to grab some shots of the two of them before they headed off to the reception.

The flower girl at this wedding was SOOOO photogenic! Probably one of the most photogenic kids I've ever been around....EVER! She really enjoyed the day, particularly when they announced her at the start of the reception! :)

The reception was next to the beach and we were all blessed to see a great sunset as we enjoyed the party.

Congrats Jenna and Trevor! You're wedding was SOOO beautiful! I was so blessed to be a part of it!

~chris

Paige and Jon!

2005-08-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

Got the awesome chance to shoot with some neighbors of mine last night! These guys are on the fast track of engagement, they're getting married just short of 4 months after they got engaged! I'm super stoked for you guys! I'm so glad I get to shoot your wedding! It's gonna be a blast!

Megan and Josh!

2005-08-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Got to hang out with a wonderful couple last night. Josh and Megan are getting married next July and it was a blast to shoot some pics with them and then grab some dinner and chat afterwards. Megan and I have been friends for a while from back when I was in college and helped her out with some photos for the yearbook.

Josh is a big time surfer so they thought it would be fun to get some shots on the water. I think the water was a bit cold for Megan, but the pictures turned out great! :)