New Bag!

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!

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!!!

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!

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. :)

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

To properly mourn the Bear's loss tonight.

We'll reopen on Tuesday.

:(

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. :)

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! :)

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

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.