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Wendy and Marshall

Well I've debated on whether or not to blog so close to the "launch." But I was working on these images today and wanted to share a few of my favorites. I promise I'll get back in the swing of things next week!

Wedding Chicks

I just got an email from my clients Kari and Steve that their engagement session was featured on the super-rad-wedding-blog, Wedding Chicks. Wedding Chicks is another awesome resource for brides looking for inspiration. Check it out!

Uh oh...

So I've been busy, really busy... and I haven't been blogging too much but I promise it will all be worth it. Its coming, and its awesome.

Michael and Brianna

I'm doing something I haven't done in a really long time... I'm blogging a wedding the night of the wedding. Well technically its the next morning but it still counts. I just shot an awesome wedding here in Houston. My good friend Akil Bennett came along to second shoot with me. Aside from the 100+ degree heat and the 97% humidity today, it was a beautiful day. I really love this area, the weather is just awful though. Makes me thankful for our incredible weather in Orange County.

Here are a few favorites from today!

Off to Texas

I'm leaving this morning to head to Houston to shoot a wedding this weekend. I'll be out of the office for about a week but should have access to email and internet. If you need anything send us an email and we'll get back with you as soon as we can. We might not be able to respond as quickly as we usually do but we will definitely get back with you.

I'll actually be in Houston for about a week and will have some personal time while I'm there. If anyone would like to set up a portrait or engagement session or if you're a photographer and would like to grab lunch leave me a comment or shoot me an email.

The After Party

After our party last week we had a little poker tournament. Here are a few images from the tourney.
Becker's poker face...

Jessica staring me down...


Masen...

Apparently I look mad when I play poker...

Regis guarding his stack...

The ghetto fab Mark and Candice...

The Brooke's, Brian and Helen (who recently got engaged), and Aaron Dieppa.

Blog Features

Over the past couple of weeks I've been featured on some really great wedding related blogs. The first was Elizabeth Anne Designs, which featured Kathy and Sam's beautiful wedding at the Turnip Rose. Elizabeth Anne's blog is an awesome place to go get ideas and inspiration for your own wedding. If you haven't checked it out already, what are you waiting for!?


The second was the blog of Southern Wedding Style Magazine, a magazine which, surprisingly, focuses on southern weddings. They stumbled upon images of Elizabeth and Chris' wedding shot last year in Nashville. Not only was it an INCREDIBLE wedding, it was overflowing with southern charm and style. They contacted me to not only feature it on their blog but they will also be featuring it in an upcoming issue of their magazine! Nice!

I'm Back... Again

So I've been out for a while... I know. I've had many, many things keeping me away but 2 weeks is out of control. One of the things that kept me occupied for the past two weeks was my party. Ever since we moved into our new place we've been meaning to have a party. Just to get all of our friends over and have a good time. We've been in the house 2 months to the day and I've been out of town AT LEAST half of that. So its taken a little longer to actually get settled in than we thought. Well last night we finally did it. We had about 50 guests, mostly photographers, over and had the best time. We brought in a couple of sushi chefs to make fresh sushi for our guests, hired an awesome bartender to handle the beverages and had our friends (Karli, Gabby and Angie) over at Simply Mumtaz helping us out making sure everything went smoothly.

The sushi was incredible, the weather was perfect and the company couldn't have been better. After things started settling down my boy Becker broke out the poker chips and we got a little game going. About 10 of us played and after about 3 or 4 hours it ended with me and Becker splitting the pot and calling it a tie. I can't complain though... anytime I walk away from the table with more than I started with I'm happy.

I'm going to post some images I took tomorrow but Lan put together this rad video of the night so I thought I'd share it first. In order of appearance... Michael Norwood, (that's right... I linked myself) Candice Brooke, Bonny Pierzina, Brian Khang, Jasmine Star, Jessica Claire, Ryel J, Justin Lyon, Amelia Lyon, JD "Star" (haha), Ma5en, Tony Bisson, Aaron Dieppa, Regis Chen and Natalie Williams. Whoa... that was a lot of links.

There were a bunch more people there. Like I said, more to come tomorrow.

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Free Music

I'm a huge fan of music. I also love to buy music. That's right, I love to BUY music, downloading crappy copies from high schoolers just doesn't do it for me. But when a band gives it away for free I'm not going to complain. Check out the first single from Coldplay's upcoming album... you can download it here.

Cyndie's Birthday!

Today is my lovely, amazing, wonderful and supportive wife, Cyndie's, birthday! She's just getting over being sick and most likely doens't feel like being photographed so here's a picture from our trip to New York a few months ago. Everyone say, "Happy Birthday!"

theLAB day 3

On Day 3 we had our bride from day 2 come out to shoot a bridal session. We don't shoot many of these in California but in the south everyone does. It was awesome and Hannah was an incredible model. Here are a few of my favorites from that afternoon. Tomorrow I'll put up a little wrap up of the workshop.

theLAB day 2

Sorry I've been gone! After the workshop I went out to a friend's lake house in Oklahoma for a few days to recoup from the LONG, LONG days of the workshop and flew back late Saturday night to shoot a wedding on Sunday. I'm back now though and have plenty to show. We'll start with some images from the workshop we held last week in Texas.

Day two was all about couples. We had an engagement couple and a bride and groom to shoot as well. Both couples were awesome to work with and the location was just amazing. I'm going to go through everyone that attended later on but I can't say enough how great a group we had. Wonderful photographers, amazing people. It was such a great experience.

I took a few more pictures this day but still not too many. I guess I was talking too much. Here are a few of my favorites.








Tomorrow I'll put up some images from our shoot on day 3. Check back for that!

theLAB day one

We had an awesome day today and had an incredible shoot with some really great models. It was the Egan show at the shoot today with him showing how he works with his clients during a shoot. Check his blog for some images. I hardly shot because I was helping out and answering questions, but I did take a model and a group at the end to work with and snapped a few.

Here's Fred working hard.

The group shooting our models.

Like I said, I didn't take too many shots but here's a few of one of our models, Mandy, who was just amazing to work with.

theLAB is here

Tonight begins theLAB. We have a great group of photographers coming from across the country and Canada and I can't wait to get started. I'm going to try to post every day during the workshop to show what's going on and hopefully also highlight some of the awesome photographers attending. Should be a fun week!

Jacqui and Bryan

Here are a few shots from a shoot I had last week. I love California in the spring.

My baby's back.

I got a call from Canon yesterday and today I went to pick up my camera. I'm so impressed with Canon. I've heard that they really take care of their pros but fixing a camera in 2 days (when they estimated 10) is awesome. So tonight I thought I'd give it a test drive and shoot a few pics of my beautiful bassets, Copper and Penny. Aside from the shutter sounding totally different it seems to be back to normal.

Steve and Kari

Last weekend I met Steve and Kari in Solvang, an incredible town in the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley. We spent a couple hours hitting their favorite wineries and even stopped by the spot where Steve proposed. I had a great time guys and can't wait for the wedding!

Bummer

This is not what a shutter is supposed to look like.

I had a shoot in LA yesterday and about half an hour into it my camera made the worst noise and quit working. I opened it up to see that my shutter was blown. Thank God I brought backup equipment. Well, I'm off to Canon to get my shutter replaced.

Edited to add:
Well the good news is the folks at Canon were super nice and helpful and even put a rush on it so I can have it before I leave for Texas next week. The bad news is it cost over $600. Wow.

McCain

Ok here's the first of many posts to come. Last week I shot an event where John McCain, the GOP candidate, spoke. He was actually very engaging and pretty interesting... something I wasn't really expecting. The event was planned by my good friends over at Simply Mumtaz.

I got there about 45 minutes before the event was supposed to start and took my place among the rest of the photographers. A few minutes later I got permission to go to the second floor and shoot from there which was awesome because I wouldn't have to jockey for position, trying to get a good shot. So I went upstairs and set up.

I sat there alone for about 20 minutes when five LAPD officers came up and immediately started harassing me, searching me, searching my equipment, threatening to take my cards, asking for ID that proved I had permission to be there. Instead of finding out if there was a problem they assumed there was one. Once I proved to them (several times in several different ways) that I was allowed to be there they told me they needed my seat for surveillance and put me over in the corner where most of my view was blocked by columns. Look, I know you have to protect politicians but, come on, let's be professional officers.

I hope this doesn't get me on their bad list.

Ladies and gentlemen, John McCain.



There was tons of press there... here's CNN's setup.

And here's how channel 14 rolls. Bringin' the heat!