Ryan and Rachelle Summer Wedding in Yorba Linda
I had been looking forward to this wedding for a long time as I found Rachelle to be so much fun to work with and couldn’t wait to meet Ryan as he has been off serving our country. We couldn’t have asked for better weather and the Messiah Lutheran Church in Yorba Linda made for an awesome backdrop to the ceremony. Afterward we headed over to the Alta Vista Country Club where we ran around the course for some special shots and then headed inside where Ross was keeping the dance floor rocking. Now something I have never seen (nor heard of until now) was the Hoedown Throwdown which the wedding party and a number of guests all did during the reception.
Note: The Hoedown Throwdown should be well known to any Hannah Montana fans
Bike Racing Action at El Toro
My friend Jeff Sipper tweeted about a bike race at the old El Toro Marine base today. I thought it sounded like something fun to do and pretty outside of what I normally shoot so I decided to join him. This bike racing series was created by Ryan Miller and Jeff Davis, in conjunction with California Bicycle Racing and sponsored by Rock n’ Road Cyclery and Team VeloSport. Here are some pics from today’s race.
LA Shoot This – Craig Park
It was my honor to be asked to speak again at the LA Shoot This group. This time I talked about getting your exposure and your white balance nailed in-camera. When it came to the shooting, the models were absolutely wonderful, there was enough of a breeze to keep us from overheating, and the location offered a nice variety of shooting locations. Here is a handful of some of my favorites shots of the day.
Show – The Supper Club – Bourbon Street Speakeasy Charity Event
What a great evening for an awesome cause. Show – The Supper Club was an awesome burlesque and music show featuring top-notch performers. With lots of different dance numbers, an awesome live band, and good food, it simply a great time. The fact that it was a benefit for CHOC Charities just put the entire evening well over the top. Here are some of my favorite images from tonight.
Posting from Android phone
I have finally caved in and dropped the Blackberrys I have been using for years and have picked up and Android based phone. Being with T-Mobile I opted for the myTouch 3G Slide. If this works out I will hopefully be able to post behind the scenes shots from different events.
The following images are uploaded straight from the phone.
Cars & Coffee Auto Show – June 19th, 2010
I love going to the Cars & Coffee Show but since it starts at 6:30am on Saturday’s, I usually am not quite awake enough to head over there. This weekend I suggested to members of the OC Photo Club that people go over to take some shots and a few people took me up on it. I had just worked an overnight grad night, so since I was still awake anyway….
If you want to hit up the show, it is free to attend and is just one block away from the Irvine Spectrum. The show is every saturday from 6:30am – 9am. I suggest being there by 6:30 and watching the cars come rolling in.
Lensbaby Wedding Project
I love the Lensbaby lenses and will pull out the Lensbaby Composer at every wedding to snag a couple of dreamy portraits and will often use it for a few special pics of the rings and details. For a long time now I have wanted to shoot an entire wedding with one as a pet project. What would possess me to use a selective focus (and manual focus) lens to shoot an entire wedding? First off, its a challenge. As photographers we generally do not push ourselves with our personal projects as much as we should. Many have taken up trying to use their cell phone camera but its still all automatic, although you can still work on composition and lighting. Using a Lensbaby on the other hand is all manual. Since the Lensbaby lenses have a small “sweet spot” of sharp focus and the rest has a unique type of blurring to it, focusing is a real challenge. Try holding a camera, adjusting a focus manually, while holding a flash off to the side with one hand and you can imagine how awkward it can be at times.
In talking to a friend of mine, Chris Diset, who also shoots weddings in southern California, we got to talking about our pet projects and when I told him I wanted to shoot an entire wedding with a Lensbaby, he immediately invited me to do it at the next wedding he was shooting. This is why its great to make friends with other photographers, I would never have tried this for a client that was paying me to get the best images as I knew going into this project that my “keeper ratio” was going to be far below average. In the end, a little over 800 images were taken. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a Lensbaby Composer. Most images were taken with the dual glass optic, many of those with the super wide angle attachment, and a handful were taken with the FishEye optic.
Without further ado, I present an Entire Wedding Shot with a Lensbaby.
LA Shoot This! Star Wars Theme at UCLA
Joelle picked a pretty cool location for this month’s LA Shoot This! event and chose an “out of this world” theme complete with a handful of Star Wars characters and some models done up in some futuristic garb. We all had a great time trying to come up with ideas, playing with lighting, gels, and off-camera flash. Here are my favorite pics from the day.
Great Day Fishing in Western New York
I absolutely love coming out to Western New York and usually try to get out for a little fishing while out here. We had fair day fishing on Thursday but today we went out and just nailed it! With yours truly taking the top count at 26 fish with a combination of Rock Bass, Small Mouth Bass, and a Northern Pike. Dan took second in count but edged me out on species count with 23 total fish with several Large Mouth Bass, a few Small Mouth Bass, a Sun Fish, and a handful of Rock Bass. Here are a few camera phone pics from today’s trip.
Kerry's Big Bass
Kerry's Northern Pike
Dan's Monster Bass
Scott Robert Lim Mentoring Workshop
Recently I was asked to be a group leader at Scott Robert Lim’s Mentoring Workshop in Los Angeles so I jumped at the chance to help Scott out with his workshop. The crowd was great, the models were awesome, and Scott gave several real magic bullets that are sure to help the students to really improve their images. With a couple of lighting tips and a couple of posing tips that are absolute go-to’s for getting really solid images, the crowd really got their money’s worth out of this workshop. Even your’s truely here picked up some new tips and tricks that I will be using in upcoming shoots.
Below are some of the images from today’s hands-on portion.
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