Congrats to Steven & Kristin

Late night editing= tired zo. Thoughts and more photos coming later today so check back soon, for now heres 3 photos to wet your appetite....

Congrats to Lierin & Harrison

Ok so i promised some photos from a wedding that we recently shot and then i got a bunch of work that i had to do so ive been shooting like crazy. Plus i went to Big Bear for my homies bachelor party, gotta support the brothas you know. Ok so back to the wedding, so actually shot it on the 25th at the Quail Botanical gardens in Encinitas. The grounds are beautiful but i will admit that i was a little worried and everything is so far apart. The last thing that i wanted to be doing is to take the bride and groom on a trek on the other side of the garden just to take a photo. All was good though as there was some sweet stuff to shoot nearby and we got some cool photos. The wedding was fun to shoot, it was kind of weird to shoot Lierin's wedding though not in a bad way but in a "im starting to get old" kind of way. Lierin and i go way back, and have always had this brother sister relationship going but you know i feel old now cus when she was a student in the HS group at church i was a leader and now shes married.......weird. Seriously though the wedding was awesome and Lierin and Harrison were so easy to work with as everything just flowed naturally and i had such an easy time with it. OK ill stop talking now, just wanted to say a quick thank you to both of you guys for letting us share your special day. Heres some photos. Enjoy!!

Another day, another set of photos....

Working on some more magazine stuff, they are keeping me busy right now. Working on trying to get another cover out of so if i get it that would be pretty sweet. Went out yesterday with my brother in law to shoot some stuff at the beach, it was a lot of fun and the weather was awesome when we shot. Marine layer was starting to come in but it was still pretty broken up when we shot, so we had some sweet sunset light and clouds that added some texture to the sky. You gotta love family, theyre always willing to help when i need a subject in my photos so theres never a lack of people when i need them. Took about 30 minutes to shoot at the beach, and we were done. By the time we were done the marine layer was starting to get pretty thick so we finished up just in time. Of course you know me, i love moody photos and the dark clouds provided so great opportunities to shoot. After i dropped John off at his place i ventured out once again to take advantage of the soft light and sweet stormy clouds. Shot until it got dark and then went home, all in all it was a pretty sweet day. Enjoy!!

A nice surprise indeed....

I recently started to upload some photos to a site called everywheremag.com its a magazine dedicated to travel photography. i never really think much of it as i upload to share photos and get some feedback from other photographers. Ive had the account for a while now but never really took the time do anything with it as i have been so busy, recently i decided to throw some photos up there and see if there was any interest. Ive gotten some comments here and there but nothing out of the ordinary, couple of nights ago i decided to do a google search on my name to see what would come up. Surprisingly a lot of my stuff comes up if you google my name, among them is some diplomat from puerto rico or something who is apparently going to jail for god only knows what. One of the things that came up though was a blog post with my name on it and it was from everywhere magazine, apperantly someone who works there saw some of my photos and liked what they saw and did a blog post on me. Kinda neat if i do say so myself, i was very surprised and flattered to say the least!!! Heres the link if you want to check it out:
everywhere mag blog


and heres a screen shot of the blog that i found. enjoy!!

Why i love the night!!!!

The night has such an incredible beauty to it, it just blows me away every time that i am at a place where you can see the stars. Up here there isnt much light pollution and the moon isnt out so it makes for perfect conditions to look at the stars. I was able to pull off 3 exposures before i got really cold and had to go back inside, the 1st one i did i wont even post because its terrible. Basically i tried to shoots something with me in it, i got it all set up and had my exposure time down, put the camera on a timer to give me enough tim to get into the shot. Only one problem.......i needed to unlock the shutter release cable in order to end the exposure since i dont have a way to trip the camera wireless or a cable that will let me input the length of the exposure. Of course i realize this right before i need to end the exposure and know that i need to move in order to do it, but this will ruin my exposure. With no other option i moved and unlocked the cable release and of course ruined the shot......oh well. So i decided to use an empty chair in an open field and try that and light it up with some flash. I did a 15 minute exposure........and i think it came out kinda cool. The 3rd shot was just something real quick so its nothing impressive but the stars look really cool so i kept it. That was my evening and now some photos for you. Enjoy!!

It continues...

The bachelor party still goes......in fact some of us are still awake as you can clearly see. Most have gone to bed long ago but the die hards (or dumb ones if you so choose) are still up goofing around. So far we have been a blast!!! I went out again yesterday, didnt go out more than a few hundred feet and had no real agenda for the afternoon so i decided to try out something that i have been wanting to do for a while. I like working with strobes and my cameras have a feature called high speed sync, basically the camera and the flash are able to sync up to the top shutter speed of the camera which is 1/8000 of a second. Being able to do this of course opens up many new opportunities but i havent really had a chance to try it out. There really wasnt much up here that i thought would be cool to try it on so i settled for some wild plants growing around here. Would have been great if they had some sweet looking flowers on them but hey you take what you can get. Anywho, it was a lot of fun and i learned a lot, of course as many things in photography the ability to shoot flash at such a fast shutter speed is without its costs. You sacrifice power for that ability, meaning that your flash has to be ridiculously close to your subject, but this can be overcome by using more flashes which i just might invest in. Other that experimenting i got to do a couple of macro shots and followed these little white bugs around trying to get a good shot. I miss shooting this kind of stuff , but im grateful that i at least get to do it once in a while. So there you have it, heres some photos for you. Enjoy!!

Early nerd fest.....

Every year a group of us comes up to Big Bear to indulge the inner nerd in us and revel in a week of computer games, movies, unhealthy food, no sleep, and very little sunshine. Our brother Steve's family has a cabin right by the lake so its an awesome place to stay at. We usually do this in december but this year is a little different.......Steve is getting married in this june and so we retreated to our mountain oasis for his bachelor party. Its been a blast hanging out with every one, playing the Wii and right now they are playing rock band.....hahahahaha awesome cus Matt doesnt really know the words. Anywho, i usually cant stay in for long, not because i dont like the people but because the outside beckons and begs to be photographed and seeing as how i always bring up my gear it s a call that i must answer. I went out yesterday in the afternoon, it was so much fun!! It was so good too to be shooting some nature stuff again. Nature photography is by far my 1st love in photography and by far my favorite thing to shoot. Shot some bird stuff but it became very apparent that the 300mm lens that i have just isnt enough.......i need bigger glass!!! oh well, someday ill get there........so there you have it. I will try to document our activities better today and still try to go out on more time before we leave. Heres some photos from yesterday.....enjoy!!

The 411......

Ok so i know that its been a while since i last updated the blog, and if you are a regular here you may have noticed that the updates have been somewhat sporadic lately. Well there is a reason for it, as i start to pick up more and more work it has become increasingly difficult to keep up with updating the blog. Right now between editing, shooting weddings and shooting for the magazines that i shoot for life has been well busy. While it has been a challenge and a stretching experience for me it has also been an exciting time and i am having the most fun that i have ever had "working". Right now im working on a fairly large project for one of the magazines, you may recall one of the earlier post where i went up in a biplane to shoot some photos. The project continues and i continue to grow and love my job more and more. One of the challenging things about this project has been that i took on calling and scheduling things for the photo shoots, administrative stuff has also been my weak spot so this has been a good experience for me. After weeks of trying to get the shoots scheduled i was beginning to become frustrated, as the weather has been lees than cooperative, i would play phone tag with people......all the obstacles that you could imagine seemed to be happening. So after many attempts at trying to get things done and nothing working out i was pretty discouraged, but things began to come together and i have been having a blast with all of it. Memorial day i did the shoot at the lagoon and it was just awesome!! The owner Josh who runs a watersports rental facility at the lagoon was just awesome to work with and incredibly accommodating. He had 2 of his guys that are the wakeboard instructors take me out in the morning for a wakeboard run, they were super chill and great to work with. I came back in the afternoon and rode wave runners until the sun went down. So my memorial day was, wakeboard run in the morning, sushi with the fam for lunch, hang at the beach for the afternoon, and go back to ride jet skie's.......HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT?!?!?! So there you have it, been busy but having a blast!! Heres some photos from the lagoon and check back this week as i will be posting some photos from a wedding we just shot. Right now im up at Big Bear for the weekend for my buddies bachelor party, i went out this afternoon for a little bit so the next post will be on that. Enjoy!!

Congrats to Jamie and Kasha....

You know, its really cool that as a photographer i have had the privilege to photograph some very cool weddings and even cooler that some of those have been for friends and family. Last Saturday Jen and I had yet another incredible privilege and we there to photograph Jamie and Kashas weddings. The wedding was in Fallbrook at a nursery called Finnamex, the area were the ceremony was held was gorgeous!! Everything was just perfect..........except for the fact that it was about a thousand degrees out and i was drinking water like crazy. Strangely enough i didnt have to go to the bathroom at all the whole day and that was because i was sweating like no other that day. So it was a nice little endeavor trying to stay hydrated and at the same time take photos and keep from passing out. So basically take photos and try not to die, other than that everything was just awesome. Oh have i mentioned the food? THE FOOD!!! Holy cow!!! INCREDIBLE!! Jamies cousin is a chef, and an amazing one at that too. It was some of the most amazing food ive had at a wedding. This was also the most unique wedding we have done as well, as there were some jewish elements thrown in and right as the ceremony started they had this guy come down the aisle with this huge horn. To signal that the ceremony was beginning the horn was blown and the show began. We were blown away by everyones high spirits and just the incredible kindness of both families, it was truly amazing to see just how loving everyone was towards each other. Even towards us, i felt like i was part of the family while i was there.....it really is indescribable. Jamie and i have this "brother sister" relationship going, and while i am not really her brother i take the title happily and am honored to have it. Of course with such a title comes the inevitable defensiveness when your little sister starts dating a guy, but if there was ever a man that could put a bother at ease man it is Kasha hands down. Never have a seen a more gentle and caring man, whose love for God and respect and love for his wife are so evident it was truly amazing to see. It was great to see Jamie so happy......and trust me it was evident throughout the entire day. Well to top off a great day there was lots of dancing and let me tell you Kasha is a maniac on the dance floor. Im still just in shock of sorts replaying the day in my mind and seeing just the incredible joy shared by the whole family. It was incredible......thank you guys for letting us be there for your special day. We love you both!!! Enjoy!!