A couple of weeks ago I met Kimberly Witort in Los Angeles for a Woodshop, a private, one day workshop. Kimberly is a great photographer from Washington and was in town with a couple of her friends for the week. We spent the afternoon going over business, workflow, processing and wedding day management and ended the afternoon with what was supposed to be a sunny shoot in Santa Monica. June gloom took the sun away but we still had a great time shooting at the pier.

Usually at the end of a Woodshop we'll shoot a couple or portrait session together but Kimberly decided she'd like me to shoot her and her 2 best friends instead. Here are a few of my favorites from the afternoon.

If you're interested in a private Woodshop shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you!

While working on an album from a wedding I shot last year, I came across one of my favorite wedding party shots of all time. I don't try to do too much with wedding parties. I don't have them in crazy poses, jumping over each other or posing like Charlie's Angels. I'm not trying to make them look like models posed like they're too cool for school. This is a wedding. They're friends. I want them to look like they're a bunch of friends having a great time on the best day of the bride and groom's life. Simple, classic, timeless... at least that's my intention.

Sometimes I get close to what I'm after, this time I got exactly what I wanted from a wedding party photo. I love *everything* about this photo.

Several months ago I was hired to shoot what I thought was going to be a pretty typical engagement session in New York. Time passed and as the date came closer I got in touch with the couple to firm up the details. They told me they had some ideas about the shoot and then said they wanted it to have a 1950's theme. They wanted to shoot outside a diner, they were having a '56 T-bird there for the shoot, they were dressing up in 50's attire... in fact, it wasn't going to be typical at all.

One of the things they told me is that they wanted to shoot with the car outside the diner and have the sunset behind them. Well if you know anything about photography you know that in order for that to happen you're going to have to use lighting. I guess I could have done some HDR stuff but its not 2006 anymore. :)

So I rented a Profoto set up and drove out to New Jersey to the diner. The diner was awesome but it was also surrounded by cars, not from the 50's, which to me kind of kills the whole thing. So we positioned the car in the middle of the parking lot and I shot from pretty much the only angle that blocked out the rest of the cars and still showed the diner. I felt pretty good about the images as we were shooting but I never get too excited because you really never know what you're getting until you open them up. I even turned the strobes off at a couple of points and shot natural light just in case things weren't turning out as good as I thought they were.

When I opened the images up to begin working on them I just fell in love. Its so different from what I normally do but man they're so freaking cool.

While I typically work with natural light, when I was first getting started I never wanted to be in a situation where I felt unprepared so I learned as much as I could about off camera lighting. I'm by no means an expert but knowing this stuff has helped me get good images out of bad situations.

So here are a few of my favorites. I put in some of the natural light stuff as well. I think the difference is really interesting. Let me know what you think.

I was going through a shoot from a couple of weeks ago tonight and thought I'd put a few images up. I had such a great time with Chu and Antonio. They're such a great couple and this is actually not the first time I've taken Chu's photo. I shot her sister's wedding a couple of years ago and she was a bridesmaid.

One of my favorite images ever came out of their "pre-wedding" "day after" session:

Enough about them though, back to Chu and Antonio... :)

Here are a few images from my time with them.

I love these ones on their beach cruisers!

Well its been WAY too long but I'm back. Lot's of travel, lots of weddings, lot's of shoots, a cross country move... all this has added up to blogging being put on the back burner. Well that's over. This will be the first post of many. So keep coming back... and tell your friends that the rumor that I disappeared isn't true. :)

This shoot is from last year and I ad always meant to blog it but for some reason or another I never did. This is my friend Edmund Prieto. He's one of the nicest and most talented guys I've ever met. He's good at literally everything he does. One of the things he does is skateboard. At one time in his life he was a sponsored, touring skater. He asked me to shoot him last year so he could finally have some good images of him doing what he loves.

Here's Edmund.

Here are a few of my favorite images from Kenny and Bri's engagement session last week in Santa Monica. They are so much fun to hang around and I CAN NOT WAIT for their wedding this summer at the Viceroy in Anguilla! It's going to be so awesome.

Side note to photographers... Every time I think about blogging I get this pit in my stomach. I mean, I love blogging but it always takes soooo loooooong getting the images ready to post. It's not the processing of the images, its the resizing, sharpening, putting my logo on, saving a version for web and a full size version that I dread. Well a couple of months ago that changed. I found out about a product called Blogstomp that does all of these things with literally just a few clicks. I still probably don't blog enough but there's definitely one less excuse. Haha. If you're a photographer, or just a blogger that posts lots of pictures go check them out and get yourself an early Christmas present. They are AWESOME.

I'd go through and tell you about my favorites but I love them all.

Last weekend I traveled to Dallas to shoot Taylor and Amanda's engagement photos. Taylor's a photographer based in Dallas. It's always fun shooting photographers because they're always up for anything, and know that even if you feel funny doing it, you have to work it in front of the camera. Taylor and Amanda were a ton of fun and I love these images and can't wait to go back to shoot their wedding in January at the Old Red Courthouse in Downtown Dallas.

I love New York. I might even go so far as to say that its my favorite place on earth. Luckily, several times a year, work takes me there and Cyndie and I always take a little time for ourselves as well. We've spent a good amount of time there and don't really do the touristy thing anymore. We just spend the days shopping, walking the streets of Manhattan and planning out where our next meal will be.

A couple of the days we went up to Central Park. It was so incredible. All of the leaves were turning, the weather was perfect and crisp and there was even a jazz band playing one day. Could there be a more quintessential fall day?

I don't always bring my big camera along but this morning I did and I took a few shots of the city, park and even a few of Cyndie. Here are some of my favorites.

Last week Brandon and Stacey Gresham came out from Alabama to do a private WOODSHOP. At the end of the day we went out on a shoot and I had some friends of mine come model for me.

They did an incredible job and were so natural in front of the camera. The only bummer about the shoot was that it was cut a bit short after I was almost killed by a rattlesnake. It might have been the most terrifying moment of my life.

Here are a few favorites from the shoot!