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've been away a while. I know. I know. It's been too long. Instead of groveling and trying to explain my absence I thought I'd make a list about what's gone on since I've last blogged... events, trips, gifts, purchases... whatever. If it's awesome and it's happened in the past couple of months its on the list.

(These are not in order of importance, just the order that they came to me.)

Cyndie and I went to New York... again. I don't think I need to explain to you again my love for New York City and more specifically Manhattan. Now I know I haven't seen the whole world, but, I've seen a lot of it and I can say with some degree of certainty that New York is my favorite place. I know it's not for everyone but for me and Cyndie there's nowhere better. The city, central park, the shopping, the restaurants... I love it all. This was actually the first time that Cyndie and I had gone to New York just for fun. Every other time I've had work there and while we always have a good time when I'm not working it was nice to not have anything but fun on the schedule for our trip.

Also it was our 10 year anniversary.

TEN YEARS!

I can't believe we've been married that long! Here are a few pics I dug out from our proofs from our wedding photos. Don't judge, it was 1999! Sorry the scans are so bad.

And here we are now, this was in December in New York.



Which brings us to food. Our favorite thing to do, aside from going to New York, is go to really great restaurants. In the past two months we have eaten some incredible meals.  I could go on and on about them but there's probably only a few of you out there that would care so I'll just list a few of them.

DBGB. Super Chef, Daniel Boulud's less formal restaurant near the site of the famous old CBGB club in the East Village. Incredible burgers, amazing house made sausages, great beer list.

Jean Georges. Wow. One of New York's five Michelin 3 Star Restaurants. Incredible

Gramercy Tavern. I've heard about Gramercy Tavern for years and in December while we were in New York we totally lucked out and scored what is one of Manhattan's toughest reservations. It did not disappoint.

Animal. A sweet restaurant in West Hollywood that is a vegan's worst nightmare. Luckily I'm no vegan.  Pork Belly sliders, chicken liver toast, veal breast, rabbit legs... even the desert had bacon in it! Mmmmmmeat!

A16. San Francisco's famous restaurant that specializes in not just Italian food, but food from the Campania region of Italy. You have to respect a restaurant that is that focused on what they do. Its easy to try to be all things to all people and end up doing nothing well. A16 does and few things and is the best at them.

And finally the culinary version of Mecca... the place all foodies aspire to eat... perhaps the most famous restaurant in the world...

THE FRENCH LAUNDRY! This was Cyndie's Christmas gift to me. I had a wedding last weekend up in the Bay Area and Cyndie thought ahead two months ago and scored us a table. It was without a doubt the best dining experience of my life. Trying to come up with enough superlatives to describe this meal is futile. I'll probably devote an entire blog post to the meal so we'll save the details for later.

Christmas! As I said, we've been married for 10 years now and this was Makenzie's 6th Christmas and we've always been with our extended family. And while that's always been great we chose, this year, to spend it alone and create our own traditions. So this year it was just the three of us and it was awesome. We definitely missed our families but it was so much fun making things up as we went, creating traditions that will hopefully last for a long time.

I got a new camera. Not really that exciting but its always fun to get new toys.

I got a Sous Vide Supreme! This is way more exciting than a camera... at least to me. We've been getting into cooking amazing food at home and this machine has allowed us to take dinner to a whole 'nother level. We had some friends over last week for a dinner party and I made shortribs that had been cooked for 72 hours! Oh my gosh, they were amazing.

Weddings in San Diego, Hollywood and Dallas and San Francisco. Those blogs are coming up soon, I promise.

Finally, I got a book that is so incredibly inspiring. Its not a photography book, or a business book, it's about a chef named Ferran Adria who is, by many accounts, the best chef in the world. What's inspiring about this book is that it takes you through a typical day with him. He's someone that has dedicated his life to being creative. Not just making food, but creating something that's never been made before. His restaurant is only open 160 days a year because he needs the rest of the time to create. Every day the restaurant is open the first 9 hours of the day is dedicated to creating new dishes. His diners are served between 28 and 36 courses and every course a diner is served is put into a database so that if they come back to the restaurant in the future they will not be served the same dish. The have hundreds of notebooks filled with thousands of dishes they've created, not one of them something the diner will have ever seen or been served before. The 205 days a year the the restaurant is closed is spent developing new processes to make food. Inventing machines and tools if necessary to facilitate the making of whatever dish the have in their heads. That kind of commitment to creativity is just astounding to me and is really inspiring as well. I want to put that much effort into being creative for my clients.

So now you're caught up! I promise it won't be 2 months before I blog again! :)

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.

I was going through my images today and came across a wedding I shot a few months ago. In May, I went with my friend, Travis, to Aruba. What an incredible place. If it weren't for the humidity, I'd pack up and move tomorrow.

I was thumbing through a past issue of Grace Ormonde a few days ago and noticed that my good friend and dad to new twins, Mike Colon, shot Timbaland's wedding on the same beach on Renaissance Island. Small world.

Anyway here are a few shots from the wedding.

How amazing is this place? We had a little free time and took a few personal pics too. Not a ton though as we spent most of the time swimming in the most incredible water I've ever seen.

A few weeks ago Cyndie, Makenzie and I went camping up near Yosemite. We spent one of the days in the Yosemite valley and I can't tell you how inspiring that place is. Every time I'm there I'm amazed. It's so incredible it doesn't even look real. Man I would do anything to shoot a wedding there!

After taking an afternoon swim in the frigid river we took a few pictures. I've posted plenty of images of Makenzie but Cyndie's a little more camera shy. Its time she made an appearance on the blog! :)

It took a little work getting this image... self timer, no tripod, using rocks and sticks to hold the camera in place, haha. Here's my beautiful family!

I had a tourist offer to take this picture of us. He was sure that because he had a Nikon D40 that he knew what to do with my camera. He took like 6 pictures and got one in focus, haha.

Cyndie took this one. She's never cared too much about it but I'm slowly getting her into shooting. She's getting pretty good. Maybe its time to put her to work?

Its been so long since I blogged I had a hard time remembering the URL to login... then an even tougher time remembering my username and password. I apologize.

Last week I went to New York for a shoot and a few meetings. I absolutely love it there. The city, the weather, and most of all... the people. I hear from a lot of people that Orange County has a community among photographers that doesn't happen in the rest of the country. Every time I'm in New York I'm reminded of how wrong that statement is. I stayed with my good friend and amazing photographer Carlos Andres Varela while I was there and EVERY night he took me out and we had the best time hanging out with our other good photographer friends Mel Barlow, Jason Groupp, Allan Zepeda, Lindsey Thorne, Shelly Kroeger, Angelica Glass and my favorite photo editor Rebecca Crumley. There are awesome photographers and an amazing community in NYC and I'm so happy be a small part of it and to call them my friends.

On to the real reason for the post... On Wednesday I met my new BFFs Brett and Claire in Manhattan last week to shoot some portraits of them. They wanted some shots of their first trip to the city. Brett is an awesome wedding photographer from Oklahoma. Check out his work. We had a blast running around the city on what was the most perfect day I've experienced in a long time.

Ok, on to the images.

We started down in the alleys in China Town.

Then we headed up to SoHo. They wanted some paparazzi style images like these from last time I was in New york.

Then we caught the subway and headed up to Madison Square Park in the Flat Iron District.

We ended the shoot in Central Park.

New York is my favorite place in the world to shoot. I'm going to be back there the first week of May. If anyone else wants a shoot there shoot me an email!

I'm determined to get caught up on blogging. If you knew how many weddings and shoots I was behind you'd either laugh or have a new level of respect for me. Probably laugh though. Last New Year's Eve was spent in Atlanta shooting the out-of-control-awesome wedding/vow renewal of Ami and Scott. They had a beautifully intimate celebration and I'm so glad Jessica brought me along!

If you remember from the rehearsal images at Turner Field I shot film that week. It was a lot of fun. I love choosing in the moment whether to shoot in black and white or color. Shooting black and white in camera has always annoyed me in digital. I always wonder if I would have liked the shot better in color so I just don't do it. With film its different, I love black and white film so much I never think that. On to the images.

I love these first few of Ami right after getting dressed.

Scott knows how to work it for the camera too.

A few portraits around the venue. It was COLD that day. Ami was such a trooper!

I love this series right before Ami heads down the aisle!

During the cocktail hour they had blackjack tables set up. So fun!

Ahhhh details. This wedding was FULL of amazing details. The two long tables might have been the best I've ever seen. Just amazing.

I love black and white film so much. It even makes the table shots interesting.

Ami and Scott hired professional dancers to entertain during dinner and to teach the guests during the dancing, it was such a hit.

Ami and her dad. Love his expression.

This little series was during the same day edit the videographers showed. It was awesome and got some great reactions from the couple.

Happy New Year!

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