For the second time in one week I got to go exploring with my camera.
The first time was on Monday with Cheryl(my fiance... soon to be wife!![two weeks!!!]) and the second time was yesterday/Thursday with my good buddy (and the dude who will be shooting my wedding) Michael Costa

We spent an hour or two in the industrial area of Santa Barbara taking in the surroundings and challenging our skills to create something. (craziest thing we saw was an industrial washing machine which can punch out something like 27tons worth of laundry in a single day!!!!! WOW)

It's crazy how you can start shooting, and be totally uninspired for the first 15-20 minutes, then all of a sudden it hits you and you're now in the "zone" or in the "moment" and it starts coming together. I love that about photography. It doesn't matter how uncreative I might feel, if I just keep shooting away, within a few minutes it always comes to me! :-)

We had a blast and were constantly showing each other the pictures we were getting. Hopefully Michael will have some pics from his camera on his blog soon as well!!

Oh... and here are some pictures from Sunday's wedding!!!

Jaime and Mark were sooooo awesome! I love it when I connect with my couples like we did! Their wedding day was absolutely perfect and beautiful. The coordinators were a bit pushy and stressed out, but Jaime was a champ, calm, fun and excited all day!

Weddings like this get me AMPED for my own wedding in just about two weeks!! I can't imagine shooting weddings every weekend and not catching the wedding bug at some point.

Oh, and they had a Catholic ceremony, and they brought their own priest. He was seriously the FUNNIEST (my highschool English teacher would kill me for using that word) priest I've ever seen! Totally awsome and fun ceremony!










You can check out the slideshow from their wedding by clicking here :-)

Hey guys!!! oh... and gals!!! :-)

Today's my birthday! so I apologize for not answering the phone today and for being a little slow to reply to emails from Saturday through to today!

Me and Cheryl are off to take pictures for fun today! One of our few days off recently. Figured having a birthday was a good excuse...

We'll post up a bunch of pictures tonight!!! Thanks for the well wishes! :-)

Alright, here are a few pictures from our little time out and about. (when you sleep in til 3 you really don't spend a ton of time out and about...)











I think this trip reaffirmed for me why I don't make a living as a nature photographer... (if you'd like to see some of my sad attempts at being a nature photographer[as well as a fasion photographer and more], you can check out my first ever website here)

Alright, I've got a TON of catching up to do with blogging some of my recent weddings, but in the meantime I just wanted to post up and share the photgraphs that I entered in tonights PPSBC(Professional Photographys of Santa Barbara County) photo competition.

It was an awesome turnout with some AMAZING photographs!!! Seriously, it was sooo great to see everyone's work and the caliber of what people are producing! I learned soo much from hearing the judges talk about their reasons for how they scored our images.

Tonight I learned that you're supposed to name all of your photographs that you enter in competitions. I always thought people just did that for fun, and I've never been really into it because I feel that my photographs should speak for themselves. But now I'm starting to understand the reasons behind naming your prints. :-)

Alright, so my big news for the night is that I won First Place in the Wedding category. I was super excited about that, and then even more amped when I received Best of Show for the night! :-) soooo exciting!!!

The print I received Best of Show for was from my buddy David Berg's wedding and is titled "Tango."

Tango(David and Danielle Berg):


Below the Waist:


Eric and Nancy:


John and Jessica:


Those are the names I ended up giving to my pictures. I really feel they all work well without names, but I'm told if I have any interest in taking these to the State or National level, I will be disqualified if they don't have names. I guess it's kinda like having a kid, you can't really have one whout choosing a name...