A break from wedding photography and work, and I still manage to shoot too many pictures!

I finally cruised through and narrowed down to some of my favorite pictures from our vacation this past week.

What an awesome trip!

I was trying to embed the slideshow... but it's not working out so much... so, click here to see the slideshow. Enjoy! :-)

Playing around too much with the IR 10D

Another IR tree pic!!! I shot way too many of these, but I just LOVED how everything in infrared just looked so black and white, almost like Lith film, but not quite as extreme.

Catching up on vacation pictures...

I've been trying to pump out some pictures from our little vacation trip, but I'm working at a snail's pace right now, and there's a bunch of pictures.

Here's a few quick ones for now... I'm going to create a slideshow to share the rest! Hopefully that will be up tomorrow. :-)




























Wow... I've been shooting my IR camera soooo much lately. (actually, I think the majority of vacation I shot with IR, but I did shoot a few in color, and some on Holga)

Our little vacation (wine tasting and shooting)

Yep... we're finally taking some vacation time!

We were photographing a wedding this weekend in Mill Valley at the Outdoor Art Club and then shooting engagement pictures in Livermore, so we decided to stretch out our trip to northern California by visiting Napa and doing a bit of wine tasting. We found a great room at the Napa Marriott and have been LOVING our time here!!! Amazing wine, good food, and sleeping in! That's not a bad little vacation!

I've been shooting a bunch of pictures on my Holga... but since that camera shoots medium format film, I won't be able to share those until we get home.

In the meantime, here's a shot of the Culinary Institute of America Greystone Napa Campus. We stopped at the beautiful campus, but ended up trying a few other restaurants around the area. (Rutherford Grill serves an AMAZING center cut steak! Mouthwatering... over the top... I can't say enough good things about it!)

Shopping at Costco...

When I shop at Costco, I always tell myself, ok, I'm going to spend about $100-$150... that's it, that's all I need. But... I've never once walked out of there spending anywhere near what I'd planned on. (Yes, I tend to lie to myself before walking into Costco...)

Yesterday we went to Costco to buy some stuff, planned on spending $150... Walked out $350 later...

So, I was shocked as we stood in line, and I looked to my left, and this lady had a shopping cart with ONE!!!! item in it, and not something I'm thinking she saved enough money on to merit a trip to Costco. It was a small bag of almonds. I couldn't help but laugh, smile, giggle, wonder, and snap a quick picture.

Shooting for fun around Santa Barbara

A few local wedding photographers: Cheryl, Me, Andrew Van Gundy and Chris Johnson all headed out yesterday for a fun shoot around Santa Barbara.

I love getting out of the house/office every once in a while to freshen up on my photography focusing on something that I normally don't shoot.

We decided to head down to some industrial parts of Santa Barbara to see what a few wedding photographers could come up with in the fine-art realm.

Here's what I ended up with:

Photographers facing scrutiny...

I worked as a photojournalist for a few years back in the day at the Tehachapi News (a small hometown weekly newspaper).

The job was a BLAST! I'd just finished high-school and suddenly I had this awesome full-time job in a respected industry. I got to drive around, take pictures of stuff, and then see it in print once a week! too cool!

But, after a while I reaelized I couldn't do that full-time for the rest of my life! Showing up at accident scenes where someone had died, or where someone was seriously injured and their family was crying, I didn't get a kick out of shooting that stuff. Also, the pay cap on what you can make as a photojournalist is kinda low for my dreams...

So, I became a wedding photographer here in Santa Barbara! I haven't looked back, and I LOVE it! I went to Brooks Institute of Photography in the same town, Santa Barbara, and learned a TON about photography. (I like to tell people that I went to school for three years to learn how to push the button on a camera)

Just the other day I was reminded of how awesome it is to have the creative freedom I do in my job! I can take photographs and tweak them in Photoshop, I can remove unwanted things like houses, powerlines and other things that were beyond my control when I captured the picture, allowing me to make a good picture into a GREAT piece of art for someone's home!

As a photojournalist for a newspaper, there are a bunch of ethical rules you have to follow which don't allow you to tweak photos around too much...

Well, Allan Detrich was a photographer working at the Toledo Blade newspaper. He shot the following picture, which was tweaked in Photoshop to remove some legs from under a sign... He came under such scrutiny for what he did that he ended up quitting his job.






















I'm sooo glad that I can add an extra tree to make something look better and people appreciate it.

Santa Ynez Photo Fieldtrip

I was hired to photograph Judy Beckmen of Beckmen Vineyards this week and had a blast cruising around her and husband's winery capturing portraits of Judy yesterday.

Judy's alamatar is doing an article on her and needed a photograph for their magazine. I guess they searched for Santa Barbara Photographer and found my wedding photography site, so they asked me to make the trip over the hill to meet with Judy.

It was an absolute blast getting to know Judy and seeing their BEAUTIFUL winery and vineyard! If you are ever wine tasting in Santa Ynez, definitely take the drive to their fun little piece of paradise!

Then, feeling inspired on my drive home I pulled off the 154 at Amour Ranch Road and scored some fun shots of the rolling hills and beautiful oaks with my 10D Infrared camera.

Post office goes Star Wars

I was shooting pictures for an engagment session in downtown LA outside the Disney Concert Hall recently when I stumbled upon this little guy.