Kyla Janette is here

After a long 9 months and 12 hours of intense labor, Kyla Janette is here! 7lbs, 2oz of healthy baby girl arrived last night around 1am after Stephanie went through a 12 hour induced labor with no pain medications! I can't believe how tough Steph is, I was truly amazed by her incredible strength! I will post much more about all this later but wanted to get a single image up now of Caiden enjoying becoming a big brother :)

Game Time!

The Doctor decided that considering all the complications Stephanie had the first time around that she will be induced tomorrow. So if I'm a bit behind this week now you know why!
I'm sure I'll have a long story to follow :)

Jenny and Tom in San Luis Obispo

Jenny and Tom are an awesome couple whom I met out in Avila Beach last week for their engagement session. We started at Mr. Rick's playing pool and having a couple drinks before heading over to an old barn and then on to San Luis Obispo. I love starting engagement sessions an hour or so before sunset so that we can get great afternoon light, beautiful sunsets and a bit of night time drama where I can break out all my off-camera lighting. It also gives us plenty of time to cover several locations.
It was really funny, Jenny thought Tom might be a bit shy in front of the camera but he was a natural! They have a great connection with each other and it really shows in their images. I can't wait to photograph them again!
I'm really looking forward to their wedding later this year. It's going to be a beautiful affair down in Santa Ynez, Jenny has some awesome plans that are going to make for some amazing memories!

Shooting Film in Napa with John

About two weeks ago I headed up to Calistoga Ranch (which is in the Napa Valley) to shoot a wedding with my buddy John. John could easily have handled this small wedding himself but his wife was due the following day with their first child so I went up just in case he got "The Call." Luckily that did not happen; John and Jody had their daughter several days later, congratulations guys!
Calistoga Ranch is a beautiful location and was a joy to shoot at. It was super windy but Jenny and Daniel braved the elements and still had an outdoor ceremony. I wanted to post a couple of B+W film shots I took with my new rangefinder 35mm camera. Both these images were shot in almost total darkness inside a wine cave with just a few candles for lighting. It was quite a difficult shoot, technically, but these two image really capture the feel for the wedding.
For anyone curious, I do shoot both film and digital. Both have their strengths and weaknesses but I believe that combining them to only use the strengths gives a much broader look than shooting all of one or the other.



OK, I couldn't resist posting just one digital shot :)

Linda and Jack Engagement Session

First of all, let me apologize for being so bad about blogging lately, I've been so busy, sorry! I've actually only been home 1 day in the past 8 and have been working like crazy. Lots of exciting stuff to talk about, but more on that later.
Last Sunday I met up with Linda and Jack for their engagement session. Let me just say that these guys were a blast! If that first picture above doesn't say everything about our shoot then nothing can. We headed out from Alameda over to San Francisco on a crisp but sunny day but by the end the wind was really blowing which made for some really fun shots! Jack and Linda were really game for whatever so we went to several locations and had a great time.
And a big thanks to Linda for noticing so quickly I left my reflector in the car before I got too far away! I'm really looking forward to their wedding, it is going to be amazing and they are such fun people that I know it's going to be a highlight of the year!

Photoforthepeople.com Interview

My new friends, and awesome photographers, Michael and Anna Costa just interviewed me on their up and coming photography forum, Photoforthepeople.com. In it I share a bunch of behind the scenes stuff about how I using lighting to create some of my images. You can see the interview here.
Thanks so much to Michael and Anna for featuring my work, I am honored!

Here's the diagram for the above image. I shot this image while helping out the awesome duo of Chris+Lynn last fall up in Vancouver. And no, I don't know how to quickly draw a nice curved line so don't laugh at me! :)

Cool shot

I don't talk about it much but I actually do quite a bit of photography for commercial clients like wineries, manufacturer's and restaurants. Normally it's all pretty boring stuff (thus why I don't mention it!) but I do enjoy the challenge it presents. Technically, commercial shooting is way more difficult than shooting portraits or weddings but it mostly lacks the creativity that I really enjoy. But every once in awhile I play around a little bit and get something I really like this this shot of Jim Kish of Kish Fabrication welding a bottom bracket on a custom titanium bike.