Kyla's birth story

Here's a quick slideshow I made from the day of Kyla's birth. I prefer the look of film for really emotional times so I'm super happy with how this all came out as the prints are stunning and it shows an amazing day in our lives. Sorry, I had to put down the camera for the super hard contractions :)

Kyla one week old

So some of you think it's really fun to give me, as a photographer, a hard time about not getting many pictures up right away! Explanations about how the film is at the lab and will be back Thursday just don't seem to appease you so here you go, all the baby Kyla pictures you can handle! I will still post up the stuff from our time in the hospital as soon as it gets here. These are just some quick pics from bath-time.

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 :)