Meant to Be – Jonathan & Charity’s Wedding

Jonathan and Charity are some of our closest and dearest friends, so you can imagine how elated we were when we found out they were getting married. These two are meant for each other.

It’s not every day some of your best friends get married in a mind-blowing building built in 1929 in Santa Barbara, but January 6th was one of those days. Rest assured, this is the most beautiful courthouse wedding you’ll ever see! If you know these two, its impossible to miss that they belong together. They’re a runaway freight-train hauling car after car of destiny, inevitability and meant-to-be. It has been a privilege to witness.

Jonathan and Charity have worked weddings with us in the past, either shooting video or helping us run around with equipment and lights, so we’ve all been in that setting together before. Being so close to them, the comfort level was amazing and they felt secure enough to get silly and run around madly, which led to the image above. It’s one of my favorite wedding shots I’ve ever taken, not just because I know and love them, but because of the way it makes me feel. I’ve been there running hand in hand on the beach with Heather and the feeling is phenomenal. Heather used to grab my hand in the early days without warning and seemingly tow me at light speed down the beach damn near removing my arm from joint, proclaiming we were flying.

This shot is a peak at what it feels like to be in love.

When we found out they were getting married at the Santa Barbara Courthouse, we were drooling over the opportunity to photograph it. When the director of our local planetarium showed me photos of the place a few years back, I began anticipating the day I shot there and now I was very happy that the day was coming soon and that it would be our best buddies pledging their undying love in such a historic place. We were thrilled.

We set out to get there early, but due to baby circumstances, we arrived at the courthouse just in time. Heather had to watch our newborn, while I ran through the courthouse past some of the most beautiful architecture I’ve ever seen, searching for the Mural Room. I’d seen it before in photos and couldn’t wait to get in there.

Unfortunately, when I arrived, it became suddenly clear to me that it was VERY dark. This makes for bad images that strain your equipment to the limit. (Warning- photo geekery ahead) I turned my ISO up to 3200 and 6400 to get the exposures I was looking for and threw on my 50mm 1.4 and opened it to f2.0 and was still having problems. I feel like the images I captured are great, but I was stunned to see how little light there was in there to work with, my tiny on-camera flash was blasting the atmosphere right outta that beautiful place, so I had to give into noise.

It wasn’t hard to get caught up in it all, all the love in the salt air and the history in that beautiful courthouse set us all up for an afternoon fairy tale.

When I left the courthouse, I knew I’d never be done photographing that building. One could shoot there for years and not capture it, I highly recommend a visit if you’re passing through or in the area. The coast of California is one of the most beautiful places in the world in no small part because of the amazing Spanish architecture and an endless highway of charming Mediterranean-like towns where you could get lost forever. Santa Barbara is a jewel. Fitting that such beautiful people chose to couple amongst the water, sand and Sun in one of the greatest towns on Earth.

Congratulations to Jonathan and Charity. It’s hard to find better people. Selfless, kind and extremely talented, we are the lucky ones to witness as their adventure continues….

My 8,000 mph drive to Vegas, etc.

Its all about video today:

1. I assembled a timelapse of my drive to Rollercon 2010 in Las Vegas this year and you should watch it. Every year, my wife’s band the Pin Ups, plays a show at the Double Down in Sin City, known for its signature drink, Ass Juice. The show kicks off right as 1000-15000 roller derby girls from all over the country “marry” each other in the parking lot of the Double Down in the Derby Wedding as a sign of commitment to each other (derby wives are hardcore connections between two derby gals). I’ll post pics from the show later, in the mean time you can see images from 2009 in this post.

2. A video for Jamie & David.

Jamie & David

Have you ever met a couple with a smiling, quiet confidence, as if they know some secret you don’t? Jamie & David have that mysterious and cool connection. We spent an afternoon with them taking photos and exploring Apollo Park.

We give a free engagement session with every wedding that we book. It allows us a chance to break the ice and get to the know the bride and groom. The better we know them, the better they know us and the more comfortable they feel. In the end, the photos show it. We brought a cooler with some food and drinks and had everything waiting set up on a table to loosen the mood from photo-shoot to picnic and we ended up having a great day. Rare birds buzzed around while we hung out in a park on a beautiful day making art, how could that go better?

[Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't like techno-jargon about photo-geekness, I won't be offended.]

We shot this over about two hours in natural light with a diffuser until fill flash was necessary, then when the light was right, we used two flashes with umbrellas as key light and fill light balanced with the night sky and the afterglow of the setting Sun for a backdrop. With the wind around here, my gear would have escaped like Mary Poppins if it weren’t for Jonathan Redman and Sigifredo Castenada who were nice enough to come along and man the light stands. Many thanks. I had a light stand blow over at a wedding with 20 pounds of weight on it ( I need more sandbags).

Images taken with a Canon EOS 7D + 50mm 1.4 or 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5). We used one large 40-something inch Westcott shoot-through umbrella on a Matthews reversable light stand + Jonathan for the key light and some off -brand cheapo light stand + Sigi for the rim light  from amazon. The Matthews stand is awesome, when I make the jump to C-stands, I’ll have to buy Matthews.  I’ve also been using the California Sunbounce Sun-Sniper strap, which I have to mention because it makes wearing a camera feel great.

There were a few things that I wanted to try that we didn’t get a chance to because time got away from me. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment when you’re having fun and things are going well. I was in the zone. In the end, I feel like we got some great captures and every time I do this, I realize more and more that this is definitely what I need to be doing right now. Love is the most important thing in the world and I am happy to be out there photographing it. It beats birds and mountains hands down. I feel lucky to have people out there that choose us for their photos and as long as they keep coming, we’ll keep shooting.

Jamie & David are getting married April 2nd, 2011. Big thanks go out to them for believing in us.

 

Efrain the Shepherd and the California Poppies

On the way to scout a location for a couple’s shoot, I drove by an amazing field of poppies. Where I live, that isn’t uncommon, but this one had a herd of about a thousand sheep not too far away complete with shepherd. I couldn’t resist the impulse to stop and record this amazing sight. California’s State Flower flourishes nowhere else in the world like it does here in Lancaster, Ca. For most of the year, the Mojave desert here is barren, brown and desolate. When Spring rolls around, sometimes it looks like the rolling green hills of Ireland only laden with caution orange. I stopped to speak to the man who was tending his sheep very near one of the thickest patches of orange poppy quilt I had ever seen.

It turns out, even though I mistakenly asked him what his number was, his name is Efrain. He tends about 5,000 sheep in the Antelope Valley each spring and took the time to hang out with me for a while and try to bridge a language barrier. He seemed to like the photos I was taking as they played back on my camera’s screen. I’m not sure, but I think he asked me for prints of the images and I tried to communicate with him that I would bring him a few in the next day or two.

His dog, Frederique, was tending the flock during our meet and for a moment gave me a heart attack when I noticed the sheep spilled out on to the road blocking a car for a moment. I felt sure I had caused it all and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I have a huge responsibility as a photographer to not put people in danger. Sometimes people see cameras and they automatically get distracted and play to the camera and lose their surroundings. I need to mind my location, I need to keep my wits about me; lens choice, ISO, aperture and shutter speed be damned.

All in all it was a good encounter and I feel like I made a friend. As I left to scout the location, I thought how noble it is to carry out such a simple life in Los Angeles County, where many live a life of decadence and waste. I thought about how good I have it and how this guy’s job was too rough for me.  I thought about my promise to return and I looked forward to meeting Efrain and Frederique again.

All images taken with Canon 7D and 50mm1.4, fill flash with Canon 580 EXII and Lightsphere Collaspsible.

He was probably my best subject. This may be my best work all year just due to him.