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….

Jesse Rosten’s iPad photo shoot.

Jesse Rosten lit this shot with 9 iPad screens set to full brightness.

I wish I had taken this shot. Better yet, I wish I had had this idea. Jesse Rosten, one of my favorite sources of inspiration for all things camera and video, came up with the idea of lighting an entire shoot with iPads. Turns out, he broke out the meter and at ISO800 1/60, he came up with f1.4, which is do-able, especially if you borrow another 8 iPads.

FStoppers did a great iPhone photoshoot that put this concept on its head, pro lights with an iPhone shooting. Great results there, also. Check out these posts, they add to a long line of posts I’ve seen from many photographers lately that say, “your gear doesn’t matter.” Although, I agree that people shouldn’t be so gear obsessed that they are missing opportunities to cultivate their skills and make art, I also believe that simply saying “gear doesn’t matter” doesn’t give up the whole truth.

As Chase Jarvis repopularized, the best camera is the one thats with you. To me this means gear IS important. You need to know your gear backwards and forwards and until you can change a ton of settings without pulling our eye from the viewfinder before you even think about a new camera, you need to learn more about YOUR camera. You also need to learn about your next camera, but this can wait until you’ve exhausted damn near all the possibilities with the gear you have now. Then wait longer. Wait until your inspiration drives you to an idea that requires new gear. Then save and wait. Then, as my advertising photography professor, Michael Miller says, “don’t buy it unless you can make money with it.” Otherwise rent it.

Now go to Jesse’s video on this shoot and enjoy:

http://jesserosten.com/2010/ipad-photoshoot

North Lake and South Lake

I decided to process some shots from last fall.  North and South Lake near Bishop, Ca. These are HDRs of about 7 shots then contrast adjusted and then converted to black and white. I love the black & white custom filter function in Photoshop; careful, you can mess around for hours.

Jennifer & Jason

You know, once in a while, something comes along that is just perfect. Sometimes, its a mate.  Not only are these two perfect for each other, but they were also the perfect client.

Heather and I are new to weddings and could not have found a more interesting couple to shoot for our first big gig. We’ve shot everything it seems, but we’re beginning to think we were born to shoot weddings. Commercial work can be very exciting and we love the studio and portraits are good times,  but something about capturing weddings has us in a fever. Bring it on universe full of couples and let us show you how amazing and cool your love is.

Below are shots of Jennifer and Jason on their engagement and their big day.

Their Slideshow:

The Salton Sea and Joshua Tree National Park

If you like to see a slideshow of these images, please click here.

In southern California, we don’t have to stop doing outdoor stuff just because of winter. While it’s pretty cold in the high desert where I live, all it takes is a short drive to reach a climate more to suitable to adventure. I spent a weekend where desert regions meet and the climate seems like summer in winter.

The Salton Sea is an experiment in management gone wrong. Orginially created by the Colorado River, it has been filling and drying up for centuries. All the salt and minerals from the surronding hills are carried into the lake and remain there when the water evaporates. The changes in chemisty kill fish in huge numbers in giant “fish die-offs,” which leave countless fish carcasses washed up along the beach. The area supports over 400 species of birds with this life cycle and harbors 30% of the U.S. Pelican population.

In contrast to the abundant life, is a number of abandoned business ventures, homes and infrastructure. Dotting the shore are buildings, docks, cranes and homes that have been left to the advancing layers of salt.  Graceful three foot tall birds stand on top of  one leg, on top of  little fish faces, on the scaly beach. Every object on the shore for long enough takes on salty tumors that cling to the skin. Lift your head and again, you see a million birds in the distance, an amazing meeting between living and dying.

Anthony Bourdain came here for the patty melt. John Waters narrated a documentary about the Salton Sea’s forgotten America vibe. This place definitely has its own appeal. Hard to be on the shore of this giant salt lake and not think about the big stuff. like time and mortality.

Not to far away near Palm Springs is my new favorite sanctuary from the cold weather, Joshua Tree National Park. There are more miles of hiking trail than you can shake a stick at, the park has numerous campgrounds and the weather was fantastic in late January. The landscape is amazing, covered in enormous boulder piles that punctuate the desert for miles. The rock mountains make for perfect camp sites, great hiking and attracts climbers from everywhere.

From Keys View, you can see Twenynine Palms, Palm Springs, the Salton Sea and on to Mexico on a clear day. The size and scope of this place is fantastic to see laid out in front of you. Like many of the great National Parks, you could spend a lifetime here and never know this place. Though I left a little over a week ago as I write this, I want to go back. What a vast place.

At night, Kangaroo Rats were shooting through the camp like kamakzes with bad aim. It didn’t take long to realize that this is yet another animal that survives off of our trash and crumbs. Usually this leads to overweight, balding mammals with little or no health insurance.

The Salton Sea at sunset

Towsley Canyon & Route 66

I’ve decided to merge two posts here. One is about a trip down Route 66, the other about a San Gabirel Mountain hike. It was an adventurous weekend that reminded me how fun and exciting being a phtographer can be. You don’t even need a camera really, all you  need is a sense of curiousity and adventure. You’ve heard me wax poetic about being an observer before, but this is meant to be a wake up call.

Get off your ass and live a fun life. Find that interesting thing in your town that you never did. Do you know how many New Yorkers haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty? I don’t either but it’s a lot. Did you ever get that downer feeling when you return home after a long vacation? You’re returning to work, to the same streets you’ve become numb to and the thought of returning home becomes a drag. This is all mental. This is all in your head.

Having had enough, my hiking buddies and I decided during a trip home from the Sierras that we weren’t gonna put up with it anymore. We bought a book on our little Mojave desert city and became tourists in our own town. The trick is to not let your surroundings get by you. Its too easy for a callus to form; too easy to get used to the smell of your job that eventually you just don’t smell it anymore. Its way too easy to be underwhelmed by the ordinary.

The ordinary is amazing. If it isn’t, you’re not looking hard enough. You don’t have to lower your standards, you just have to see better. Take a walk. Go to a museum. Open your eyes wider and drink a milkshake. Make love on the kitchen counter this time. Offend someone and don’t be sorry about it. You can start by commenting below.

Visit Emer Long’s Blog about Bottle Trees here. Or on YouTube.

Hiking Saddleback Butte

~4 miles, 1000 feet, easy

A friend and I hit up a local hill for some views and elevated heart rate. The Station Fire put us out of business for a while; it closed down many of the roads heading into the Angeles National Forest, our favorite stomping grounds. Not to mention we can hardly afford to drive elsewhere and don’t get much time to do so anyhow. So we headed to the mis-named Saddleback Butte, a hill at best, that resembles a small rocky mountain ridge and is not and looks nothing like a butte.

The semantics meant nothing of course when we finally put feet to trail. This very easy 3.2 mile climb to the summit is hardly a hike at all, more like a stroll, but there’s enough elevation gain in it to get you panting if you hit it hard enough and the views are lofty, if only of the high desert (For the record, National Geographic’s TOPO software calls it 1.97 miles one way, or almost 4 miles round trip, 1000ft gain). There might not be any cascading waterfalls or towering granite cliffs, but it’ll do just fine for me.

On the way, we passed a sheriff giving a fruit stand a hard time. I can’t really decide where I come down on this argument, and I know theres an amount of “just doing one’s job” happening here, but you hate to see any kind of home-spun family money making venture having a hard time these days. We passed an old rusted out hulk of a car that has been bleaching in the sun along with all the other couches, shotgun shells, etc that people leave to elements. The Aztecs sacrificed in a sacred place to  a God, it seems desert dwellers sacrifice just on the outskirts of town and offer the gods simply discarded and unfashionable items.

We began the trail from the South parking lot, but you can add perhaps a mile starting from the North end. It is a simple path heading due west straight up the hill. Whoever built this trail possibly had never heard of switchbacks. The trail is sandy and loose on dry days but rain will make itmore cohesive. It can feel like the beach as you walk through what amounts to a gallery of the life cycle of the Joshua Tree, not the amazing album, but the amazing plant.

The trail gets more rocky the closer you get to the “butte,” allowing for a more steady foot plant as you ascend the hill. You pass some great faulted outcrops with signs of ancient volcanism before you’re greeted with panoramic views of the San Gabriel Mountains, the Tehachapi range and the distant frosted white Sierra Nevada. In Trails of the Angeles, John Robinson says that you can see Mt. Whitney from Pleasant View Ridge atop the San Gabriel’s high country and I’ve been looking for it ever since. I’m still not sure, but we saw the best candidate so far from Saddleback Butte. I’m anxious to actually take a lensatic compass and map up there to verify.

It seems like you can’t go wrong being above the desert at sunset.  The wind pushed you around like a sail at the summit, but there’s a lovely summit plateau that you could spend hours exploring where the conditions are nice. I know the term “golden hour” is well deserved for this magic time, but I think it goes beyond photography. There’s definitely something rewarding about watching the Earth turn whether you take photos or video or just sit with your #1 squeeze and take it all in in with Sangiovese and Oreos. Sometimes simply observing and witnessing the world is enough for me. You don’t have to look very hard or very far to find something amazing.

All images taken with Canon 7D + EF28-135mm IS, many of these are HDR’s.

Expansion at Arbor Lofts Gallery

(For a slideshow of these images, please click here) Heather and I headed down to the Arbor Lofts to check out the Expansion show. Before we took two steps towards the door, we saw giant fireballs in the courtyard courtesy Rex Campbell. Here’s what we found….

Fall in Bishop, Ca 2009

For a slide show of these images, click here.

Heather and I took the majestic highway 395 North to Bishop to take in the changing color and too much good bread from Eric Schatt’s Bakkery. A few friends who shall remain nameless once made the five hour journey just for bread and turned back and headed straight home.

Fall in California is elusive for Angelenos or those in the Southern and desert regions. Some might argue that autumn and spring simply don’t exist in the Southwest. For a few lucky Californians, fall is an explosion of weather, color and trout.

In spite of having the most comfortable bed ever in history, we woke up reluctantly each morning hoping to catch just the right light. We headed to 3 separte alpine lakes: Lake Sabrina, North Lake and then South Lake on the following day. Each location was packed with hopeful anglers and a smattering of photographers here and there. We even ran into a group called the Nikonians, who happened to be on the same picture-taking circuit that we were. Heather and I sported the only Canons around and tried to represent as best we could.

On the way, home we stopped at all of the photo-ops we could including the Volcanic Table Lands, and Fossil Falls. We also took a turn towards nearby marshy Klondike Lake to get better shots of CalTech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory.

Our last stop would be Manzanar, the site of an American concentration camp. Japanese-Americans, some born in the U.S. and having no connection to Japan, were given a week to liquidate their belongings and get to the train station whem Japan declared war on the United States. This visit shook me like I knew it would. I was ashamed at what we were capable of. It was a sad chapter in history, taking place in a harsh but beautiful climate that attracted the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. It also attracted two A-10 Warthog attack planes and an F-16, I couldn’t help but think of my brother, the a-10 pilot, and if that could be him up there tumbling around through the clouds at 500 miles an hour.

The Canon 7D still seems to be meeting every one of my expectations. Even my biggest issue, no assignable AEB button, has now been overcome simply by editing a Camera User Setting. There are still many things I need to get used to on this camera body, but I am loving the feel and the results. I honestly believe that my best work is ahead of me and thats in no small part due to my new acquisition.

I’m going to leave this one short and sweet. Thanks for reading and I hope you come back next time.

Saddleback Butte 9.20.09

We have been very, very slack in our hiking lately. Its really shameful. Last Sunday, we tried to find our way back. We normally scoff at 10 and 12 mile hikes as with thousands of feet of elevation change; last weekend, we barely topped 2 miles.

This isn’t for lack of trying. The Station Fire, according to the media has laid waste to 160,000 acres of our playground, the Angeles National Forest which is essentially the San Gabriel Mountains. From where we are, the burn doesn’t look so dramatic, so we are anxious to get up there to survey the damage. We decided to grab our favorite hiking guides and our maps and head as far in as we could get before we were stopped. We didn’t get very far. We did see some burned out post-apoctalyptic landscapes in the distance, but nothing that anyone living in Southern California for a while hasn’t seen before. Fires are a part of life here just like earthquakes and avocados.

We didn’t expect the roads to be closed here. We continued around the northernmost range of the San Gabriels in hopes to find our way up a fire road for a peak. All roads into the forest were blocked and it looked serious. We continued to drive East to the Devil’s Punchbowl, a natural sincline that we have hiked more often than any other local site. The fire was one entire range away, so we figured we would at least head out to the Devil’s Chair, one of our favorite spots. The geology around these rock formations is dramatic and exiting. Everywhere you look there is evidence of fault activity. The San Andreas runs directly underfoot here and makes for some lovely desert terrain.

When we arrive at our home trail, so to speak, we throw on our packs and walk to the nature center as we always do, only to be greeted with a sign that informed us that, ” ALL TRAILS CLOSED.” Damn. We walk inside and inquire as to when our playground, the Mojave Desert’s backyard oasis, my church will re-open and the 5d Mark II wielding attendant stated that it was up to the U.S. Forest Service and there was no possible way to know when they’d open it again. “It could be a day,  it could be months.”  We started to speculate hopefully that it could’nt have burned everything. The trails here must be closed because they don’t have the personnel for a search and rescue operation, right? The map of the burn read like a laundry list of our favorite mountains and hiking trails. They always have a rattlesnake, an owl or a tarantula along with other flora and fauna for the public. There was a Boy Scout group there, taunting the rattler who sound like  he couldn’t possibly rattle any faster or louder to get his point across. Ruth, the barn owl, was there as she was last time so we said hello.

We retreated to the valley floor and away from the San Gabriels, leaving the USFS to its work.