Julie & Ryan

I’m still thinking about this wedding. Julie and Ryan are one of those couples who exude togetherness. To anyone around, its quite obvious that they’re meant for each other. It’s hard to explain, but they just fit. It’s romantic and sappy perhaps, but I believe there is true love and I’ll go on the record as saying these two are going to be together forever.

Aint love grand?

We hit it off with this couple right away. Ryan is a space geek and we couldn’t stop talking about NASA and telescopes and planets, etc. Julie and I both go to the same college. We couldn’t have made a better connection with a couple in the short time we had before their wedding. When they said they wanted to shoot their engagement session at Griffith Observatory, I was beside myself.  A 2 hour session turned into 5 and I was ready to stay. That night we looked through a few telescopes (one belonging to Tuvoc for you nerds out there) and saw a pass of the International Space Station.

If a great fit and an amazing e-session wasn’t enough, they got married at Le Chene. My wife has been telling me about Le Chene for 15 years, but for whatever reason, life probably, we never made it there for dinner.  She’s told me over and over again how good the French cuisine is there. They say that its the best food in northern Los Angeles County and is the oldest building in the area. I don’t know about the history, but I can confirm that the food was phenomenal.

From the gorgeous ceremony outside in the garden, to the grapevines, to the accommodating staff, Le Chene really impresses.  I’ve never been fed so well fed photographing a wedding or any other job. Though working a little and dining a little, I’ve seldom had a better meal in my lifetime when I was sitting down and I was on my feet. The staff there took special care of me, seeing to it that I was fed and hydrated throughout the night. I can’t see why more Antelope Valley brides choose this great location. While other venues might be more extravagant, Le Chene delivers a fine experience, even if you’re just the photographer.

This wedding had an amazing vitality that surrounded it. The day, the couple, the venue, were all amazing and I was fortunate to be along for the ride. Once again, I was allowed to live my dream and take photographs for a living. Not everyone can do what they love for a living and that’s a privilege I don’t take lightly. I wish Ryan & Julie happiness and contentment forever and Ill never in that time be able to thank them enough for having me.

They asked for cheestastic photos and came up with this idea.

I think its kinda awesome.

Over Los Angeles

Griffith Obsevatory.

Le Chene was beautiful.

The place settings were simple and elegant.

The food here was definitely the best wedding food I’ve ever had.

Julie & Ryan were high school sweethearts.

This is one good guy.

A lovely ceremony in the garden.

Aint love grand?

This couple has a great sense of humor and they know how to have some fun!

Lots of fun.

Is it me or do we get the best looking couples?

Burning Man & The Great Ticket Shortage of 2012

Today, the Burning Man Organization will announce its new policies regarding tickets to this year’s event. Growth, permit concerns and an aging ticket system has taken its toll and has caused, what many burners see as a huge disaster. Many of the amazing and mind-blowing art and projects that makes Burning Man what it is each year are threatened, because theme camps and project teams have received only about 25% of the tickets they need to complete their projects.

There’s a lot of debate out there right now and a lot of people who are devastated. I get it. I’ve only been once and there hasn’t been a day since I got back that I haven’t thought about its effect on me on how I can re-arrange my life to fit Black Rock City into it. Should Burning Man move to a private location? Should we use non-transferable tickets? Many questions remain unanswered. I’m not sure what will or should happen, but I do know that we can all find ourselves back there again. I have hope that this will create a better Black Rock City and that we can all be together again.

It is speculated that later today, they will announce a plan to place the tickets in the hands of those who have the know-how, resources and experience to make Burning Man amazing. I don’t consider myself on of those people, but I still hold hope that I’ll make it back. There’s still Burning Man’s STEP program, which is supposed to help facilitate a secure exchange of tickets at face value amongst burners. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Hopefully, today will be another step towards a better event and you can bet your ass there’s thousands of people holding their breath right now.

Last year, the planets finally aligned and I was privileged enough to make it to the playa. For years, I made excuses or had my head in other places, so I never made the trip. When I finally did, it was everything I hoped. It changed me forever.

Thank you citizens of Black Rock City, from DPW all the way to the Sparkle Ponies. Whatever happens today,  I hope to see you at home and good luck with tickets!

 

I will never forget the time I spent in the desert with 50,000 of my closest friends sharing ideas, living with wild abandon and being astounded by each other. It shook me up and poured me over some ice.

Every day since, I’ve been trying to hold on to what I learned there. I left some of my prejudice and judgement out there on the playa, gasping for air and I thought I didn’t bring any. I don’t know how long its going to last, but I see things differently. It’s easier to be in the moment and its easier to open up to people. Those were two things I thought I was good at. I know now that I do not know how to give.

I can hardly describe the feelings I had over the course of that week and I won’t even try to. I will say that my heart and my brain are different now and I want to stay this way. I want to hold on to that Its-A-Wonderful-Life feeling that I have right now and I want to carve in stone the truce I’ve made with everyone in the world, good or bad. Its easy to write it all off as some giant desert art party, but it is a very special place on the border between personal freedom and the law where people treat each other with more respect and empathy than I’ve ever seen. People are more real, less diluted.

They say it’s the 4th largest city in Nevada (for a week). They say its the most educated city in the world. I’ve been to a thousand cities and it is impossible to compare Black Rock City to any of them. It’s more a feeling than a place.

Black Rock City is now my favorite city. I had too much fun to take the time and really take careful photos, a mistake I won’t repeat next year. I was perfectly content at the time to just be in such a wonderful place with such amazingly talented and creative people. I was told not to shoot at all, but thats just crazy talk.

I normally shoot digital, but I decided just before we left to shoot film and I wasn’t even really prepared, I just grabbed the stuff I had lying around. I did however acquire an instant camera that I fell in love with.

Now, I’m find myself shopping for toyhaulers, golf carts and scissor-lifts, planning my future around how I’m going to make it back and how I can apply what I learned there to my everyday life. I miss the playa more and more everyday, but one of the lessons of Burning Man is live in the moment, so I’m off to be with my lovely wife. Hopefully, I’ll see you there next year.

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

Jupiter over Los Angeles (self-portrait)

I was waiting for my wife Heather to get home from Dallas when I decided to run up to Griffith Observatory to take a few shots.  As usual, the view was great, but not so usual, the view was very clear. Isn’t the universe awesome? Jupiter has been good to me this year. Canon 7D 10-22mm 30″ f20 ISO 800.

I took this photo of Jupiter back in August:

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.

 

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:

Jennifer & Jason

We stole some precious time from these two while they were in town wrapping up wedding details for an impromptu engagement session. The best part of being a photographer is showing people how amazing they are and hopefully, sometimes showing people how they feel about each other. There are never happy photos in the newspaper and much of what we see in most images of the world is pretty scary these days. It can be a tough world to live in, filled with cuts and bruises and it would be a much different place without the comfort we find in each other. Love is what makes it all worthwhile.  It’s an honor to get the opportunity to image that warm, comforting connection. As photographers, its our duty show the world to the world and that space in between people is the best location to shoot. It is no small thing when someone chooses you to photograph their wedding when they’ve sacrificed inviting somone they know for your photographs.

Heather and I are honored and giddy about being a part of this amazing day where these two stop to take notice of that connection and celebrate love. Some say that love is the most important thing in the world and you won’t hear any argument from us….

Villains

If you know me, you know I love music. I spent about 5 years as a concert promoter before I became a full-time photographer and have played many concerts in many bands. We threw hundreds of shows from the Vandals to Avenged Sevenfold and the Aquabats to the Horropops. Music makes great photography. I like shooting bands on stage almost as much as I like playing on stage. Bands make for good listening, good times and great photos. A few all-stars from the local L.A. music scene that I knew from those days came together to form Villains, a metal project. I’ve worked with a few of these guys in the past and if its any indication of what the new sound is, brace yourselves kids and get ready for the pit. Do yourselves a favor and keep your ears open for these guys, cause its gonna be good.

The idea behind this shoot was lean and mean. Get in, get the shots, get out, stay happy. The clients get what they want with little hassle and without all of the logisitics rigamarole and man-hours that can add up to big costs. We could have gone with the tying the damsel to the tracks, spare-no-expense scenario, but in this economy, everyone is looking to a save a dollar or two. No big strobes or elaborate setup here, just a 380EX II with an umbrella and parking lot after a storm. Its arguable that the background detracts from the subject, but in my world, this makes a much more interesting shot than the typical seamless background and it was free. The universe is much more interesting than a studio.  This shoot was over in just over an hour, we got great captures and everyone went on with their evenings. Smooth, quick and 21st century. Thanks to Garrett, Kyle and Jake for standing around in the cold and thanks to Redman and Heather for their work and support. Let me know what you think, criticism welcome.