Well, this was a new one for me…I have photographed many, many weddings, families, kids and engagement photo session, but never a baptism.  I was familiar with the sequence of events, so I approached it like a miniature wedding, in a sense.  I had recently done a photo shoot for the little guy a month earlier with grandma and her newest grandson, and a couple months prior to that for his newborn pictures, so I am familiar with the wonderful family and they make things very easy for me.  Zayden is such a cute little guy, and I look forward to watching him grow.

Below are a few pictures from the morning…enjoy:)

Just a quick post to post a few quick photos from a client’s second photo session.  Kids are just so darned cute!

Last week, I met Stephanie and Dave for thier Engagement photo shoot.  Rather than doing the photo shoot at the beach or a park, we decided to try something downtown.  We had a great time, saw a skateboarding chicken, and made some fun and unique photographs.  I will be photographing their wedding later this year and am super excited to photograph them again!

Just a few photographs from a wedding I shot in La Jolla.

Yikes! Has it really been over two months since I last updated the blog? Well, it certainly has not been due to lack of content. I have been shooting a ton, and insanely busy in general…I guess that is the way the halidays work though. Where do I start? It seems the hot item for me has been family portraits, mostly newborn or first year photos. Pictures of the family together is always a great gift for parents, and it never gets old. There have have also been a couple weddings in there recently. Things are starting to book for next year, and I must say life is good! I will post images from the family sessions and the weddings seperately. Let’s go with the weddings first…the two latest are from the Wedding Bowl in La Jolla and Carlton Oaks Country Club in Santee. Both are awesome wedding locations! If you are looking for outdoor locations for your upcoming San Diego wedding, have a look at the images below to get a preview of the grounds. Check back in a few days for some super cute photos of the little ones that make our lives so much fun.

Last Friday, I met Sean and Sarah, a great couple, down at Sunset Cliffs to do their engagement photo session.  I will be photographing their wedding next Spring here in San Diego. Up until this day, we were a bit worried about the marine layer that had been hanging around in the evenings lately, but we had a cloudless sky and a great time. I have been to this beach a time or two and it is a perfect little beach for a photo session. There are rarely people other than surfers there, and the cliffs are quite dramatic with the evening light. You have to time it right with the tides though, or there is no beach at all…we had a good on Friday evening. Enjoy the photos!

Life has been crazy for the last month, and I haven’t been able to get a recent post up, but I have been doing some photography here and there. Two weekends ago, I headed out to do a photo shoot with some friends who needed some family shots before their second baby arrived…which is not too far away now! We planned the photo shoot for the evening down at the beach in Del Mar, in hopes of getting that nice light that typically bathes the cliffs in a golden color. We were presented with a beautiful overcast evening…argh! It wasn’t ideal, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? We had a great time and it shows in the photographs below. Sean and Nguyen are awesome, and I cannot wait to see their new guy when he gets here!

This past weekend was a blast! Jen and I took Quinn down to the beach for his first play session in the sand and water. Being his first time there, we had to get a few shots. As soon as we set him down, he went straight for the water…not really surprising seeing how we are both water people. It felt good to get back to shooting again, as many of you know that I have been away from the camera for a little bit (see below three posts). My wedding, engagement and family sessions are starting to book for the fall and for 2009. Please contact me if you would like to check my availability or have unanswered questions. Thank you for coming back to my blog.

So, I have a wedding I am shooting in late June for a couple, Dominique and Cody, who lives in Las Vegas. Her family is in San Diego which is where the wedding will be located. They have a one year old son who is absolutely adorable. Since they live in Vegas, it makes it tough for them to get here for an engagement session which they didn’t really want anyway, but they haven’t had any photos done of their son. Last week they were in town for his one year birthday, so I suggested we do a shoot with him in place of an engagement session. Being a new dad myself, I now know how valuable those pictures will be later. They change so fast!
We got an hour one evening and met at Lake Poway, where we had a great time running around trying to capture him looking at the lens. He was all over the place…certainly no time to plan and set up a shot, so I am glad my auto focus works really fast. Doing pretty much anything we could to get his attention, I am sure we looked pretty funny to the others in the park…but that is part of the fun with child photography. Here are a few images of Tristan’s afternoon at the park…

April 12th marked Jen and I’s five year wedding anniversary! For the occaission, we went to Catalina Island for a few days. What a cool place. It was exactly what we needed although there wasn’t enough time to do everything we wanted, but…is there ever enough time when you are having fun? That gives us a great reason to go back. We stayed at a place called Hamilton Cove which is a condo complex built into the side of a cliff. We had a spectacular view off our balcony as you can see from the first two pictures in this series. We were lucky to hit it in the off season, so the rates were reasonable and the place came with a golf cart, way cool! That really made things nice to get around, as Hamilton cove is about a 10 minute cart ride to Avalon, where everything happens. Quinn was great the whole time! We took him for a swim for the first time…I think we are going to be spending A LOT of time at the beach with this guy. He loved the water!
I also experimented with some photography techniques. Avalon Harbor, at sunrise, was a perfect place to stitch a large panoramic picture together. The panoramic image below is 8 different images stitched together in Photoshop CS3. Doing this with a wide angle lens makes for a very interesting image. I also started fooling around with HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. The third image down on the left is done this way. By exposing several different images for both the shadows and the highlights and layering them together, you can make a beautiful image in which you don’t lose the highlight or shadow detail…all of the information is right there, details across the whole range…very cool! I haven’t quite realized the full potential of HDR yet, but I will certainly be experimenting more with it in the future. I think some HDR portraits could be pretty awesome looking.
By the last day, I think Quinn was pooped from hiking, swimming, riding around in the golf cart and all the walking around…as you can see from the last image…haha!
Thanks for looking…