Balboa Park is a great place! I had a wedding to photograph last weekend in the rose gardens…it was beautiful! The weather was perfect, it was an intimate little wedding and the people were awesome! I photographed the short ceremony, had a few family and formal shots, then I got to work with the bride and groom for about an hour walking throughout the park. I think I have said it before, but Balboa Park is one of my favorite places in San Diego. The history, the architecture, and the overall beauty of the place is just phenomenal! Here are a few photos from Vicki and John’s day. Thanks for visiting!

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.

Well, I am all healed now! I went to see the neurosurgeon last Thursday, did a few strength tests, got some x-rays, and was given the go ahead to take the dear neck brace off I have been in since the surgery. What a feeling! I now have two spectacular scars in my neck, one in the front where they put a plate over vertebra C6 & C7, and another one in the back so they could put a bar over the same two vertebra for more stabilization. My limitations now are to lift nothing more than 40 pounds for the next six weeks. At that point, I will have to head back to the doc one more time after some physical therapy for the stifness I am having now. I suppose this is normal, since I didn’t move my head for just shy of two months. The best thing is I can now lift my son, Quinn! I really did miss that connection with him. I could have him in my lap, but being able to pick him up is so much better now! I did ride my bikes around the neighborhood this weekend. It felt good, but it is going to take a bit of time to loosen up to where I can go on a long road ride again. Racing will have to wait until next season. This is a good point to focus on my photography anyway. Thank you everyone for all of the interest in my work lately. I am now cleared to get back to shooting…and here are a couple shots I did in my kitchen the other day…

So, I have been living with my trusty old neck brace for the last seven weeks now. It has been tough, but we have been managing. This Thursday is a big day…I head back to the Doc’s office for more X-rays. I will find out at that point what is next on the road to recovery…hopefully it doesn’t involve me wearing the neck brace or not being able to drive myself around!
I will be starting back in the wedding photography business again as soon as I can. I have had to turn away several people and for that I am sorry, but they have all been very understanding. If you are planning a wedding for the latter part of the summer, fall or 2009, I would love to be on your list for consideration.
Stay tuned for the updates…and Thank you for all of the support everyone has given me over the past two months!

On May 4th the Trauma Surgeon came back into the ER and told me, “Erik, you have fractured four vertebrae in your neck, C1 & C2 are stable but C6 & C7 are very unstable.”
A BROKEN NECK…I BROKE MY NECK?!? But…that can’t happen to me! WTF! It’s just too much for us to deal with right now as life was cruising along at a pace too fast to enjoy. I just went out for a quick ride to get the legs moving, nothing serious…HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

THE SHORT STORY
Head out for quick mt. bike ride, hit rut wrong, sent head first into embankment, feel pain in neck, lay still while calling Jen then 911, delivered to the trauma section of the ER, immediately given X-Rays, Cat Scans, and MRI’s, results…stable fractures on C1 & C2, but C6 & C7 are not stable, admitted to hospital for emergency surgery, fuse C6 & C7, success, recover, come home.

THE DETAILS
While Jen’s brother, wife and son (John, Sandy and Avery) were out for a visit from Virginia for a long weekend, I was getting a little antsy to head out for a ride on the last morning they were in town…they had an evening flight, so I figured an hour ride would be good for me before we went to the local street fair, then to the airport later that evening to see them off. I headed out to a trail I have ridden probably more than a thousand times…literally. It is just a loop that climbs 1000 vertical feet up and comes down a steep and technical but fun downhill. On the last part of the downhill, the fastest part, just before I was turning to start another loop, I hit a rut at just the wrong angle with my front tire at approximately 35 mph. My bike went to the right and I was sent flying through the air to the left where I see the ground coming at my face…and it was coming fast! It must have been a spectacular impact, because I don’t remember that part of the crash. However I do remember thinking while flying through the air, as if I was in slow motion upside down, no…no…no…please don’t let me hit my head…not my head…NOOOOO!!!….BOOM!
The next thing I know, I am laying in an erosion ditch on my back with a tingling left arm. The tingle only lasted a few seconds, but that coupled with the intense pain in my neck gave me a clue that this could be serious. I laid there for a few minutes thinking about what just happened. Realizing that I can move my arms and legs, I resist the urge to get up and continue to keep my neck totally still. My cell phone was in my jersey pocket, and I can reach it with my left hand without disturbing my neck or back, so I call Jen first. She is used to me calling when I get a flat or even crash, but this time all I could say was HELP ME! She knows the area well as we hike up there quite a bit, and she could drive most of the way to me. At first I told her to call 911, then I though I might be able to pinpoint my location a bit better. It is a surreal experience to call 911 for yourself. As I lay still, Jen and John show up within about 5 or 10 minutes. Sandy was great as she stayed back with the kids. After about 30 more minutes, the paramedics found me with the help of a helicopter. Time check – about 10:30am. They strap me to the backboard with what appears to be duct tape and load me into the back of the ambulance, and I am off to the ER. Jen has taken me to the ER a few times now, so at this point we thought this was all precautionary. After all, I could move my legs and arms…how could I have a broken neck?
Once at the ER, I am immediately given X-Rays, Cat Scans, and MRI’s. As I am wheeled from room to room, pain shoots up and down my neck and back with the slightest bump of the wheels. After seeing a good portion of the ceilings in the hospital, they put me back in the room where I started. Jen is there waiting for me. A nurse comes in with some much needed pain medication and she stitches up my left elbow. I don’t even feel it, as I am focusing on breathing to control the other pain I am feeling at this point. After a bit, the Trauma Surgeon comes in and tells us the results of the images. I have stable hairline fractures on C1 & C2, but C6 & C7 have been crushed together, displaced and all the ligaments connecting the two have been severed. Emergency surgery is scheduled for 5:00pm the following day. They decide they are going to leave vertebra C1 and C2 alone as they are stable and will heal just fine, and they are going to fuse C6 and C7 together with titanium plates and rods. The news was a bit shocking to both Jen and I, but the doc assured us that I was going to be fine in time.
At this point, I have leads all over my chest to monitor me, IV’s in both arms, a big neck brace on and there is talk of a catheter…yikes! They wheel me to my new digs until the surgery, room 419. I learn to hate this room, as this is where I spend the next 30 hours in the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life despite the IV narcotics and valium they have me on. On the pain scale of 1 – 10 that the hospital staff use to know what the patient is feeling…I am at about a 27, unbearable! I don’t remember a lot of this part, but several people did come to visit for which I am very thankful. Jen was amazing through this whole experience, and I cannot imagine what emotional state she must have been in.
In the morning, Jen came back to my room, and the staff told us that the surgery was going to be pushed up and will now be at noon…well, noon came and went, and I am still in room 419 waiting in pain…the spasms in my lower back from laying still for so long is what is sending me through the roof at this point. They come back to tell us that my surgery had been pushed back to 5:00pm…I was devastated! 5 more hours of this pain…NOOOOO! Tears came to my eyes. My dad showed up around 2:00pm and eventually the surgery did roll around. As they prepped me for surgery, I had Jen get a few pictures of me, so I could see what I was going through. The last thing I remember was the breathing tube going into my nose, then I woke up in ICU then next morning.
The support we had during this time was amazing! My dad took care of Quinn, and our good friends Erin, Damon and Jen stayed with Jen through the entire 6 hour surgery. We do have the best friends in the world! I wake up in ICU and my family shows up in the morning. Still all drugged up, I am now on the road to recovery. The doctors come to talk and they tell us there wasn’t much they didn’t expect from the images, but the damage was quite a bit more extensive. There were chunks of bone in my spinal column 1 mm from the cord itself, that they had to extract, which explains the tingling left hand at this point.
They tell me that it was literally the smartest decision of my life to lay still on the trail and if I had, there was no stability in that C6-C7 joint to keep them from slipping and damaging the spinal cord…I would have been a quadriplegic for sure!! So, the next three days were spent in recovery. There was a steady stream of visitors, flowers and get well wishes from friends and family from all over the country. I don’t know how I will ever be able to thank everyone, who has been there for us, appropriately. One thing is for sure…my wife has been the biggest rock star of all. I love you Jen! This has been a truly amazing experience, fortunately I will be back to 100% in not too much longer. It has been a month since the accident, and I still re-live the crash a thousand times a day. There will be a lot to take away from this. Life is short and it can change in the blink of an eye. Do what makes you happy, and don’t sweat the small things…
Here are a few images of my stay and the new hardware in my neck…thank you to all of you who have been thinking of me!

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…

Last week, I had a great family photo shoot with Zak, Heather and Aubrey. We met at Windansea Beach in La Jolla on a fairly windy afternoon. The light was a bit harsh, but I think the photos turned out quite nice. They are such a beautiful and photogenic family, it would be hard to take a bad picture of them. New babies are a challenge, but I usually don’t have a problem making a fool of myself to make them smile or at least look in the general direction of the camera. Aubrey was a trooper, especially for being only 4 months old. She is cute as a button. I tend to like and look for the moments between the poses. To me they are a bit more interesting than a static posed shot. Below you will see my style is more of a lifestyle kind of photography. But there always has to be a few posed shots here and there to frame. This was a fun photo session….thank you Zak Heather and Aubrey!