More Ben & Cindy

Tonight's image is another from the session with Ben & Cindy. These chairs were set up for some play that was either taking place later on or had already taken place and they made for a nice patterned background. It was starting to get dark at this point but I was still able to pull off some shots with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.

Hopefully everyone's Christmas was as good as ours. Jacob got hooked up with a bunch of goodies and Jayden enjoyed her first Christmas. We started off the day hanging out at my mom's house. My sister is in from Arizona and we had a nice time visiting with her. My brother hooked me up with some bowling items so I can eventually join his team. I never thought I would enjoy bowling so much but it is actually quite fun. It also gives me time to hang out with my bro which is always an adventure. Jess got most of the items she was wanting as well. It's so tough to get in the Christmas spirit when the weather is as beautiful as it was today. The rest of the country is in heavy snow storms and I wore shorts and a T-shirt all day! We also hung out with Jess' family which was nice as we don't hang out as often as we should. We finished off the day with a prime rib dinner and a call to my dad. Maybe I can get him out here sometime for the holidays. Overall, the day was great and it was really nice hanging out with family. I will be posting some pix from the day as soon as I get them processed.

Stay tuned for more images with Ben & Cindy. I need to go as my little girl is getting ready for the 2:00-3:00 am feeding. I am going to deviate from this session tomorrow night so I can post some pix of Jayden's first Christmas along with her brother. I was also playing videographer today so I don't have too many shots. I do have enough though for a few posts.

Once again, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and enjoyed time with your families.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I can't believe how fast this year has gone. My baby girl is almost 8 months and my son is almost 9 years old. It's crazy how time flies once you have kids.

Posted tonight is an image of our friends Ben & Cindy. We always have a nice time hanging out with these two. This image was taken in Old Town after we stopped off to get some Mexican food last weekend. I thought the session was going to be tough considering Ben's height. One thing I should have noticed at the time of capture is the placement of Ben's right hand. He really is grabbing the wall! So many things to consider when posing people. Besides that, I really like this image. I dig the relaxed pose and I like how the door's darkness separates Ben from the background. Cindy's dark hair separates her from the white building. The sun was going down really fast but we were able to bounce around to about 5 different places to capture some shots. I will be posting more from this session as I process them. Thanks again you two for helping me out with my "multiple people" portraits. I really appreciate it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas. Enjoy the time off and enjoy the time spent with family.

Back to the Ally

Here is to make up for the post with Rob yesterday. I have a few more to post from this session and that should take place over the next few days. This is going to be a short post today because I need to get some last minute Christmas stuff done. In the meantime, enjoy the image. With an image like this, who needs my rants anyway.

Blog has been updated

Well, no new images for this post. It's more of a "I got off my duff and finally moved everything to this blog" post. I should have some images in the archives that I should be able to post tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, you will have to read my rants.

I am going to be trying to expand my stock portfolio while I am on vacation for a week and a half. I plan on doing some lighting with LED's. I know what I have in my mind so let's see if I can actually reproduce the images I want. I need to get the lights first and I plan on bringing in Rob for the shoot so we can collaborate. Speaking of Rob, I do have a post for tonight. Here is big bad Roberto striking a pose during the shoot with Ally. I don't know about you, but I would rather look at Ally posing for the camera!

A simple post turns lengthy

I love black & white images. B&W photos in magazines always catch my attention and this was the first thing I thought of when converting this. I wanted the image to have the feel of something you would see in Vogue or something similar. There's so much I like about this image. This is one of my favorites from the shoot. The pose was all Ally (I didnt' direct her at all in this shot) and everything just came together. The way her left leg runs parallel with the shape of the rock on the left. The gentle S-Curve with her left hand adds another dimension. And then there's the angle of her head which runs parallel with her right leg. The more I study this photo, it IS my favorite from the session.

I have been doing a lot more reading & studying lately to take my photography to the next level. A few months ago, I started getting bogged down and getting frustrated with my images. I felt like I was at a stand-still with my images and my post-processing. I would sit at the computer for hours on one image playing with different settings and get nowhere. I ended up having a 3 month break from photo sessions and I feel like the break I took was the best thing I could do. I started critiquing the crap out of my images and making a real assessment of where I was going with an image before I even touched a tool in Photoshop. There are a lot of great photographers out there and I can become frustrated easily when comparing my work to theirs. That's part of what drives me to outperform my last shoot. Take the good and the bad from a shoot and learn from it. More of my reading lately has to deal with the actual shoot and the posing. I feel really good about my latest post techniques but you need a great starting image. A lot of my late nights are spent looking at ads, watching movies, and I find myself watching more commercials on TV lately. It usually takes me a while to get through a movie because I am looking at the lighting or the camera angle and trying to dissect the shot so I can improve my abilities and give the client images that they are truly happy with.

I know I have said this what seems like a thousand times this week, but working with Ally was what I needed to get inspired again. I'm just giving credit where credit's due so thanks again Ally. And a huge thanks to Rob for setting up the shoot. Everything just came together at a perfect time for me.

I was just going to post the B&W image tonight but I wanted to see what people's opinions of the color shot were as well. For those that made it through the text of my post tonight, thanks for hanging in there while I aired some thoughts.


Oh yeah, I finally got around to updating my website to take out the wedding section considering I am concentrating on my portraiture and commercial-type work. I also changed the image on the home page to the B&W image posted tonight.

I will be posting a few more images over the weekend so check back in. Enjoy the weekend.

Ally continued

Considering I haven't posted any photos of Ally since Sunday, I decided to post 3 tonight! I have some more that I will be posting this weekend. Thanks again Ally for giving me such a great variety of photos to post. You rock. It's been another busy week with post-processing and trying to get some sleep. As you can see from the time of this post, sleep wasn't a priority tonight. Volleyball is going to be rough tomorrow at noon.

I would write some more but I need to get some sleep.

Just a reminder that I will also be updating this blog sometime over the next few days with all the archived posts from the old blog.

Let's Hear Your Opinions

I am curious to hear from my readers their opinions on the new blog. Hopefully what I am about to write doesn't bias your decision in any way. I just want to shed some light on my thoughts.

First off, let me cover the reasons for switching over to this blog. The ability for you all to leave comments was the major reason for moving my blog. I think it will be a lot easier for people to comment directly from the blog instead of writing an e-mail to let me know their thoughts. I also like the fact that you can subscribe to RSS feeds and get an update whenever I post. How this works right now, I have no idea. I know how it works for other people's blogs I have subscribed to but I still need to test this one out (I usually get an e-mail update from a few photographers and that is purdy sweeeeet). Hopefully this one works the same.

I'm also debating on whether to keep the white background with black text like the old blog or should I switch to a black background with the white text. Let's hear what you think.

Labels were another reason for switching over. If you look to the right side of the blog, underneath "blog archives", you will notice the element called "Labels". This blog allows me to add labels to a post so readers can sort the archived posts by these tags. For example, a reader wants to see the latest photos of my family (Jake & Jayden are the usual subjects). All the posts that have photos of my ninos will be labeled "Family". Once you click on this link, all the posts with that label will be displayed. It's a way for me to organize my posts to make it easier for whomever is viewing my blog. See that! I'm always thinking of you and how I can save your time in your busy schedules (my goal is to actually get you to spend more time looking at my photography which might not save you any time at all).

Now for the bad. First off, I can't stand the small photos that are linked to a bigger photo. I don't like unnecessary clicks and I wish I could upload a photo at the size I specify and it displays at that size. This was the main reason I created my old blog. I have yet to find out why blogger is like Microsoft Word in that it formats things in ways I don't want it to. That means more time for me to "play" with settings and still not get the results I am after. Secondly, I liked the way my old blog followed the design elements of my main website. It would be nice to have a seamless blog. A lot of time went into the design of my old site and I wish the blog matched.

So there you have my opinions on the new blog. Overall, I think the good far outweigh the bad. I still want to hear from you all though. Don't hold back. And if you do comment on this, thank you for taking the time to participate in my market research.

Now it's time to get back to processing some photos. By the way, I will be adding the previous posts from my old blog throughout the week.

Ally

In order to make up for my lack of posting last week, I will be posting images this week from today's photo shoot with Ally. She had contacted Rob a few weeks ago in regards to a photo session. I mentioned last month that Rob and I were working together more with our photography. Working with him pushes me even harder than I normally push myself. Rob is one of them dudes that is just naturally good at whatever he decides to pursue. About the only thing I can beat him at is Madden on XBOX360 (it probably helps that he usually chooses Detroit but hey, he's making that decision for himself). Anyway, not only does this make me push myself, it also gives us some time to hang out.

So Rob calls me the other day and says that the photo session is still on with Ally in spite of the weekend's rainy forecast. The weather was perfect today for some location shots. Working with Ally was a complete pleasure. I wish everyone I met was as nice as her and her dude, Joe. They were great to hang out with for the 4 hour session and Ally just worked the camera! It's a different ball game when you are working with someone who has experience modeling. She would tweak her pose in between shots which gave very subtle differences to ensure just the right look, which meant very little instruction from me on the posing. This allowed me to concentrate on the composition and get the shots I was looking for.

This image was taken in La Jolla and is one of many that will be posted this week as I work on the post-processing. I hope you enjoy (you can click on the photo to view it larger, which I highly recommend).

Ally was great to work with and I hope to arrange some more photo sessions with her in the near future.

Jayden's 1st Holiday Season

Sorry for the delay with last week's posts. I have been busy as ever. This is the first time I have been on the computer all week. I'm gonna start this week off with a photo of Jayden dressed up all pretty. We had "Breakfast with Santa" last weekend and the kids were dressed up. Of course I had to get some pix of my baby girl. Isn't she a doll? She's getting ready to crawl so I should have some new pix sometime soon of that. In the meantime, I will be posting some photos from a photo shoot today with Rob...more to follow soon!

Mason's 1st Birthday

I can't believe how fast time is going by. Christmas is just around the corner. We went to Vegas a while back to see some friends we haven't seen in a long time and also to celebrate their son's 1st birthday. It was a wonderful weekend and it was a chance to photograph the party so the parents could enjoy the event. Craig and Christie were so kind to let us stay in their sweet pad for the extended weekend. Craig and Christie went all out for this party. The Harley theme set the mood for a good time for everyone invited. Mason had a blast digging into his cake. I'm just wondering how much cake he took in for this look (I think I looked like this after Thanksgiving).

Here's Mason's cool little VANS. It's all about the details during these times. They grow up so fast.



Thanks again for a wonderful weekend. It was great seeing you all and we are looking forward to another trip.

For those keeping track, I set a record in November with the amount of posts! I hope you all are enjoying the photos and the write-ups as much as I enjoy posting them. 2008 is just around the corner and I can't wait to update the new offerings for clients!

Pete & Linda continued

Here's a family shot from Pete & Linda's shoot. Working with kids and dogs together is a total different dynamic. Patience plays a key role during these more formal sessions. This is why I block out a considerable amount of time when photographing families. It's all about having fun while getting the photographs. There's no need to induce stress by stacking appointments one on top of the other. The last time I photographed Pete & Linda's family, time was flying by and before I knew it, nap time was setting a precedence over the session. This time however, we alotted enough time to set up and get a bunch of shots.



I think Rachel was more excited about the lighting equipment than being photographed. Luckily, Pete set up a Dora DVD to get Rachel focused. I really want to do a location shoot with this family. Rachel has some great expressions that I think would come out if we were in a different setting.

I also want to thank Pete & Linda very much for becoming my first repeat customer! It's so cool when you leave a session and the client says, "We'll see you in May."

Post-Processing Techniques

It's time for another before/after segment. For tonight's images, I am using a photo of....you guessed it....Jake! This one was taken up at Dudley's Bakery a few weekends ago. The image was taken around 4:30 and the sun decided to move behind some clouds which diffused the light quite a bit. He was playing around this fence and peeped through at me when I told him to stop going onto the private property on which he is standing in this image. For those that are curious, I shot this with my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens set to ISO 100, 1/160 @ f3.2. The overall exposure is nice but the photo needs a bump in saturation & contrast.



I ran some actions but masked out the effect on the skin as I didn't like the saturation in the skin tones. I also ran an adjustment layer to get rid of the redness around the eyes. I finished off by darkening the edges of the frame to bring attention to the center of his face. Below is the final result.


I normally shoot with no color/tone/saturation adjustments in my camera as I like to have control over the final outcome in the image. I have tried different settings on my 20D but found I was having to do double the work on an image because I was trying to undo the adjustments so I would have a nice base image to work with.

I hope you all enjoyed tonight's post. The next couple days might not have any updates as I need to finish up some photos from recent photo shoots. It was nice having a 4 day weekend. I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday. It's hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner!

Our Family Session

Rob was kind enough to shoot our family session yesterday at the beach. We wanted the folks that are experiencing cold weather to realize why it is so expensive to live in Southern California. It's called the Sunshine Tax. Granted, it was a bit chilly but not that bad. Rob got some great shots of us which was nice because I'm not usually in the frame. He also got some great individual shots of the kids which hopefully he'll post on his site. I'm stoked that he and I are collaborating more with our photography.

In between setups, I grabbed my camera and rattled off a few shots myself (Rob can't have all the fun). And besides, who wants to see my mug when you can look at my beautiful wife and adorable kids? This was my first real attempt at doing some portraits on the beach at this time of day. I have read that the light changes fast but I didn't really have a clue until I started shooting and changing setups in a few minutes.

Posted tonight is a shot of Jess spending some time with Jayden. Jake was busy running around for Rob to get some panning shots (I'm sure Jake enjoyed the break from me snapping away at him) so I had Jess and Jayden all to myself. I broke out the 85mm fixed lens for this shot which made me work a little harder to compose the shot. Zoom lenses have a tendency to make me lazy and I haven't shot enough with the 85mm lens. I REALLY love this lens. It makes me push myself harder to get the shot I'm after.

I'm really happy with this photo. It's definitely marked for another project I'm currently working on!

78 to Ramona

First off, I would like to say Happy Thanksgiving to all who are reading this. Judging from e-mails, the list of viewers is growing which is really cool because it makes me want to post more! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I finally fried my first turkey this evening and I'm wondering why I waited so long. My buddy Ev took the time out this last week to give me a lot of pointers and everything came out great. Thanks Ev for hooking me up. It was a big hit.

Now for the photography. Two weekends ago I was on my way to a buddy's house to help him out with his property. He lost his house in the Witch Creek fire and I have been going up there for the last few weeks to give him a hand and just help out wherever he needs the help. 78 was finally opened up again so I decided to stop and take some pix along the way. I was originally planning on keeping the color in this photo but decided to play around with some infrared post-processing techniques. I also decided for a square format as the right hand side of the frame didn't really add to the photo. I plan on taking some more landscape shots on our next mini-road trip to the mountains to see what else I can get.

I have some other photos scheduled to be posted this week so keep checkin' in.

Linda & Pete

I had another family session with Linda & Pete two weekends ago. They are a wonderful family to work with and I have enjoyed both sessions. This session was a little more formal and Pete saved the day with a portable DVD player and a Dora video. Thanks Pete for giving me the idea for working with kids. This was a fun session to shoot because of the dynamics involved.

The teaser photo from this shoot is of Linda & Pete. I have a few more from this shoot that I will be posting throughout the week so stay tuned.

For those that are holding me to my word, I have posted another image of Jake from last weekend. The photo is posted below yesterday's image so scroll down and check it out.

Julian

For the last two Sunday's, we have taken some mini-road trips to Julian. It's been nice getting outta the house and just hittin' the road. I like the small town feel that Julian has to offer. We met up with Rob and his family today and stopped in for lunch at the Julian Grille and then headed out to the various shops in town. I'm stoked that Rob is getting into this world of photography. We have started coordinating to shoot a lot more! We've been looking for some local talent so we can expand our portfolio and what we can offer. Hopefully there will be some more road trips in the near future, as well as attending some photo workshops.

For now, here's the big man Jake wishing I would photograph his sister. Last weekend's image will be posted tomorrow. I also have some images from a portrait session last weekend that will be posted this week.

Bate's Nut Farm

We obviously went before Halloween and I had every intention of posting these last week, but didn't. It was a busy week to say the least. I have a ton of pics to post for this month so hopefully I can get off my duff and get to postin'.

Here's a few to show off the chitlins as they played in the patch. Jake finally came around to being photoghraphed. He wasn't game for it at first but I used some Jedi mind tricks to get him to cooperate (video games can be a parent's best friend when you want to manipulate their little minds).

J-Dawg Gets Student of the Month

A big congratulations to J-Dawg for getting Student of the Month for September. This is the second time he has gotten this and we are real proud of him. It's a trip to watch him in class. He is such a fireball 99% of the time, but when he gets into the classroom, he just chills out and does a great job.

After the ceremony in front of the school, he was presented with an award in front of his class. The students then took some time to write little notes to explain why they thought he was awarded with Student of the Month. It was freakin' hilarious to read what some of these kids wrote.

Here's a shot of the big man after the ceremony. All the recipients got to stand up there so all the parents could grab some shots. I tried to get him to do his Guitar Hero face but he didn't do it. I might have to post a shot from the Oceanside shoot to show his "ultimate shreddin'" face.

Dream Wedding

Even though I mentioned last month that I am not shooting weddings for a while, I wanted to post an image from a wedding I shot with Scott Robert back in May. For those that have kept up with my ramblings, I started attending Scott's seminars a while ago. He e-mailed me a while back and asked if I wanted to assist him with a wedding. Of course I jumped on the opportunity. I didn't find out until about two weeks before the wedding who the actual bride and groom were. The bride, Penny, was a dancer for Britney Spears. The groom, Steel-O, is a dancer for Gwen Stefani. Needless to say, the day was sweeeeet!

We had just finished shooting the bride getting ready and as we walked out of the room, Scott saw the shadowed texture on this wall. While Scott was capturing his angle of Penny, I was off to the side capturing my own. The biggest lesson I learned that day was to constantly keep my eye looking for light and textures. For me, this is the biggest reward with photography. You look at the world with a keener eye and it makes you slow down and really look at things in a whole new way.

Seeing first-hand how Scott worked the wedding that day gave me such a boost of confidence. Penny & Steel-O were great with the camera and really opened up which made for some great images. When I do get back into weddings next year, the biggest thing I want to convey to the bride is how being open to ideas can produce great photographs. A big THANKS goes out to Scott for providing me with this experience. I will be posting more from this wedding as I process the images so stay tuned.

*All the images from this wedding were taken by me for Scott Robert Photography*

Surfin' with the Alien

Yes, I was one of the knuckleheads that stood in line for 3 hours of my life in order to get the midnight release of Halo 3. I was going to pick it up Tuesday morning but I figured it would be nice to wake Jake up with a fresh copy so we could play first thing in the morning. I ended up taking the day off and letting him take the day off from school so we could have some dad/son time without estrogen floatin' around the house. We beat the game on normal in a collective 8 hours. For those out there thinking that today's youth spends too much time inside, we also went to the park that evening and played football with my brother and then played frisbee football once the sun went down. Overall, we saw a lot of similarities between this one and the original Halo. The graphics rock. Our favorite level is STORM and nothing beats kickin' some alien ass while crankin' some System of a Down. Thanks Rob for the mix CD. Jake has a newfound appreciation for Motley Crue and Ratt.

For tonight's image, I did a fair amount of processing to come up with the one you are looking at now. This is the 4th version and the one I like the best. Rob thinks I should enter this one in some local contest. I have no idea how that works as I have never entered anything in any type of contest. I think it's time to push the envelope though. And yes, the title is a nod to Joe Satriani. I thought it was fitting for tonight's mix of text & visual. Let me know what you think.