Last week I visited the new home studio of Jeff Berkley, a local San Diego singer/songwriter and producer. Jeff recently moved to Bay Park, also moving his recording studio in to new house. He asked me to come over and shoot some images of the studio for the new website he’s building. In addition to the standard shots of the studio, he asked for some additional “art” style images that could be used for backgrounds and filler for different sections of the site.
Here are a couple of those fun studio art style images:
After unsuccessfully trying to pass the stone over the holiday weekend, I know have an appointment to see a urologist at the end of the week. I have a constant slight, dull pain in my abdomen, but I’m going about my business as usual until the stone decides it wants to move on out. Thanks for all the positive vibes everyone! They’re not going unnoticed!
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Filed Under Weddings, Portraits and Clients
I know that I’ve been suspiciously absent from the blog for a few days… but it’s ok because I have a note from my doctor! I’ve been having pain in my lower left abdomen for awhile now, and have been 99% sure that it was a kidney stone. I’ve had stones in the past, and the familiar (yet different) pain resurfaced over the last few days.
I had originally thought that the stone had passed, and that I was in full recovery mode. I’d had SEVERE pains for a couple hours late Saturday night, and have been feeling progressively better (albeit very slowly) over the last few days. Initially the pain was constant, and bad enough that I had to cancel a few meetings and shoots. I feel terrible about that. There’s nothing worse than having to postpone a meeting or a shoot with a client because of medical reasons.
Back to the story… After feeling progressively better over the last few days, I expected good resulst from the CT Scan I had earlier today. Well, the doctor called with the results saying that I still have a stone, it’s fairly large, and is “mid-ureter”. That means it’s half way between my kidneys and bladder. It’s just hanging out for no reason, refusing to move itself along to the bladder where I can pass it. Therefore I’ve been told to drink as much water as I can handle to help flush that bad boy outta there.
Having passed a couple of stones a few years ago, I know what insane pain I’m about to endure. I thought this part was finished, but apparently not. With any luck at all, the stone will pass soon, and without much pain. (Yeah right). If not, I’ll be headed back to the doctor for more scans, and possibly evaluating alternative ways to get the stone out of me. Today was the first day I’ve felt somewhat normal all week. I have images to post, and things to blog about, but it’s going to have to wait until this thing is over.
Thanks for reading! We will soon return to our regularly scheduled programming.
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On Saturday I headed down to Paradise Point to shoot a gorgeous wedding on the bay. From the moment I arrived I felt an amazingly relaxed vibe coming from everyone involved with the wedding. In fact, this was one of the easiest wedding I’ve ever photographed. Every bit of the planning went smoothly, including extra time set aside to for photographs! And on a HOT afternoon, that little bonus made me very happy.
A beautiful dress detail:
The shoes…
A gorgeous boquet:
The bride was absolutely stunning:
So stunning, that she gets a few more shots:
The happy and relaxed groom… I didn’t enhance his eyes at all. Just great light!
A beautiful San Diego afternoon:
Married!
All of the guests were given bubbles before the ceremony. I love this shot just seconds after the ceremony ended:
A few more shots of the couple:
The groom was a little nervous about the first dance, but it ended up being very sweet!
Island cake!
Throw ya hands up!
And one last portrait in front of the awesome San Diego sunset:
I want to send a shout out to DJ Peace and DJ Zan of Awesome Entertainment for doing there thing at the reception. These guys were amazingly fun, and I hope to work with them again in the future.
And I want to say a BIG thank you to Melissa Koehler for shooting with me. You always do an amazing job Missi! Check out her blog to see some of her images.
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Last night I drove up to Orange County to hang out with a few photographer friends, and check out the beautiful new home of Michael and Cyndie Norwood in Ladera Ranch. Michael is an amazing photographer, and equally nice guy. He actually catered in Sushi, complete with 2 sushi chefs willing to make whatever we wanted! I was starving on the drive up, so imagine my glee when I first saw it.
I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures, but my friend Lan Bui (of the famous Bui Brothers) shot some video and already through together this fun little piece. I’m only in the video for a short time, throwing up the peace sign, and doing my famous poker card flip.
Stolen from Lan’s blog:
Congrats on the beautiful house Michael! Can't wait 'til next time!
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Several months ago I had the pleasure of shooting some headshots for my good friend and fellow photographer Melissa Koehler. Recently she’s been undergoing the process of re-branding herself and her business with a new, fun and fresh style. To add to all of her recent success and new business branding, Melissa asked me to once again shoot a few new headshots of her that would reflect her new look, attitude and brand.
She’s always been a very sweet and talented person, but this time around I wanted her images to better represent this new fresh style. I’m always honored when a fellow photographer asks me to photograph them. Thankfully, Melissa makes it very easy by being super relaxed, and very easy to hang with.
True to my style, I shot almost 2,300 images in just over 2 hours. Here are just a couple of shots from our afternoon:
She’ll hate me for posting this shot, but it’s just too FIERCE!
A very sweet shot during the last 10 minutes of that awesome late late sunlight:
And something a little fun and funky to round it out:
Thanks for asking me again Missi! Congrats on all of your success!
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A couple of weeks ago I donated a portrait session to an auction benefiting the MS Walk taking place at Liberty Station in Point Loma. A wonderful family won the high bid, and Mom immediately contacted me to schedule a session.
On Monday we met up in La Jolla for a shoot, and the entire family could not have been any sweeter! Even though it was super cold, cloudy and windy, they hung in there like champs! They didn’t even care when it started to drizzle towards the end of the shoot. Even with the gloom and haze we were able to capture some fantastic images!
First, a couple shots of the kids:
I though about removing the stray hairs, but I think it adds to the vibe of the shot.
A nice shot of Mom and Dad:
And a shot of the entire beautiful family:
Thank you guys for contributing to such a great cause, and for being such good sports in the cold!
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After having lunch with my Mom on Sunday, I met up with Jen and headed out to Harbison Canyon for an afternoon barbeque with some family and friends. In addition to all the wonderful Moms, and the amazing spread of food, we had a chance to celebrate the engagement of our dear friends Alex and Kim.
My wife Jen has known Alex forever, and the two of them have always been the best of friends. So, you can imagine how excited she was to hear that Alex finally proposed to his girlfriend Kim on Saturday. Kim is an amazingly sweet and wonderful girl, and the two of them make an incredible couple!
I had my camera in the car, so I offered to take a couple of quick shots for Kim to use on her MySpace, and to send out in a few emails to family and friends. I’ll be shooting their wedding later this year, along with a real engagement session very soon. For now, here are a couple quick informal snaps of the happy couple!
Filed Under Personal
I realize that Mother’s Day is nearly over, but I wanted to be sure to say “Happy Mother’s Day!” to all the Moms out there. I also want to send out a special message to my own Mom. We had an awesome lunch this afternoon, and talked about everything going on in our lives. I love catching up and talking about the things we each have coming up on the the horizon.
Here’s a quick shot of the two of us from this afternoon.
I hope you had a wonderful day, Mom. I love you!
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In response to receiving a large number of e-mails asking about my post processing techniques, which actions I use, and how I achieve certain effects, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those subjects. I’m going to try to regularly post a couple of images, along with the EXIF data and the details of the post processing.
When it comes to my overall thoughts on post processing, I always subscribe to the “less is more” philosophy. I believe Photoshop should always be used to enhance a good image, but never to make a crappy image tolerable. I prefer subtle adjustments most of the time, with the occasional “tweaked out” image or two. For the most part, my images are only slightly enhanced from the out of camera files. (or at least I try!)
When it comes to the actions I use on a regular basis, there are really only two that stand out. Kevin Kubota’s actions, and the Totally Rad Actions by Doug Boutwell. At the moment, these are the ONLY action sets I use. If you don’t yet own these action sets, what the heck are you waiting for?!!?
Today I’m posting a couple of images from a recent evening shoot with a few of my fellow SoCal photographers. We spent the evening hanging out and photographing each other. These images are examples of not doing a lot to the images – simple enhancements to make the images pop. Here are the images, along with all the data:
Here’s a nice shot of Jamie Lawler, late sun as backlight, cool curly hair, fun freckles, etc. This image is STRAIGHT OUT THE CAMERA, with absolutely no tweaking except for re-sizing for the web:
Now, it’s ok, but could use a little clean-up and some pop. Camera data = 5D, 85mm 1.2 @ 2.0, 1/500 @ ISO 100.
And here’s the post processing info, and the resulting image:
– Slight under eye touch-up w/ patch tool
– Slight Levels adjustment to add some pop
– Pro Retouch @ 40% – (Totally Rad Actions)
– Yin/Yang – (Totally Rad Actions) – Lighten hair in front, darken background
– Magenta Remove @ 50% – (Kubota Production Tools) – A great tool for removing that slight magenta tint that sneaks in sometimes.
– KPD Magic Sharp – (Kubota Production Tools) – The best action on the planet!
It may look seem a lot of steps in processing, but it’s not. This type of thing takes about 4 minutes when I’m blog prepping. I left in all the little freckles and stray hairs because they are a part of what makes Jamie look like Jamie, and I don’t want to make her look like someone else! She looks awesome the way she is. Here’s the after:
Photo number 2 is of the talented Emily James. Again, here’s the STRAIGHT OUT OF CAMERA image:
This image was shot B/W in camera, and here are the specs: 5D, 85mm 1.2 @ 2.5, 1/320th, ISO 200
Second only to the “How do you sharpen your images?” question, the next most often asked question is, “How do you process your sepia shots?” Well, here’s how! I nearly always only do sepia conversions of images that I’ve shot B/W in camera. They just seem to look better to me. I don’t usually go B/W or sepia from a color image. (Unless a client requests it). I use a couple different sepia actions, (and are both fairly close in output), but this is the one I use the most. Here’s the post processing rundown, and resulting image:
– Slight under eye touch-up w/ patch tool
– Slight Levels adjustment to add some pop
– Chocolate Syrup 1 – 70% (Kubota Artistic Tools, Vol. 1) – I also remove the “snappy” layer after the action is finished.
– KPD Magic Sharp – (Kubota Production Tools)
That’s it!
A quick note – if you don’t yet own the Totally Rad Actions, they’re putting on a cool promotion right now where you can download some sample actions to try out before you buy. One you download the samples you’ll be entered to win a $500 Apple gift card! And, if you purchase the Totally Rad actions this week and enter the code “totallyrad5508″, you’ll save $20! How sweet is that?
I know this is only 2 images, but I’ll be doing more of these posts in the future, showing a lot more of the actions and techniques I like to use. Drop a note, and let me know if you find it useful.
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While most of the world was celebrating Cinco de Mayo on Monday, a few of my photographer friends joined me for lunch in Old Town to celebrate my own holiday, “May-Fiven” day. On May 5th of last year my friend Chad sent me an e-mail wishing me a happy “May-Fiven” day as a joke. The more I thought about it, the more I laughed, and said I would actually celebrate it 2008!
After settling in we chatted about the state of photograph in San Diego while sipping on some drinks and eating some awesome Mexican food. And, for the first time in weeks I remembered to bring my point-and-shoot camera!
Yummmm…
Melissa McClure peeking through a round of drinks:
And after the main course, this beast was delivered to the table. Unfortunately I didn’t leave enough room after gorging on my enchiladas.
I took several pictures of all of us, and this one was quirkiest of all. From left to right – Julia, Brandon, Melissa, David, and yours truly:
Thanks again for coming out guys. We’ll certainly do it again next year!
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