Before heading out to have some b-day fun, I took a few goofy shots at the house. It’s amazing to see just how big she’s getting. Here are a couple shots of the crazy birthday girl:

And a shot with her awesome Aunt Jenny!

We then headed out for some spaghetti for lunch, and as you can tell, she’s not shy when it come to chowin’ down!

We then headed out to a little Halloween fair and carnival for some fun on some rides. Another quick shot:

And lastly a shot of the best ride at the carnival - the jumpy thing! We waited in line for about an hour to get her on this thing, but it was well worth it. I was a little surprised at how high she was able to get in this thing:

I’m sure it’ll only be about a month before I’m posting pictures from her 8th birthday. Agh!

After a fierce battle, and nearly a hundred votes, my good friend Courtney is our 2008 winner with pumpkin #6! It’s pretty obvious that he chose that most difficult design, and it paid off. I’m pretty sure he complained about hand cramps most of that last half of the carving process.

I also want to give praise to my friend Megan for her scary McCain pumpkin, which came in second place by only 1 vote! For the first couple of days, my wife Jen’s pumpkin #4 (the hands) was in the lead. But a late surge by Courtney and Megan left everyone else in the dust.

My pumpkin this year sadly did not turn any heads. I carved the goofy “Patrick” pumpkin (#8). I thought it would get the “cute” vote, but was sadly mistaken. Next year I think I’ll have to carve a scale replica of my vascular system just to compete with Cort’s intricate designs.

Thank you very much to everyone who voted! We’ll certainly be doing it again next year for contest #3!

On Sunday evening Jennifer and I headed down to Chula Vista to the home of Pete and Jena to meet up with them and a few other friends for our 2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest! We had a blast doing this last year, and had enough fun again this year that it looks like we’re going to make it a tradition.

The best part about this contest is that I photograph all of the finished pumpkins and put them here on the blog so all my readers can vote for the winner. Last year I was stoked to be the winner (#3), and hope to repeat again this year. I obviously can’t say which pumpkin is mine, because that wouldn’t be fair. But I still have faith that I’ll continue to reign as carving champion. There’s no money or prizes involved, only bragging rights.

There are 10 awesome entries this year, and it’s not going to be an easy choice. You’ll find a voting poll at the bottom of the post. You can only vote once, for one pumpkin, so make it count! Voting will be open until midnight this Thursday, with the winner being crowned on Friday morning. One final note… the McCain pumpkin was chosen by it’s carver because it was the “scariest” of all the designs. I encourage all of you to vote, and then leave a comment as to why you chose that particular pumpkin.

I have reactivated most of the image galleries from 2008, and they now all have a 10% discount for all orders. This discount will be available through the end of the year. Please be aware that if you’d like to receive your orders in time for Christmas, you MUST submit them by December 5th. I will do my best to get them all shipped in time for the holidays, but cannot guarantee any orders after December 5th. To browse through a particular gallery, simply CLICK HERE to access the main page.

If you have any questions, or need to be reminded of a particular password, please feel free to contact me at anytime by sending an email to orders at ma5en dot com.

*** Holiday Portrait Sessions! ***

In lieu of the recent craziness on Wall Street, and the challenging economic times facing everyone in the coming months, I’ve decided to offer an amazing, low cost Holiday Portrait Package for 2008. This year I’m offering only one package, with everything you’ll need for your family portraits and holiday cards. For the insanely low price of $275, here’s what you’ll get:

– a 1 hour location portrait session here in San Diego
– a password protected on-line gallery containing of all your images
– a disc of all the out-of-camera hi-res images
– 25 - 5 X 7 folded linen holiday greeting cards with envelopes (utilizing your favorite image from our session)
– a digital retouched hi-res file of the image used in your holiday cards

All sessions must be booked in the next 2 weeks (by November 1st), and must be scheduled to take place by Sunday, November 23rd. If you have any questions, or would like to book a session, please send me an e-mail at masen at ma5en dot com.

I understand that because of the recent economic crisis, many families will be trying to save money over the holidays. I’m trying to do my part to help out those that would still like to have a beautiful snapshot of their family to send out to their loved ones this year. Also, if you’d like to use an image from a session from earlier this year, you can order holiday cards directly through your gallery!

Don’t wait too long to book your session. Just look what happened last year when my wife Jen and I waited too long to have our portraits taken, and had to go to the local photo hut in the mall:

Don’t let this be you!

After sitting down with Harry a couple of times to discuss the feeling, theme and vibe of the record, I came up with a idea of how to go about shooting the two of them. After listening to the record a couple of times, I noticed that it had a distinct and consistent tone and feeling of genuine happiness. This record is the furthest thing from the contemporary sad, angst filled records on the radio these days. I wanted to make sure that the “fun” and relaxed vibe of this record was well represented in the photographs. Harry agreed, saying that he and Nancy are in a very wonderful time in their lives, and that the record reflected that.

Along with graphic artist extraordinaire Rob Garbowski, we got together during the last hour of sunlight on Monday to let the two of them sit back and relax, play some music, laugh, and let me roll off a few shutter clicks. Also, I really wanted to achieve a look of over-saturated, flared-out-to-the-max, richly colored images. And while they’re not all in that exact theme, I’m happy with the results.

Here are just a couple of images from our session:

Flare overload! Love it!

Rob played a big part in setting up this awesome set of images on this beautiful white porch:

And one of my favorite images. I love the color and excessive flare. I also really dig that the guitar is in focus, and they are soft in the background. It’s incredibly warm, and subtly romantic.

I’ll be sure to post more images of the artwork as it get’s finished up in the coming weeks!

So, this is my first real attempt at “phone blogging”. Pretty cool! The phone app is very straight forward and simple to use. I love technology, and how it constantly makes it easier to stay connected!

Anyone else out there “phone blogging” yet?