Sarah Grace Mia

So Sarah hired me to take some portraits of her for a school project of hers. She wanted something to show how she's into skateboarding now and that she also has a clothing style about her to show how STINKIN CUTE she is!

I charged her 20 kisses and 30 hugs per hour and she agreed. She's a tough negotiator! I thought I'd also cut her a deal since she's my niece and all.

Here are some proofs from the shoot!

Sarah took me in an arm wrestling match!

I just love these kids and since they came back to Santa Barbara, I just can't get over how big they are. They left for Europe almost 4 years ago and they were tiny! I now realize that I have to start working out because look at what happened when I challenged Sarah to an arm wrestling match!

Festival of Arts - Pageant of the Masters

Trisha and Ray Nash invited Karen, Bear and myself to dinner at their new place in Huntington Beach and to see the Pageant of the Masters last night!

I've never heard of it, but after last night, it's something I'll never forget. It was absolutely amazing! Famous works of art are re-created on a huge stage with real people! It's hard to visualize unless you see if for yourself. It was a beautiful night at the amphitheater in Laguna Beach where we sat through ninety minutes of "living art" as they say on the website. It occurs once a year and it's always a sold out event.

Thank you Trisha and Ray for treating us to such an amazing night! Afterwards we went out for some gelato and as you can see, we re-created our own work of art... well sorta. Here are some fun iphone pics!

Last night's Lunar Eclipse

So, on the way back from seeing the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, the moon was being eclipsed by the earth! It was way cool! I stopped along the way on my drive home last night to take these shots.

Trisha & Ray Nash's Wedding at the Santa Barbara Zoo

Here is a little slideshow for a couple that's larger than life! For a larger version, view it here.

Mira and Jeff's Wedding at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort

I had the pleasure of shooting with Michael and Anna Costa the other day! Michael and Anna are a very talented husband and wife photography team. I've known them for a while but never shot with them so when Anna called me up under the weather I was more than happy to come and help them out.

Mira and Jeff were married at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort up top on the rotunda. If you didn't know, there are fires burning here close to Santa Barbara and the winds were blowing the smoke clouds over the city that day giving us beautiful orange hued sunsets and awful ash blowing in the air.

Despite the smoke and ash everything was beautiful. They had the cutest Dr. Seuss themed wedding as seen in the invitations, table settings, seating cards and even the cake! Their day was elegant, intimate and beautiful.

Here are some favs from their day! Elysium productions did an awesome job on their videography and you can see it here.

Carballo Boys

I had the honor of shooting 3 boys the other weekend. Chelsea is from Michigan and was one of my brides' best friends and bridesmaid at her wedding a few weeks ago. She was in town for the past 2 weeks and we shot a portrait session for her boys at the beach. These kids were a ton of fun!

Here are some favs from the shoot.

..... Enter..... David Baxter!

So, I was honored to have David Baxter from Oklahoma City fly into town to visit/work for the weekend. He didn't realize He, Karen, Bear and myself were shooting a large beautiful wedding that required him to not sleep the whole weekend and to not sit either!

We all got together and stayed in a hotel close to the wedding and the first two pictures were taken at around 4am! We were hard at work, see the 2 laptops and the coffee cup? It was so great to have him in town and we had a blast shooting the wedding and it was a weekend none of us is going to forget for a long time!

During the wedding, I was looking around for my backup shooter and what do I see!?! The Baxter up in the balcony with a phone in his hand instead of his cameras! hahaha I had to take a picture of him for evidence sake, too funny. I was informed later that he was texting Karen for some assistance up in the balcony. (Yeah Right!)

I had the ultimate "A" team with me for this wedding as you can see in the last picture. Baxter is on the left shooting the crowd, Karen is on the right shooting wide, I'm behind the bride shooting tight and Bear is sitting down for the first time in 24 hours in the back! It makes the biggest difference in the world to work with real professionals and that's not a joke. I don't know what I would've done without them!

Poker night at David Jay's new pad!

I played poker last night at David Jay's new house here in Santa Barbara up in the Riviera. He just moved into his new place and it's really pretty amazing. Chris and Katie Humphreys, Tim and Cheryl Halberg, Forest and Raya Carlisle, Jessica Claire, Keats Elliott, Brett Austin, Amy Nave, and Gary Fong were all there.

We had a ton of fun playing poker and then we all sat around the hot tub talking it up! Tim and I made it to the final round but we had the choice of beating up the pot, or sitting at the pool smoking cigars and needless to say, the cigars won!

We sat at a poker table with one spotlight on us and one of the most amazing views of Santa Barbara I've seen. Basically, we were at the hi-rollers table in the penthouse suite at the Jay Casino in Santa Barbara!

I had the help of Jessica Claire's iphone on most of these pictures.


DJ and Brett

Katie "pretending" she doesn't know how to play :)

Brett showing off his card shuffling skills.

And of course... Poker Face Tim!