Formerly known as ChadRick Photography...

Well, I'm sure you've noticed that ChadRick Photography has changed it's name to Ricky Mia Photography. The "Rick" in ChadRick is me Ricky Mia and I'm here in Santa Barbara but the "Chad" in ChadRick has moved back to his hometown of St. Louis MO.

Life takes you in all sorts of directions and it brought Chad back to his stomping grounds. This was a sad day for ChadRick Photography. Chad is an incredibly gifted person, a great friend and a talented photographer and I wish him only the best in everything he does. He just recently launched Chad Jeffrey so check him out!

Since St. Louis is a few thousand miles away, we have become separate entities, hence Ricky Mia Photography and the new Chad Jeffrey! It only gets better from here!

Solomiya and Valeriy Goloborodko Wedding

We just shot a beautiful wedding here in Santa Barbara this past weekend. Both families are from the Ukraine and were so wonderful to be with. Here are a few favorites, the slideshow is still to come!

Students with Character

I've been doing some really great ad work with SBCOM lately. Here are some of the student faces of Santa Barbara College of Oriental Medicine!

Critical Error! This was a bummer!

Well, you always think to yourself, "it won't happen to me" but ... my hard drive crashed on my main computer! This was such a horrible experience! I back up my data especially my photography but there was that 20% that I kept telling myself to make sure and back up. Well, the computer went south and it's been a rocky road to recovery! I have to give kudos to my buddy Mike Murimoto for coming to my rescue at the drop of a hat. He spent many hours weeding through a corrupt drive to restore my files and he did a great job!

Now, I'm on the path of getting my systems up and running again. Things are almost back to normal now but what a pain in the !$$!@#%!#$! I'm master back up man now!

If you haven't been there yet, I've updated the slideshows on the site and Adrian and Gina's wedding is up and running!

Remember, make sure to BACKUP all of your work! I learned my lesson the hard way.

Take care!

Mia, Mia, Mia!

This little dog is the best! As you can see, she's got her favorite spots all over the house. When I'm working and it gets really quiet, I'm sure I can find her in one of many places. Here are a couple of them!

Kauai Hawaii - "secret beach"

Melissa and I went to Kauai for a much needed vacation. It was part vacation and part work though. Melissa, owner of Spa Defined just recently partnered up with Spas of America. She features Santa Barbara area spas and they have a wider scope covering the United States so it was a great fit. Anyway, she enjoyed the facilities and services while doing a review of the Grand Hyatt Anara Spa while we were there, bummer huh?

Kauai was so beautiful and a lot more lush than any of the other Hawaiian Islands I've been too. It's also much more peaceful and relaxing, really laid back. The beaches there are awesome especially one we went to. Kauai seems to be known for it's "secret beach." We finally found it and had to hike down the side of a cliff to get to it but it was worth it. I hiked around with all my camera gear on my back, I'm just stubborn that way! You can see in the pictures that we practically had the whole beach to ourselves! The water was warm and the beach was wide and clean. It was a great trip, oh yeah, check out that wicked spider we found! I used a macro lens to get that shot but when I was done, I didn't realize that my face was about an inch away from it!

Gina and Adrian's wedding

Gina and Adrian were married at Elings Park in Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful day and everyone was so much fun! There were some great t-shirts at the rehearsal and the best man actually had the rings under padlock attached to his belt! Just in case, the bride, groom and the maid of honor also had keys!