Vanesza and Ryan's Wedding

Vanesza and Ryan's wedding was this past weekend. One thing special about shooting this wedding was that I had the honor of shooting with my good friend Karen. We had a great day on the beach in Goleta.

Vanesza and Ryan had a beautiful, intimate wedding on the beach with close friends and family. There was a sitar, drums and the tiniest little drum playing before the wedding. I couldn't believe that I could actually hear that little heart drum! After the ceremony there was a butterfly release. I think they were a little bit shocked by how cool it was because I thought they were going to fly away quickly but it took a little while for them to warm up and they really enjoyed hanging out on the bouquets.

One butterfly flew around Vanesza and Ryan and finally wound up on her flowers. I'm not sure Ryan knew what to think of the butterfly by the look on his face! They are an incredible couple that has been together for more than 9 years. At the end of the ceremony, there was a beautiful tribute to their new baby that's due in a couple months.

Here are a few pictures from their day.

Santa Barbara Museum Nights!

The Santa Barbara Museum holds what are probably the most popular summer events of the year. Nights - art, music, martinis. The name of the event says it all.

The museum opens it's doors to ticket holders for them to enjoy amazing art, entertainment and drinks. The first event for this summer was pretty amazing. There was an outdoor stage with Metropolis DJ Jason Bentley from KRCW and VJ Brian Szymanski taking care of the music and visual effects. Tribal Drummers Lindsay and Steve Campbell and fire dancers Aniya Cullen and Romi Cumes kept all of the guests jammin to the beats and watching the fire dancing in amazement. There was even a woman swinging from a trapeze attached to the stage!

1500 tickets were sold out in 30 minutes! The museum uses all of the funds raised at the Nights events to support the Museum's education programs that serve over 40,000 people through 40 different programs every year.

Here are a few pictures from the event and you can view the slideshow here.

Stephanie and KJ's Engagement Session

I work in such an incredible industry of professionals that it's an honor to work with any of them. My good friend, Eric Richards of Z Videography recently took me on board to shoot Stephanie and KJ's wedding in September. I had the pleasure of shooting their engagement session here in Santa Barbara this past weekend.

I was so bummed when I picked up the phone and it was Stephanie telling me that they might not be able to make it. KJ hurt his back the morning of the shoot but he's such a trooper and they came up and he muscled through it. Actually, the only thing that gave him a hard time during the shoot was when he was rolling around on the floor with my dog Mia!

These two were the sweetest couple and they were such a pleasure to work with. We had a great day starting out downtown at Nordstrom's (that's another story! haha) and wound up touring through Santa Barbara running around the Paseo Neuvo mall, the Santa Barbara Mission, Shoreline Park and the beach.

Here are just a few pictures from our shoot. View their slide show here.

Hilarious first dance!

I just came across this and had to share!

Arroyo Burro Beach, Santa Barbara

This past Friday I had some great friends come up from Glendale, Karen and Craig and we took little Mia to the beach. It was such a beautiful day and the beach we went to is the ultimate dog beach so there were dogs everywhere! It's one of the few places that dogs can just run free.

There were hang glider dudes and crazy para sailers floating around all over the place. I got a shot of an awesome hawk but didn't notice that he had a field mouse in his talons until I got my pictures on the computer, pretty cool.

Mia had the best time and we had the best time watching her go nuts! She's a mini Australian Sheppard so she has that herding gene in her. She loves trying to herd everything. You can see in a couple pictures where she saw an egret off in the distance so she started to stalk her and then went full throttle after it. Well... she went after the Egret and then realized she ran into some pretty deep water. When she stopped running I saw her little head go underwater and I freaked out! I was about to toss my camera (at Craig of course) and jump in after her but she realized it was deep and swam her way out. I was actually proud of her!

Anyway, she loves playing with all the dogs except for this one Hell Hound that chased her away at first but then she went right back over there and it was all good. Check out that picture of the Hell Hound that looks like he's going to eat poor Mia.. look at the fear in her face! haha

Beautiful little Abigail Grace Gaston

I had the honor of shooting my good friends Dan and Kara's little baby girl Abigail the other day. She's too cute! Here are a few shots of the little jumping bean!

OSP BBQ Showdown

What started out as a simple get together to work on a new computer, turned into a BBQ rib cook-off and a model shoot! A bunch of photographers from OSP came over for some good food, good company and a model shoot here in Santa Barbara.

Karen and Craig came up from Glendale and she brought with her some of the best pasta salad I've ever had, 5lbs of it and enough of her special pumpkin chiffon pie to feed a high school! We also cooked 6 racks of ribs! I'm not going to say that there was a winner because ALL of it was excellent!

My good friends Kashina and Andre volunteered to be our models and they were the best! We were super lucky because it had been raining for days except..... during our cook-out and model shoot! We put together shoots like this to learn, share info and basically have fun. We ran around Santa Barbara having the best time. Karen, Craig, Alvin (Raquel, wife and Vivian, the cutest little baby girl!), Carlo, Dia and myself chased them around like crazy paparazzi! At one point, we stopped in at a Starbucks to warm up with some coffee. You couldn't miss us shooting so everyone passing by wanted to get a look at the "famous" people we were shooting! It was hilarious. Everyone had a different story to tell. I know I told a couple people I was shooting for People magazine and then I told some others I was shooting for a new reality show! I told the truth most of the time but it was way too much fun to make stuff up!

Here's our massive BBQ layout!




Alvin and Raquel's little daughter Vivian was the cutest little thing.




Here are some pictures from the engagement session shoot with Kashina and Andre.

Poor Karen had many obstacles to overcome during her shoot as you can see in the picture below!