I met these two quite a few months ago!! Brigetta and Ben are probably one of the sweetest couples, and to top it off they really are beautiful!! As well as all of their friends!!!

I showed up tonight to take pictures at their rehearsal at their family’s property in Montecito, and wow… everywhere I turned, there was another beautiful person with a GREAT smile on their face!!! I seriously kept doing 360 degree turns with my camera up to my face just firing away!

A lot of my “mentor” photographer friends (those with many more years experience than me) often give me a really hard time because I shoot sooo many pictures! I probably average 3-4k in pictures per wedding these days. I then edit those down for my couple’s to about 600-1000 depending on the length of the wedding. My mentor’s tell me this is way too many pictures, but I’m always super excited, because I just can’t help but take a picture when someone is smiling, and at a wedding like tomorrow’s promises to be, I’ll be shooting a LOT of pictures! (I hope the couple doesn’t mind too many awesome pictures of them and their guests!) ;-)

I know… I posted up a picture of a huge smile 3 times!! But seriously, when do big beautiful smiles get old???

Wow… I’d be a pretty fit dude…

I think I’ve probably said it before… and I’ll for sure say it again!!! (just wait til I buy the Mark III!!)

Thanks to Jaime and Jeff (an AWESOME bride and groom who’s wedding I photographed in Mission Viejo earlier this year) I’ve fallen back in love with my Holga and have started taking more and more pictures on film again.

I’ve always been into cross processing film because of the crazy fun effects you can get, and so I’ve started playing once again with this!

Here are some quick shots I did as a test recently:

This is a post that probably most people won’t truly understand, only those other lucky “brookies” who spent time in classes like LP, LS and LT…

I’ve never gone to the art walk before (well, I’ve gone past it a million times, but never walked a section of it) But this past weekend Cheryl’s cousin was in town for some family portraits we did of his wife, baby and him.

So we’re walking along admiring all of the artwork. Some of it I “connect with” and some not so much. And then we hit this photographer’s set up:

Total Brooks assignments!!! Wish I’d thought of selling that stuff!!!

I love being inspired by other photographers, and I’ve found that entering print competitions only pushes me even more to do my very best and to constantly improve!

I’m very thankful to be a member of the local Professional Photographers of Santa Barbara County (PPSBC). This is such a great group with a real depth of wisdom, knowledge, experience and talent!

Tonight we had the Summer 2007 PPSBC Print Competition and I entered four of my most recent images to see what the judges would think of my work. Hearing their critiques and thoughts on how my images could improve really has my mind working and I’m super excited to shoot my next wedding this weekend and try some of these ideas!!!

The competition was SUPER tight. I was super excited when one of my prints was chosen by the judges for First Place in the Weddings/Events category. Quickly there-after they had to vote for best of show, where they grab the highest scoring prints from each category and pit them against each other for an overall Best of Show winner. Well, with two other categories represented: Portraits and Illustrative, there was some VERY stiff competition!

One of my former teachers from Brooks, Bill Robbins had an AWESOME and hilarious image of a man in a speedo standing next to a pelican on the beach in Baja. Seriously, when this print first came up EVERYONE watching let out a chuckle, talk about catching everyone’s attention!

Allyson Magda had a beautiful image of a young boy walking through a tunne. The little guy was in perfect silhouette against the whitewashed exit of the tunnel. A truly impactful image!

I think the judges debated back and forth for at least 5 minutes, and I’m pretty sure that every print on the rack at some point was the leader to be voted best of show. At one point they asked if they could just declare a tie, but the moderator said it wasn’t allowed. After a ton of debate, the judges voted by just a hair for my print:

You might recognize this picture from a wedding I JUST shot last week!!! This is from Eric and Nancy’s wedding on 7/7/07 in Ventura, CA.

*someone asked what I named the print… I’m TERRIBLE at naming prints… I mean, I’m real bad…. But, they require that you name the print, so… at the last second I named it “Glad about you.”