Yeah, 5 wedding photographers, only one who professed to have any talent at capturing nature, and that one was not me.

I consider myself to be a pretty bad nature photographer. My strength is definitely people and wedding photography.

But, just to prove that I was in Death Valley last week taking pictures with my buddies Colin Michael, Jason Groupp, TJ Cameron and John Griffin, here are some photos from the trip:

I could NEVER been a cop. I just couldn’t ticket people for speeding. How can you pull over one person, when the person in front of them was going the same speed. And then, how as a cop would you like to spend your day sitting with two other cops on the side of the road in one spot waving people down…. what a boring day for them. (and good thing for me I’m a PRO at fighting tickets)

Thanks to my buddy Tim Meyer I’ve had a chance to play around a bit lately with a beautiful Hasselblad CM camera with one insane 50mm Zeiss lens!! It’s quite heavenly!

And, thanks to my buddies Ryan Becker and Cody Duncan, I have some pretty old film to experiment with in the beautiful camera! (We’re talking film that expired as long ago as 1981! And that’s OLD film to be messing with as you’ll see in some of these pictures)

I shot a few rolls of this old film on a Valentines/wine tasting trip for Cheryl up to Cayucos/Hoppe’s Restaurant with our friends Kenny and Ander Hyder. I wanted to try a few rolls out in preparation for a photo trip I’m taking this week out to Death Valley with a couple of photographer buddy’s of mine. Should be fun!

When Cody gave me the oldest of this film he warned me that it was old… that the film backing will probably have exposed into the film. I didn’t exactly know what that would look like, but hoped it would be a nice added affect. Well, I think it worked out AWESOME!!!

A different angle and some sepia

It looks like it was shot in the 80’s because the film expired in the 80’s!!!!

The ladies

80’s film and my high-fashion wife!

Kenny and Ander in black and white along with some film backing!

Kenny and the Barn

From a past photo fieldtrip with Kenny – cross processed E6 – as C41

I shot a lot of pictures holding my camera over my head at weddings to get the right angle. Well, Kenny is taller than me, and I wanted to frame the shot he was getting using his arms… but I did it with a Hassie without looking! Pre-focus, point and shoot from over my head! NICE

While wine tasting in Paso Robles we got a quick tour from the wine maker at Halter Ranch Winery of one of California’s oldest Oak trees, estimated at 300-600 years old. (don’t ask me why such a wide range…)

I felt like I was shooting an album cover, but totally not! lol (yeah… I’m weird)

The parting shot: more film backing, and some SICK trees on the back-road from Cayucos to Paso Robles.

On Tuesday night we had the monthly Professional Photographers of Santa Barbara County meeting/February Print Comp.

It was a ton of fun and there were some really awesome images! We had a great turn-out and it was exciting to see everyone’s pictures.

I entered one picture this time. It is of Jennifer Roberts from her wedding in Camarillo. This photo took first place in the weddings category:

Some of these photographs are from weddings, some are from our anniversary when we went to Mexico, and some are from when I’ve gone out recently to shoot for fun.

(I would love to know what you guys think about the size of the pictures right now. I made it so I could post bigger pictures, but are they too big now?)

First, this is the sickest happy accident I’ve gotten in a while, and I didn’t even realize how cool it was until I looked really close. I was going to enter it in a print comp tomorrow, but realized I don’t have a big enough scan of it!!

Edit: for those who can’t see it, look just above the couple’s head and you can see a faint image of them kissing – this is a double exposure on the same piece of film. – end edit.

April at her wedding at the Madrona Manor:

For our anniversary in November we took a trip down to Baja with our friends Austin and Dara and took a little side trip to La Bufadora.

This cat snagged our picture with his polaroid camera. Hopefully he’s stocking up on film right now seeing as Polaroid just announced that they’re going to stop making his film. :-(

Sunrise at Rincon on “Big Wednesday” December 5, 2007. The sunrise was truly amazing (I only maybe see the sunrise like 4 times a year)

From my sister, talking about my 4-year-old niece. Sooooooo cute, and absolutely hilarious!

“My daughter and I were eating lunch today, and she asked why we can’t get a cat.

I told her I’m allergic, and she asked why – I told her my mommy is allergic and her mommy is allergic.

She said “You were born that way?” and I said yes.

Then she asked if she was born that way, and I said apparently not.

Then she asked “Where do babies get born out of? The tummy?” She’s so smart.

I’ve known she’d ask this sooner rather than later, so I was prepared! I told her no, they come out down here (and I made a motion of a baby coming out) and she said “Your privates?” and I said yes.

Not startled at all, she continued… “Why don’t boys have babies?” I told her that they don’t have a uterus, but women do – and the baby is in the uterus.

And then she asked if we have eggs. I told her we do, but not hard ones with shells. She looked perplexed and then asked why the cheese was warm in her grilled cheese sandwich.

Oh boy! I just hope she doesn’t ask HOW babies are made! I haven’t come up with a good answer for that one yet!”

Seriously… I was dying laughing when I heard this!!! sooo funny! I LOVE kids!

And in my new effort to not post without a picture…. I LOVE out of focus pictures… I actually had one of my buddies come to my wedding and snap pictures ENTIRELY out of focus and blurry!: