I’m soooo excited for this new year! A huge change for me this year is that I’ve started two new businesses. Both with my good friend and fellow photographer Ricky Mia.

The first company we started is called FotoCielo. Basically, we both have really successful and busy wedding photography businesses and we’re constantly having to turn brides away, so we decided we wanted to be able to serve more brides and with the creation of FotoCielo and our team of 4 awesome photographers we’ve been able to do this.

Secondly, we started Photo Booth Santa Barbara (sorry… just couldn’t come up with a more original name.) But really, this is a SUPER fun business/option for our couples.

We’ve seen a few photo booths here and there at weddings, but were never truly impressed with them. They were fun, but just didn’t give the same feel we remembered from our days growing up in the mall and hoping into a booth for a fun picture.

Well, we combined our passion for fun photo booths and came up with an AWESOME booth that you can fit a ton of people in and go nuts.

Check out this slideshow from our release of the photobooth at the Santa Barbara Bridal Expo this past weekend:

Definitely check out the site to see some photos of the booth! Seriously the coolest party/wedding favor that gives something to your guests and is an absolute blast!

WOW!!!

Seriously, WOW!!!

Cheryl and I drove down to Torrance a little over a week back now to photograph Josh and Michelle’s baby boy Milo. We shot their wedding last year in Palm Springs at the Vice Roy and had such a great time with them then, that we were biting at the bit to get some fun pictures of their little boy this year!!

Needless to say, we were chatting with them, and the subject of the iPod came up. We had just managed to lose our two-year-old iPod somehow and were trying to decide if we should jump and get one right away. They kept telling us how cool the iPod touch was, and how similar it is to the iPhone. (ALL of my wedding photographer buddies have iPhones and I’ve not fully caught onto the craze – until now!!)

Josh and Michele and Milo stoked us out sooooo much when out of the blue they got us an iPod touch!! It arrived at our doorstep the day after we did their portraits!

Having now played with the iPod touch I’m having a really really hard time holding back from wanting the iPhone. Basically the only difference is that the touch does not have 1)Mac Mail, 2)a phone, 3) a camera. Besides that, it’s basically an iPhone. It has wireless connectivity which is WAY awesome!!!

Now if I can just keep my money in my pocket until the second gen. iPhone comes out I should be pretty set!

THANK YOU Josh and Michelle and Milo!!!!!

Yep… I’ve been shooting the Holga pretty consistently recently at weddings and for fun. Being a mostly digital photographer, I’m not used to having to run to the lab and pick up film, so I remembered today that I had two rolls of film I needed to pick up!! (aww how I love digital and knowing exactly what I got right away! but at the same time, it’s nice every-once-in-a-while to have a surprise like today!!)

Here’s two pictures from Joe and Becka’s wedding:

And then I also had some pictures from Tim and Holly’s wedding!! (we’re also creating a sample album from their wedding right now!!)

Oh… and this was a special roll of film! I converted one of my Holga’s to shoot 35mm film!! (so instead of a square photo, I got a panoramic on 35mm – basically like 2-3 normal 35mm frames all together!!) I LOVE how they came out!! If you’d like directions on how to do this with your holga (I know you own one!!) click here.

I seriously really really like the whole panoramic look! We were watching Into the Wild last night at the theater (which if you’re like me and like epic adventures, this is a GREAT movie to watch!!) and I realized just how awesome things look in panoramic!! And the look of the holga in pano is just amazing!!

They left recently for a mission trip in Africa(for a year)!! Pretty darn awesome! (and it sounds like they’re in for a ton of adventures as well!!!)

I shot a few pictures of them with my Holga after they finished loading up their truck with all of their possessions. They drove across country to I think the easternish side of Texas with their stuff before fly out to Africa!