Our good friends, Jon-Ryan and Christy Schlobohm, adopted Ethiopian twins last year – Moses and Elsabet. It’s always fun to take pictures of friends, and even more so when they have a brand new family.

JR and Christy waited so long for these guys to come home… I can’t wait to see who they become as they get older!

For more pictures check out their slideshow as well

- Cheryl

I am so excited to be a part of the Thirst Relief International Mentor Auction this year to help raise money and bring clean drinking water to people around the world.

Nearly 2 million people die each year due to waterborne-related disease (90% of which are children under the age of 5) This is a staggeringly scary number, and we want to do anything we can to help fix such an easy to fix problem. Thirst Relief has come up with an AWESOME system for helping people get clean drinking water, a filtration system that flat out works. Definitely check out their website for more info.

The auction only has about 7 hours to go, so go to the auction page on ebay and bid asap!

The mentor session is set to take place in March at WPPI in Las Vegas. If for some reason you can’t make it to WPPI, I’m happy to host at my place in Santa Barbara in the next year, or over the phone, whatever works for you.

This mentoring session is wide open, if you need an hour or you need 2-4 hours, if you win the auction, my brain is yours for all the info I can provide. Let’s grab some food, a drink, a cigar, a comfy chair and dig in and see how I can help you move forward with your photography business.

Click here to bid now.

A while back, Tim and I offered a free portrait session to any family who lost their home and/or photos in the Santa Barbara Tea Fire. We really wanted to give back to people who lost everything and the best way we knew how was with our photography.

The Martinich’s were one of those families and although we can never replace the pictures they lost, we were stoked to get them some new ones to display. Here are my favorite images from their session.

Also be sure to check out their slideshow

By the way, our offer still stands… anyone who lost their home/pictures in the Tea Fire or the Jesusita Fire, we would be honored to take your family pictures for free.

Matt and Wendy were married at the Resort at Squaw Creek in Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe. With a little bit of weather the day before, the sun popped out just in time for their wedding, lighting the valley behind their ceremony beautifully.

You can see their entire Squaw Valley wedding slideshow here.

What better way to spend a Saturday in Santa Barbara with Cheryl than a hike, some yummy wine and cheese and then finished off with a bit of shopping then a movie on the couch at home!!

Via my iPhone

We’re quickly approaching the big day, the first of several Business, Marketing and SEO workshops for wedding professionals will be taking place on January 23 in Santa Monica!

Seats have been steadily filling up, if you want to book your seats before the price goes up, try and get signed up before this weekend hits.

Kenny and I have been going over the program and I’m amped for the things I’m learning about seo just from talking about what we’re going to talk about… I can’t wait to actually hear his presentation! (there’s always something new I learn from Kenny, he’s a HUGE wealth of knowledge in this department) Since announcing the workshop we’ve been putting some effort into getting our website ranking for “destination wedding photographer” with google, and we’ve made some AWESOME progress, from never having ranked for the term before, quickly to the middle of page two, and now on most people’s search results we’ve made it onto page 1!! (something new I’ve been learning from Kenny, depending on where you’re located and how often you search a specific phrase, your search results can be skewed, and the results take a little while to update to servers located in different parts of the country/world) wild stuff!

Can’t wait to see you at the workshop!