Jo Jo's Salon - Cut-a-Thon Centerville, Ohio

After helping Jo Jo's Salon in Centerville, Ohio with their photography needs for their web site last year - I returned a little while back to cover the Cut-A-Thon benefit they had to raise money with Vanessa Pinto for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It was a fun day filled proceeds going to the campaign - and lots of fun stuff with a raffle, face painting and a ton of Pizza courtesy of Papa John's! Here's a bit of fun from the day...

Naperville, Illinois Family Sessions...

While being in Chicago for Ali & Kevin's Street Session, I also had some time to do a couple of family sessions in beautiful Naperville. Their Riverwalk area of course is a great place for photos - but really the whole town is loaded with great possibilities. I'll look forward to shooting there again sometime! Between getting some nice portraits and having some fun goofing off too - here's a few quick highlights from that morning...

Alison and Kevin - "Street Session" Chicago style...

I had a great time heading up to Chicago to do Ali & Kevin's Street Session! We mixed it up a bit by spending some time in Chicago's Oak Park neighborhood, and then heading downtown for a bit of fun in Millennium Park and riding the El. Here's a few highlights from their session....

2010 "Breathe Project" calendars are available!

The 2010 "Breathe Project - First Harvest" calendars are now available! These are beautiful, oversized calendars printed on heavyweight art paper. You can check them out at the Darrin Ballman Red Bubble site. Also be sure to learn more about "The Breathe Project". This "First Harvest" produced quite a variety of images from two dozen different sessions. Out of all of that came these twelve that were chosen for the calendar. Many more images can be viewed at The Breathe Project and more will be added over the coming weeks. Meanwhile...look for a "Second Harvest" of sessions to be scheduled sometime in the spring or summer of 2010. Who knows what direction that will take!

B'ginnings...part 1 - How it all started...

I get asked plenty of times how in the world I ever started in photography, and especially photographing weddings, so I figure I’ll give a little background over the coming weeks as we venture into winter. Of course, I started long before these digital days we have now, so things were definitely different for me, easier in my opinion, given the variety of things photographers are faced with deciding these days. Over time I’ll give my $.02 on getting started and maybe a little perspective as well.

Starting to shoot weddings was really a happy accident for me. By the summer of 1988, I had developed a serious interest in photography, and was looking at possibly going to photography school, something I would really not recommend today. I was living in Southern California, working in Ventura County at a very small one hour photo lab in Moorpark. Thanks to having free processing and printing of my film, I had been shooting quite a bit over the past months and was really comfortable with exposure and knew my camera inside and out. I can’t say I was very knowledgeable about how to go about starting a career in photography…but I did know three things for sure:

1. I loved taking photos of mountains, nature and all that kind of outdoor stuff.

2. I knew it was advertising and commercial product photography that might pay the bills.

3. I had no desire to work with people or do portraits because I was deathly shy.

(this is where you begin to sense some irony, huh?)

One day while at the photo lab…a woman, probably in her 50’s comes in and mentions she’s looking for someone (cheap) to photograph her and her husband renewing their vows and celebrate 25 years of marriage. They were doing a full ceremony and a reception with some family and friends. I told her I could probably do that…so I agreed to do so for $200. After all, my only expense was the film!

So far it sounds nice and simple, right?

Their ceremony was going to be at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Moorpark, and the reception was a simple gathering at what I believe was the City’s community center at the time. I did what reading up I could on the kinds of photos one may want to take at a wedding and felt pretty good about things. I really only had very “basic” info about the plans for the day…something I corrected fairly soon as I shot more weddings, and have since made it a specialty of mine to be well informed. More on that some other time though.

What I walked into was a little different though….first off was a bridal party that had a good 16 attendants or so…next was the fact that it was a “full” Catholic mass. I’m not Catholic…so the hour long ceremony and vows renewal had me wondering what was going on! Then there was the “some friends and family”…all 300 of them. While it was a perfect scenario for some newbie photographer like myself to freak out, everything actually went extremely well.

Just a month later I found myself at the photo lab once again, being asked if I knew someone (cheap) who could photograph her daughter’s wedding. Now that I was experienced and everything…another $200 and away we went on wedding #2!

This was going to be much simpler…smaller bridal party and under 100 guests…ceremony lakeside on a gazebo in a housing community in Chatsworth, and the reception at the clubhouse. It really was a much easier wedding…even though I began to wonder at first when the entire wedding party came walking down the street to meet me for their formals….all of them had cans of beer, and it was evident it wasn’t their first round…at 10am. Once we got past that though it was a breeze and I was kind of hooked.

I can’t say I as much enjoyed myself as much on those first couple weddings, as I just seemed to do well in a very high pressure situation. I came to realize eventually I had a knack for that, as well as working with people. Both of those realizations served me well in both the dozens of weddings I cranked out early on and the world of wine sales that I ended up living in during the week.

So much for never working with people, huh?

A lot has happened and been learned in the years since, now that there’s a few hundred weddings under my belt, and the transition was eventually made to digital and so many new considerations that come with it. Since then I have learned 3 new things….

1. I really don’t like nature photography…it (usually) bores me to take it and to look at it.

2. I suck at commercial and advertising types of product photography.

3. I love working with people and photographing them in a wide variety of styles and situations, and apparently seem to do a pretty decent job of it.

So there you go…literally the very beginning. What has come after that I’ll save for another time…

Wedding: Pam & Brian, Los Angeles, CA.

I had a great time these past couple of weeks, traveling out to Los Angeles to photograph Pam & Brian's wedding at Mountaingate Country Club...as well as staying in town to visit my daughters and enjoy Thanksgiving with family. More on that a little later though...first up here's a little peek at a few shots from the wedding! I went along for the whole day, starting out at the Mary Brambila Salon in Santa Monica, and then followed Pam cross town for make up as well. Their ceremony and reception was at the beautiful Mountaingate Country Club atop the Santa Monica Mountains. Along for the day also were Rob and Zack from ElmanAdam Films - check out their video sneak peek from Pam & Brian's day at the bottom of this blog! Special thanks also to Miguel Mayo for coming along and second shooting!

Pam didn't mind changing earrings thanks to Brian's surprise gift from Tiffany's... :)

We had a beautiful afternoon and evening with just a touch of the fall crispness in the air...

There weren't many times throughout the day when you didn't see the both of them smiling...that's for sure!

Well, ok...here's a couple... ;)

It was definitely a night of family and friends from around the country celebrating and focusing on enjoying the time together...

The Monday after the wedding we did their Street Session in Brentwood Village and out at Santa Monica Pier...all of it after dark!....a few more photos to come a little later on! Congratulations to the two of you!

Pam + Brian Brown Wedding Trailer from ElmanAdam on Vimeo.