By far the oddest request I’ve had for weddings this year was from this couple.

Cliff & Jjana: “Could you NOT shoot pictures at the ceremony?”

Me: “No pictures at the ceremo–…” THUD! I fall to the ground.

When I finally came to I was in a hospital and was told I’d been in a coma for 12 years. That’s weird… I must have traveled back in time during my coma.

But as much as I tried to convince the beautiful couple to let me take pictures during the ceremony, they insisted that as actors currently living in DC, they’d become too aware of themselves with a camera clicking away to be natural during the part of the wedding they didn’t want anyone to remember in any way but in their hearts.

I respect that. They knew what they wanted, they knew what they were giving up but felt that what they were gaining was greater.

Cliff & Jjana were an absolute dream to work with. Very laid back and the coolest personalities. And their guests were too (see?).

Hope you enjoy the photography and Happy Memorial Day!

I did a shoot of my boys recently. Thought I’d share :)

Here’s Mason:

And here’s Gabe:

Remember this from last year? On September 1st 2009, I took something similar… History repeats itself I suppose.

And then this.

Last weekend I shot a wedding. They had setup a bowl filled with heart-shaped stones and a sign that said simply this: “Take a little love with you when you leave.”

I didn’t want to help myself, but at the end of the evening, the mother of the bride kindly suggested that I do.

And tonight, as I flip the heart between my fingers, I can’t help but wonder how many feelings this little symbol can evoke in people.

The pessimist: A heart of stone
The optimist: A heart ready to bloom
The hopeless romantic: If I break it in half and leave it somewhere, maybe my true love will bring back the other half.

I’m embarrassed to say this, but I’m the hopeless romantic…

Which one are you?

Trying to be a bit creative with the title variations for weddings :)

It’s already been a month since this awesome couple was married in beautiful Las Vegas. How time flies!

Like I mentioned before, this wedding was so amazing it made it my first ever truly positive trip to Vegas. And what made it so? Essentially, this awesome couple, that’s what.

The New York New York hotel (I was right next to the roller coaster listening to people scream! hahaha!), the Loews hotel with crickets chirping at night as I overlooked Lake Las Vegas, the awesome guests, the touching ceremony, all the fun everyone had, the partying; everything stemmed from just these two.

John, Amy, if you guys are reading this, I can’t thank you enough for taking such great care of me during my stay, and more than anything, for allowing me to be part of the truly beautiful celebration of your union.

I’m working through Saturday’s wedding and I remember walking by and being momentarily blinded by sunlight. I stopped and looked but quickly realized that I liked the light, but nothing else.

So I shot it completely out of focus just to see what the light might tell me.

Right now as I look at it, for some reason, the following words come to mind:

“Light in its indiscernible form”

I think I should do more of this.

I had a roll of undeveloped film from back when I was in NYC, so I finished it on Wil & Ashley and my boys.

First, the really touching picture of Wil & Ashley:

The gorgeously simple Guggenheim museum:

A bridge in Central Park:

Back home, my oldest, Gabe:

And a little something different to finish off.

I hardly have any pictures of myself. I think that’s true of most photographers actually, and although I can’t speak for all of them, I know my share, myself included, who don’t like their appearance. Maybe that’s why we prefer to stay behind the camera. I know it’s the main reason for me.

Anyway… Enjoy a rare little glimpse of myself in pictures.

Mason took a shot of me with my Holga:

And yesterday evening at a wedding, a guest took my camera and decided I should be in this group picture. I wasn’t about to object to being surrounded by six beautiful women! What I wasn’t expecting however, was the girls deciding they’d pick me up!! Why OH WHY didn’t I just smile?!?!?!

This wedding was such a blast! I’ll be posting more of it soon (I still need to post the pictures from the Vegas wedding). At the end of the evening when the party stopped, the bride just said “You’re off the clock! You can go home if you want, but we’d love to have you stay and hang out with everyone.”

So I did :)

I ended up mingling with a whole bunch of cool people, playing a few exciting games of foosball and then finally calling it a night after being invited to take one of these beautiful stones home with me:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

I LOVE my job.

This is Alisha.

Actress, model and long-time friend of mine, she came to me with a request to shoot pictures of her acting crew. They’re all headed on a cruise to perform a play! How cool is that?!

I do have a question though… If the ship tilts significantly to one side or the other, is it customary to shift the performance in the opposite direction to keep people from getting motion sick?

Hmm…

Anyway, onto the headshots of all the beautiful/handsome people. Everyone except Alisha was getting the star treatment, because… Uh…

Because all the actors are playing actors in the play.

Most. Redundant. Sentence. EVAR!!

But so, all the actors needed headshots to print out and actually use during the play, so what it means is that they needed to be in character for their headshots.

Jeremy plays Hugh Lockwood, Veronica Vicious’s lackey husband.

Mary plays Glo Star, the desperately untalented actress trying to reach the top of the food chain.

Tony plays Brent, director and host of the awards show.

Tonia plays Ravishing B. Yuety, the up-and-coming ingenue.

Heidi plays Veronica Vicious, the talented but mean actress.

And Alisha plays Sally White, Veronica’s stalker…

And here’s a few of Sally White’s stalking exploits involving the highly irritable Veronica Vicious:

…never looked so sexy!

I’ve had this shoot in mind since late last year, so when I was finally in a position to do the concept a few weeks ago, I knew I had to have the best.

Enter two excellent women: Rachel Wixom (model) and Danielle Carlsen (makeup and hair).

Here are the results:

What is The Music Project? Well, it’s a simple concept of mine. Here we go:

The Music Project

Listening to great music, and I mean really great music, elicits an avalanche of powerful images in my head. So powerful in fact, that with the best of songs or melodies, I am completely paralyzed in my visual imagination run amuck. The whole world falls away and all I’m left with is what I see from what I’m listening to.

So one day, I decided to attempt releasing everything that remained a prisoner in my mind.

Because I want you to experience what I do.

I started digging through all the music I loved, asking myself the biggest question behind the concept for The Music Project:

“What do I see?”

This will be an ongoing project with new photography concepts for new songs. I won’t be posting the songs together with the images, or even the lyrics. Hopefully, if you enjoy my work enough, it’ll make you want to go out and buy albums and MP3s. Nothing would make me happier than to find out there’s a spike in sales for every song that inspires me to a shoot.

Let’s kick things off with Regina Spektor’s “Summer in the City”.

Many thanks to Shanda Palmer and Nick Hemsley for the amazing makeup and hair, respectively, and of course my good friend, the endlessly energetic and beautiful Dani Jae for modeling, even in a bar full of men who all wanted to buy her a drink. I was planning on buying her a drink for the shoot anyway, but a customer did it for me.

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