Post production work takes hours and hours after a wedding. Clients never see our RAW images, but if they did they would then realize how NOT easy it is to go through almost a thousand or more photos, one by one retouching and color correcting them all. Here are only a couple of examples. I used Photoshop CS2, Kodak Digital Science, Kubuto tools and Panorama Power consul for the effects and retouching. This wedding on 11-18-06 took 2 days working a total of 19 hours to get our final look we wanted.

Katie and Levi  /11-18-06 / Arden Hills Country Club / 300 Guests

What do you do when you have a wedding with over a thousand images and its a holiday? Well you work on Post production all day on Thanksgiving!  Lets see now, I started at 5am this morning and am finishing up at 9:40pm. Did all my retouching, color corrections, special effects and a web show…pew!  I miss the old days of film, it was so much easier then, but digital makes you a computer geek and an artist. Its lots of fun, and the back breaking work is worth seeing the finished product and the clients reactions.

Enough talk already from me…here is the web show created from my November 18th wedding that Mark Lydell assisted me on.

CLICK HERE:  ARDEN HILLS COUNTRY CLUB 

This was a well executed and planned out wedding, to sum it up… A CLASS ACT! I mean the decorations, music,slide show, food, it all was spectacular! These two families really worked hard on getting all the right people to bring this event together and make it the huge success. Planning…it always pays off folks!

Enjoy the show,

Randy

May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Remember to pray for our troops overseas and also for protection for our country daily.

Well it was one of those beautiful nights, the stars were out the weather was a cool 68 degrees and our Bride and her Bridesmaids were a hour and fifteen minutes late to the church. So what to do, what to do? Well, after I rushed to get there at 3pm for a 3:15 shoot, we shot some of the church surroundings, the set up and decorating going on and then we just S.A.W. which means, we just SIT AND WAIT.

At 4:35pm the limo pulls up and 8 women, 2 flower girls and our Bride step out to the waiting room at the church to get organized, check their flowers and then the fun begins. I only have 20 minutes to shoot all the images of the Girls and the bride with her parents. Well, with this group of gals it all came together and we did it, not all perfect mind you, but I shot most of the photos I needed for their Storybook album design.

I don’t think I ever moved that fast before, we were loosing light and it was getting very dark out and the Limo had to return to the hotel to pick up the guys and it was 5pm already. They were all to be there seating people by then. At 5:10pm the limo is back with the Groom and his men, some just a little bit tipsy from celebrating a little too early. So its off like a race horse with the church coordinator to start to pin their flowers on, get a few shots of the groom, and I mean just a few, then its show time at 5:40pm. I’ll try to have a web show up in a couple of days. This was a beautiful wedding and every guest was treated to all sorts of surprises at the reception. The attention to detail from the music, the decorations and the food was excellent. The reception was held at Sacramento’s elite Arden Hills Country Club . More to come so check back in a few days!

Yippie ya-hey and away we go!

This Saturday’s wedding is going to be a lot of fun. The wedding party, all Twenty two of them and Katie and Levi in Sacramento, California. I’ve been waiting nine months to shoot their wedding and its all going to be worth the wait. These two are so cute and so much fun to photograph, they let me create rather than pose, they are a photographers dream. Allowing me to just think up unique out of the air ideas for photos and then they are like shooting professional actors, they know how to mug for the camera!

I spent the last few hours with my friends and fellow photographers Mark and Kerry Lydell this afternoon scoping out the Church and the reception site (Arden Hills Country Club) who are going to assist and help me cover all the bases for this event. With three hundred guests and some very large families, it was a good idea to bring in some other pros to help out. I’ll have some photos and a web show up by Sunday morning for Ya’ all to check out.

I was just notified today that I’ll be photographing a very special event in San Francisco on Dec. 3rd for the Achieve Program. The two VIP guests for the day will be Ronnie Lott and Willie Mays. Talk about your big time ball players! Both will pose for photos with some of the programs brightest achievers.

As a year-round program, Achieve provides students with extensive academic support, mentoring, summer internships, cultural and community service activities. It is our ultimate goal that all achieve students go on to college, graduate, and become successful citizens who will give back to their communities.

In 1986, Willie Mays returned to the San Francisco Giants organization, where he serves as special assistant to the president of the club. In 1993 the Giants made this a lifetime appointment. His position in the history of his sport will last even longer. In baseball, Willie Mays is one of the immortals.

Ronnie Lott

A complete player, he surpassed the 1,000-career tackle mark in 1993, and had five seasons of at least 100 tackles. In his ten seasons with the 49ers, San Francisco won eight NFC Western Division titles and four Super Bowls. In 20 playoff contests (all starts), he recorded nine interceptions, 89 tackles, one forced fumble, one fumble recovery, and two touchdowns.

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What to do? What to do? Oh well, its time to pull out the canvas backdrop and light the lights!

Three adults and three kids all at 9:15AM and they were not to happy to see me or to have their photos taken so early in the morning, but that’s what Mom wanted and she had to get these now or never. Grandma lives out of State, her oldest son needed to drive back to Reno with  her Grandchild afterwards, and this was the only moment they were all together before any big holiday hit. So here I am with 5 out of six people who could care less about smiling in the morning for photos.

Thank goodness for my 15 years as a professional clown, magician and stand up comedian. It took me just a few moments to get rolling, then even the 2 year old was mugging for the camera and smiling.

You have to be on, ready to fire off your camera very quickly with little ones and even some adults. Grandma looked like she didn’t want to be there at all.  I was speaking to her about pictures. I asked her if she was like me? If she didn’t like her photo taken. Yep, she was the same and we both laughed, except I was firing off three frames a second to capture her! HA! HA! GOTCHA! The same with the kids and the 22 year old son, I had to think fast and tell some type of joke. Hmmm. I got it.. FART JOKES! I’m sorry folks, but these are hard times and I needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat and the fart jokes did it!

I shot for an hour, had 73 exposers taken and 32 came out well with all good expressions. I had them all retouched and ready for the web by noon for her to view using David Jays “Show It” slide show software. The response was somewhat like this…”Oh my God, these are all beautiful, you even got my Mother to smile, she never smiles!”   My response was… Thank you..Thank You very much…

Here are a few images from this mornings shoot.

 I was hired a couple of months ago to photograph a private party at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco honoring George P. Schultz in December.

For those of you who do not remember who he is, here is a short bio.

George P. Shultz

Oh my oh my oh my…….
Randy, we are both speechless!  Absolutely beautiful, made us even more excited for the wedding.  Once again there are not enough words to express our thanks and joy for your work.
You are amazing!
Erin & Chris….oh and my mom too!

Erin Horning, PT, DPT

You might recognize my couple here. This is Chris and Erin who we shot in Las Vegas last month. I wanted to also do a test shoot for them at their wedding venue just to see how some of the locations would turn out and also I thought it would be fun to have a few of the same poses on their wedding day so when I created their web and DVD show I could morph from the engagement shot to the wedding shot..how cool that’s going to be.

Sometimes you just have to go that extra mile for a client, and with these two, who have been so much fun to work with, its been a blast. I created these at 3pm on Sunday, edited and retouched all images and uploaded for clients by 6pm the same day. I love to get reactions from clients right away, just like the one above she emailed me after seeing their photos! These type of shoots and fast turn arounds have my clients raving about me to others. That’s what I need and want and desire to stay way ahead of my competition. Thanks Erin!!

The Location: Catta Verdera Country Club  Lincoln, California Camera: Nikon D2X w/28-70mm  Photoshop CS:  Kubota actions used

This mini engagement test shoot took all of 12 minutes with over 70 images created, edited down to 32 finished images for my clients.

Here is a mini slideshow of more of the same: Catta Verdera Country Club