My good friend Mike shot his image of me shooting my bride from last week with all the bridesmaids looking on. I HATE my photo taken, but in this case I liked the image. Wish I had Mikes wife shooting the bridesmaids faces. I was in rear form as usual with the jokes and noises I make to get my clients to relax and just have some fun in front of me!

Nope, just kidding, I’ve been playing around with some software and seeing what I can come up with thats different, thats all. I really love Black and White photography so much more than color. It has always been more artistic to me and I get a totally different feeling from B&W. Thoughts anyone?

  Here are some variations of a pose I did really fast.   

Congratulations!

Bobby and Amber 

June 28, 2008 

The weather was wonderful this year out at Black Hawk Country Club in San Ramon, California. We had the beautiful Golf Angels again who can sell more raffle tickets than snow falling in Tahoe, these women are the biggest flirts, and I thought I was a big flirt?! Ha! Lots of golfing,  100′s of golfers from all over the SF Bay Area and lots of Super Bowl Champs from the Oakland Raiders too. The auction and tournament raised over $100K for the San Francisco Council of Boy Scouts of America. Not bad for a one day event where all you do is play golf, eat lunch and dinner, enjoy a silent auction, hang with ten superstar Super Bowl Champion athletes. Everyone who worked, volunteered and played had a blast. I can’t wait until next year!!

Location: Lake Natoma Inn  Folsom, California   More to come later! 

Mr. & Mrs. Erik Nickell 

Cutting More Than Cake: Wedding Party Becomes Melee

There are plenty of things that can go wrong at a wedding: torrential downpour, an inappropriate drunken toast by an old army buddy, the bride running away with Dustin Hoffman.

Usually, though, there isn’t much blood.

Not so over the weekend in Newburgh, NY, where a dispute over a camera at a wedding party turned into a 100-person melee which spilled into the parking lot outside of the Ramada Inn where it was being held. Two people were treated at a hospital afterward for stab wounds. Another man received treatment after being punched in the face.

Finally, 30 cops showed up to break up the fight. “It just kept going on and on,” said Town of Newburgh Police Sgt. Peter Talarico. “It was a wedding party gone bad.” Cops say they broke up over 30 individual fights among the party guests, and arrested six people at the end of the night.

We’ll be in beautiful downtown Folsom, California at Lake Natoma Inn. A big and beautiful venue overlooking the Folsom River makes this destination wedding site saught after by couples from all over the world.

After our evening wedding finishes up it back to the house and pack up all my gear for a 5:30am departure Monday to San Ramon, California for my annual Celebrity Golf Classic at Blackhawk Country Club put on by the SF Council of Boy Scouts of America. Pictures and stories to come, so visit back on Tuesday!

What most people don’t know about or understand is how many hours go into production and retouching of all of their images after a photo shoot. This wedding is a perfect example. I had a total of four hundred images after editing down from almost one thousand and every single image has to be retouched in some fashion such as color correction or full blown retouching with all sorts of effects to get a finished photograph. I started at 6am this morning and just finished up at 4pm this afternoon. That’s 10 hours of post production along with a 8 hour wedding day shoot plus travel, down loading all the images and the edit time. Total hours to get all the images edited, retouched, CD burned and Storybook preview album to deliver to my client so far has been…twenty six hours.

The next step, after my clients go through and select the images they would like in their Storybook album, is the design and creation time to create the entire layout of the finished album. This can be as much as a full week working each and everyday at the computer. Every page is custom designed by myself and after its all finished I create a web show for my clients viewing with music to see the finished album before it gets sent off and produced. Total time from start to finish is around Fifty Hours.

BEFORE

AFTER

 It was a beautiful day in the 80′s.  Fine food, Live Music, Great Friends and family and a wonderful day for my Bride Georgia and her new husband Adam. Their romantic hideaway wedding was held at the very beautiful Deer Crossing “Old West Hospitality Inn” in Castro Valley, California. Just recently “Playboy Magazine” did an entire photo shoot at this very private location that will be appearing in just a few months. Guest appearance by Classical Guitarist Jay Alvarez was another wonderful surprise as he performed for the ceremony and also throughout dinner.

The ceremony and dinner was held on the upper deck of the Inn, cocktails and Hors D’oeuvres on the second floor, with dancing held on the lower deck patio overlooking the grounds of this beautiful estate. Here are just a handful of images to give you a glimpse into their day!

I arrive at 5pm and am whisked off to a back room of this brand new beautiful HUGE home by my clients who forgot to inform me that the wedding I was about to shoot was a big surprise to all of their guests. So after sitting around for more than an hour it was time to spring into action! It was a blast and my Bride April was a hoot the entire time.  These two know how to entertain and have had parties in the past so this one had to top all the others and by having 50 of their closest friends and family made it the perfect time to finally tie the knot.