One of the hilarious hazards of on-location photo shoots, even though they’re much more fun, is the phenomenon commonly known as “Photobombing.” This happens much more often than you’d think. Strangers, upon observing a shoot, sometimes jump into photos – sometimes on purpose, but often quite by accident. The results are pretty funny. I think I’ll try to post a blooper section every now and again, if I remember to save them. Thanks to Chuks & Kelechi, Arthur & Chereece and Lee & Rolake for this set of bloopers.

Ah, IB & Mike. These two have got to be the most laid back (and by laid back, I mean silliest) couple I’ve shot in a while. IB is my cousin, and I’ve been watching Mike fumble around for quite a while now, so I was delighted when they told me it was Go Time. IB has always had her eye on this phone booth for her engagement pictures, even well before she got engaged! It took some doing, including talking to the owners of the phone booth, and power tools. Don’t ask. Worth it though! I’ll be posting images from the wedding shortly, so check those out too, soon.

So… I’m a member of the Flickr group Assignment: Houston. I use the term member quite loosely, because I show up at assignments roughly twice a year. I feel like I’ve sold out to The Man, ‘cos most of the images I create nowadays are paid client commissions. I really miss just going out to shoot stuff for me – even though I *love* the images I create at weddings, it’s always nice to go out and just shoot whatever I want however I want (wait – how is that different from what I do now? lol!). I managed to make it to a pretty early morning meetup at the Wabash Feed Store downtown and it was great fun to just be unleashed creatively and shoot with a bunch of other photographers and see what we all got, and what we all missed. It’s actually a great learning experience, to see through your own eyes and then a bunch of other people’s as well. This shoot was actually a couple of months ago, but what triggered my memory was a bag of Lorna Doone cookies I just opened, and I remembered the Here’s how I saw things…

Last weekend, I shot a wedding out on South Padre Island – but my hotel was in Corpus Christi. After the wedding, I stumbled in to my room at around 1:30am, and I didn’t finish copying and backing up cards until a little after 3 am. I then managed to drag myself out to the marina right across from the hotel at around 6:00am to catch the sunrise. It was so beautiful and peaceful… I even got to hang out on a park bench and chat with my dad on the phone in the wee hours. Definitely worth the sleep deprivation.

I’ve been away from my blog for quite a while now and I’m going to try to post more often. Now that I’m back at it, it’s only fitting that I post about something near and dear to my heart – food! I shot a three day wedding in Dallas recently and my amazing clients K&D picked up the tab for my stay at the W hotel downtown. This was not such a good idea, because my favorite restaurant in the whole world is in that hotel! Craft – Dallas. For a foodie like me this is like dying and going to heaven. I got to eat brunch, breakfast, lunch and dinner there for 4 days. I tried not to repeat a meal so I really went through their menu. One of the most amazing things I had there, which was a first for me, was the Pork Belly. Amazing. I got to sneak in a few images of the restaurant on a couple of trips. Enjoy! And watch for more posts coming soon.

I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of months – I was invited to beta test the latest incarnation of Adobe’s ubiquitous Photoshop. I started using Photoshop back in version 2, when there were no layers and pretty much everything worth doing required an intimate knowledge of layers or later on, Kai’s Power Tools and other great plugins. I wish I could say I was selected to test CS5 because of some fantastic quality of mine, but I think I just won a crapshoot! It’s been a great experience, except for the constant downloading of new builds and retesting reported bugs to make sure they’re gone. I’ve done quite a lot of work using it lately, and it’s always been rock solid and only a little quirky at the beginning. Below is a quick before and after of a wooded area I shot recently – I used a few familiar tools as well as a couple of brand new groundbreaking tools, which I cannot name, confirm or deny (Seriously! It’s in the contract!)

Basically, there isn’t anything that couldn’t be done with an older version, but now I can do these things SIGNIFICANTLY faster, more efficiently and more accurately than ever before. It’s pretty amazing! I think it’s definitely worth the upgrade. Less time editing = more time shooting – yay!.

Whoo! What a game! We had a little superbowl party here, and it was so much fun. Admittedly, I’m not as into the game as the average guy so I spent some of the time playing around and shooting some of the guests. My favorite subject was a supercute 8 month old called Christian. She was such a delight, and smiled and cooed most of the evening as she sat in all our laps at some point or another. Here are a couple portraits I made of her at the party.

I’m so so so excited right now! A couple of months ago, I decided to experiment with album cover materials, and I went to a few unorthodox places and ordered different materials – a plastics company, a glasscutter and a couple of others – and I had my favorite album company – Albums Innova – help to bind them into covers for my new sample books. The results completely blew me (and everyone who has seen them) away! Well, as I type this, B&G – whose wedding I shot a couple of months ago, are on their way into Houston from Dallas for the weekend and they’re stopping by. They have no idea I’ve made this kickass sample with images from their wedding, and I can’t wait to show them! They’re also my first clients to let me pick the images for their album and run with the design, which is the model I’m working towards using from now on. Check out a few images of this new sample book!

I’m all excited, because today I finalized my new business card design. The fancy new paper is on it’s way, and everything is a go. I think i’m going to try to shoot the process of making my new cards, and I’ll post that too. One of my favorites is called Attack Duck – you can’t miss it. It’s so very interesting having this whole array of old cards – it’s so cool when a new prospect comes in clutching a 3 year old card. And I know it’s an old one because I keep changing them.

In the meantime, check out my past in business cards I’ll post the new ones in a separate post as soon as they’re ready.

I totally ripped this blog post idea off a friend a few minutes ago – I thought it was brilliant, and I couldn’t resist. I did however (as you can see) resist cleaning and staging my desk – I just shot it as it was. On there are my monitors, keyboard, mouse, tablet, Powermate, NuLooq (I love toys!), Y’s new Leapfrog Didji thingie I’m trying to set up for her, and a case for it, my watch, keys, wallet, some CF cards, card readers, notes on an ongoing project, stickies to remind me what I need to do today (didn’t remember to actually read them!) an old hard drive, a new hard drive, $3, a Pocketwizard thingie, Altoids, 2 different kinds of lip balm, hand cream, wrist rest, White House Custom Color sale sheet, floss and a set of coasters I never use. The only thing that’s missing is a stack of unopened mail and receipts, because I have vowed not to let that pile up any more.

This was a pretty fun way to kill a few minutes while I wait for about 1.5 terabytes of stuff to transfer to new drives. I think I’ll do it again sometime. Maybe you should do it too, for the fun of it!