It is fun to be able to photograph your family, especially when they have two wicked gorgeous kids. My cousin Jennie and her family... :)

When I was just a wee photo-newbie, foaming at the mouth over each new roll of shot film waiting to be developed, I met Mike Dobson.  I had been working a few months for my college newspaper, practicing my photography and selling ads when Mike became the photo editor.  With Mike, my earliest mentor Hector Roberts, and myself now heading the photo department of the paper, we were a great team bursting with enthusiasm.  Together, we tried to figure out what it was about photography that fueled our addiction and kept us inspired over and over again regardless of our subject matter; I still have a hard time putting it into words...

Fast forward a dozen years or so and into the era of the all-pervasive social networking websites.  I reconnected with Mike through facebook a year or so ago and was so happy to see he was still an active photographer living in NYC with his own business, Echo Imagery and continuing to produce amazing work.  It came as great news when Mike wrote telling me he was getting married to a woman he'd met in Sundance, UT named Venessa and he wondered if we'd be interested in photographing his wedding in Tulum, Mexico.  Oh man, how frustrating when we checked and were unavailable on the date so we suggested the next best thing...Hardy!  Now Hardy will be there in October to capture the day for them and we'll be there in spirit.  

We met in Oceanside to take a few engagement photos and it was great to catch up with Mike and meet Venessa.  The two seem like they've never existed apart from each other and were both intimate and extremely silly - often within the same minute.  Good fun and great effort guys, meeting me at 7AM in the drizzle to negotiate with the guard at the drive in for a few minutes of photos.  P.S...Alex loves to be involved with the picture taking so when we met for lunch the previous day, we gave him the Olympus XA and he took the last photo.  Wish I'd started so young!

We met Paul and Katie at Nisha and Sean's Wedding... Katie was a Bridesmaid! They are all in the music industry, and met at Berklee Music School. 

Paul's is Latvian, I have never actually met any Latvians so it was pretty exciting... we got to see Katie's traditional Latvian engagement ring, and they even did the Polka for us! They also brought an old Graflex 22 camera that used to be his Grandfather's.

I know this is starting to become a regular thing - we ended the portrait session with martinis, a cheese plate and fried chickpeas...

We had a little too much fun with Salina and Travis, we started at their new house in Los Feliz and then moved over to Los Feliz village, finding cool little nooks and crannies to take photos in... We kept them WAY to long, talked their ears off, and finally ended up having lunch with them at the best noodle house on earth (taking photos the whole time). It was a really fun day! This was also our first shoot with our new Roliflex! 

For our shoot with Ali and Karen, we headed back to Union Station, downtown Los Angeles and for the first time, we headed above ground.  Who knew there were trains up there too?!  

Sayeh (pronounced SAW-yeh) and Avesta are getting married in August after 9 years of being together (about time, right?). They are still so totally sickly in love with each other, that I thought they had surely only been together a couple of months. We did an extended shoot around Santa Monica and then finished off the day with a fantastic Italian dinner at C&O Tratoria in Venice Beach (and yes, they do have killer garlic rolls! - Thanks again guys!) 

We shot Grace and William's engagement session on a blustery day in San Francisco. We, ironically, had been waiting for a window of good weather and when we thought we had it, we shot up to San Francisco at the last minute... It turned out to be the coldest day on record in a while - we even got a bit of hail - ooppps - so much for the good weather luck! Grace had the each outfit planned down to her bangles - they were freezing cold most of the day - but great sports about it! We had a fantastic time! 

They got the a-okay from their parents (in Indonesia) to do this engagement session, though they are officially not yet engaged. They are off to Indonesia at the end of the month with their session album in hand to talk William's parents into asking her parents for permission to get married. Good luck guys! 

We met Jonill and Colin in New York for their engagement session - and again... a freezing cold December day! We walked around the East Village until we could not longer take the cold and then ended the session at their local dive bar for a couple of photos and warming drinks!  

Gen and Alex are getting married in La Jolla, CA - but are living in New York at the moment. It was great to be able to catch up with them in the city while we were there to do their engagement session. It was freezing cold, but they were such good sports about it - hopefully their fingers have regained some feeling since!