I remember when I attended the first Furious Photographers workshop. Boy was I excited. But I was also nervous. I was fidgety. I had more than a couple butterflies milling around inside of me. After all, I was as newbie as newbie gets.

Fast forward a bit to the 2nd Furious Photographers workshop and just a few things have changed. I came this time with a better knowledge of my camera. A couple more lenses. A few more memory cards. A cool bag to hold it all in. And though I still had a bit of that nervous-excited feeling in my tummy I also felt this awesome reassuring calm that hey, these are a bunch of cool dudes. Dudes who don’t mind that I am a newbie – who in fact embrace my newbieness (and everyone else’s newbieness) and kindly show us the ropes. Fun, helpful dudes who led an awesome first workshop and a top-of-the-notch 2nd one as well!!

For this one we met at their killer home studio and learned some of the business side of wedding photography before heading off on an awesome shoot in downtown LA. Gavin of Gavin Photography led us to an explosion of rainbow colors… I can’t believe I never knew this place existed! After shooting there we went back to the studio and covered some post-processing techniques. Fun and informative, doesn’t get much better than that!

A big thank you to Andrew and Megan – the gorgeous models who could not take a bad picture if they tried their darndest, to Peter for referring them, and All Made Up for their dazzling make-up and hair artistry. And of course to the FP team for an amazing day!

Aren’t they both gorgeous?

And now for a few behind-the-scenes photos…

Doug in the studio:





Lawrence demonstrates:



The Furious Photographers setting up the shots… they make great models too!





Kevin keeps one eye out for traffic:



With Tawny!



At the end of the day the Furious Photographers took a quick group photo! See the final result on their blog:

Back in December I shot an engagement session for my good friends Becca & Keiji. A couple months later Becca contacted me saying they wanted to do another shoot. Another shoot? Was the first not good enough? Were we missing shots?? As I wracked my mind for answers, she explained that they wanted this one to be a Japanese style shoot, complete with kimonos & montsukis!! How genius is that? Continuing with the Japanese theme, they decided to do the shoot in the Cal Poly Pomona Japanese garden, a garden that has special significance since (1) Keiji teaches landscape architecture at Cal Poly and (2) the garden was designed by his father (who has designed lots of other beautiful gardens all over Southern Cali). I loved the story behind the kimono Becca was wearing – it belonged to Keiji’s mother and was worn by her at her own wedding. And seriously, Becca was such a trooper in it – I’ve been stuffed into a kimono my fair share of times and let me tell you, as pretty as it is, it’s equally as painful. “Suffocating” and “rib-squishing” are also adjectives I like to use  :)

Certain parts of the garden looked just like it was fall!

We headed back to Keiji’s house after the shoot but the fun didn’t end there! Apparently an equally awesome garden surrounds the sides and back of his home. So of course we had to run around and grab some shots in there too…

A big thank you to Becca and Keiji for coming up with this fun idea and including me in it! And a ginormo thanks to Scott and his camera for tagging along this time too. Hopefully I can post some of his shots up here soon as well!

I was sitting at a burrito stand in Westwood when she called me with the news. “I’m engaged!!” she told me, her voice brimming with happiness and disbelief. After getting all the juicy details, I hung up and turned to Scott, my dining partner, and babbled excitedly about my friend Joyce who he had yet to meet – how we had been friends since junior high, how we shared laughter and heartbreak over bags of Hot Cheetoes throughout high school and college, and how she was now GETTING MARRIED! (She is actually the very first of our group of girlfriends to take the plunge.)

So of course I was ecstatic when she not only asked me to be a bridesmaid, but to do an engagement shoot for her and Yuki. Unfortunately they had a plans for 4 pm on the day we decided to shoot, which meant no pretty afternoon light. So we went for the next best thing: pretty morning light! Which is how we found ourselves at the Santa Monica pier at 7 am on a Saturday morning. Even though I am the antithesis of a morning person, I have to admit the conditions were great – the sun was out so it wasn’t too cold and the beach was not yet full of people. We even had time to drop by UCLA for some fun shots in the Sculpture Garden.

A big thank you to Joyce & Yuki for a wonderful shoot. I can’t wait for the wedding!!

* A couple of the above photos utilize Photoshop actions created and graciously shared by the Furious Photographers!