Julia and Brance pulled out all the stops for their engagement session, including not only a wonderfully color-coordinated picnic setup but also an awesome place to stay for their visit to Austin, Verde Camp. A place that also had, among many other great attributes, a bright-yellow wall to go with all of the other yellow goodies that they brought along, something that I can only assume was not a coincidence whatsoever. And what were these other great attributes, you may be asking? How about a vintage Caddy, bicycles, and, last but not least, a GIGANTIC METAL ROOSTER. The rooster was my favorite…

Austin Wedding Photographer – Los Angeles Wedding Photographer – www.jakeholt.com

In early March, Kasey and I packed up the Honda and left Austin to embark on a 2-week road trip across the great southwest. There’s something wonderful about this part of the country…big skies, wide-open spaces, giant men holding tiny Winnebagos, and ridiculously cute red panda plush toys, to name just a few. It’s been the busiest of busy seasons since we returned, so it’s now two months later that I’m finally getting the chance to share a few photos. Our path took us through, among many other places, Las Cruces, Hatch, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Marfa, and as you can tell, there were plenty of things that caught my eye, mostly amazing signs. Enjoy! All of the images with border treatments were taken with my phone, the rest with my “real” gear. I think the phone held its own, don’t you? No worries, I won’t be showing up to weddings equipped with just a phone anytime soon…

Giant man with a tiny Winnebago – Hatch, New Mexico

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

Amazing Seven Year Itch mural at Fox Studios

Kasey at the Lomo store in Los Angeles

As taken on my digital camera…

3-frame sequence of the Supermoon rising over downtown L.A.

Hot dog and soda sez pay first! Pay first and then you may devour them.

I call this one “red panda invades Marfa, 2011, limited.” We found this little guy in Santa Cruz.

Austin Wedding Photography – Los Angeles Wedding Photography – www.jakeholt.com

Finally! A very belated post featuring a few of my favorite non-wedding day shoots from the last 3 months – portrait sessions of every shape and size. I’m incredibly excited to get some of this stuff up for public viewing at last – since I’ve been spending the last 6 months or so working on developing some new looks and techniques and using a number of new locations, well, I guess you could say that this marks the official unveiling of a season’s worth of experimentation…

The last time that I visited the Mexican American Cultural Center, it was for a big, out-of-control SXSW party. This time, however, it was for a, ummmmmmm, well, another big, out-of-control party. I should hope you would expect no less when the wedding party arrives on the Bevo Bus, adorned with feather boas and glow sticks! There’s some world-class dancing faces going on in here…

Nothing says “party” like green flip-flops, a sailor hat, fake moustaches, the Hora, the promise of a boxer puppy and an amazing getaway car. Oh, and plastic baby doll limbs? Oh yeah, they’re in there, feel free to have your own little “Where’s Waldo” contest…first one to find them all wins a free five year subscription to my blog! And a unicorn!

Heather chose Roadhouse Relics for her and Taylor’s engagement session – I didn’t quite know what to expect as I’d never actually shot inside of the place before, but I now have a new addition to my small and exclusive list of “utterly fantastic” places to shoot. This place is just amazing. It’s relatively small, but what’s crammed into that space is just overflowing with goodness…

No posts for 6 weeks? Well, while it’s technically been the “off season” for weddings and portraits, that doesn’t mean that my cameras and I have just been sitting around and gathering dust while watching endless episodes of Life After People. In the last 6 weeks I’ve had a couple of fun shoots for Tribeza, headed off on a 2 week, 3800 mile road trip to San Francisco by way of Roswell, Flagstaff and Los Angeles, and had a few friends over to my new studio (now officially unveiled and open for business, BTW) to serve as lighting guinea pigs and to help me get my bearings in the new space. With new posts coming your way faster than a runaway Prius, here’s a incredibly quick rundown of what I’ve done with my down time:

These first three photos were shot for the February issue of Tribeza magazine – the piece featured local musicians who have residencies at restaurants around town. First off are Ethan and Doug, 2 members of “The Moonhangers,” a band that pays regularly at Lamberts on 2nd street. Next is Kris Kimura, a regular at Eddie V’s. Check out the article online on pages 84-87!

This photo tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Roswell.

On a creepily vacant and very, very long stretch of road between Roswell and Albuquerque I spied these two fabulous signs…fabulous for entirely different reasons. A word of warning to any future road-trippers that may take this same route – do not even think about leaving Roswell for Albuquerque without a full tank of gas! That’s what I did, tisk tisk, and I finally came across a gas station with my on-board trip computer giving me a total remaining range of 12 miles…with about 40 more to go to the I-40 junction and the next station. Lesson learned.

I finally made it to L.A….and this happened. I’ll try to explain these 3 photos, and I will fail miserably. In short, my friend Lydia (below) wanted to make a video for her friend Crystal’s rehearsal dinner…when they were in high school they apparently both loved “Money Ain’t A Thang” by Jermaine Dupri and Jay-Z, so of course the only choice was to remake that video, with Jay-Z and crew replaced by Lydia and her friends. I shot the video (my first and most likely last video gig) and stills, and below is just a tiny sample of what we created. It was incredibly fun, and very, very, very ridiculous. If you’re curious enough and enter the right search terms our masterwork can be found on YouTube, but I won’t post it here lest I be held directly responsible for amazing you to death.

This may look like a rather pedestrian photo of a nice house, but oh my, this is not just a house…this is THE house that was used as Fisher and Sons funeral home in what I call “the greatest thing ever put on film,” a.k.a. the amazing t.v. series Six Feet Under. This was pretty much the highlight of my entire trip.

The composition here leaves a bit to be desired, but what more can you expect of a photo taken with an iPhone at 2 a.m.? I just had to share, as I was really impressed with this healthy cake that we found at a Ralphs grocery just east of 101 on Hollywood Boulevard…it said that it was healthy so I ate like 11 of them over the course of a week.

This truly awful thing actually exists…somewhere in Arizona at a ridiculous roadside attraction called “The Thing.” I’m not sure if they left it in the bag because they were scared of it or if the person responsible for stocking that section was just incredibly apathetic.

Back to Austin, and back to photos that weren’t taken on cellphone cameras…this is my friend Amber, one of the aforementioned people that donated their time to help me test countless lighting setups in my new studio space and scout out some cool new locations in the surrounding area. I think we were quite successful…and with that, I now plunge headfirst into the heart of wedding and portrait season, stay tuned!

So, I went to a portrait session and a wedding broke out! Jess and Justin’s session was without a doubt one of the most unforgettable shoots of my life – not because of the awesome location, Austin’s own Hotel Saint Cecilia, one of my absolute favorite settings, but because of the unexpected way in which the day unfolded. This requires a bit of backstory – Jess and Justin are both in the military and were due to ship out in about 10 days, with plans to get married when they returned. They were originally going to two very different locations  - Jess to Spain, and Justin to Alaska. However, they discovered that if they were married prior to shipping out that they could be assigned to the same place, so plans were made to have a small private ceremony at Mt. Bonnell, officiated by Justin’s best friend, with a full-sized wedding taking place when they return from their assignments. When someone is willing to give up living in Spain to come live with you in Alaska, you know you have something special! Anyway, our original plan was to spend a couple of hours shooting around the South Congress area, and then for Jess, Justin and friends to head to Mt. Bonnell for the ceremony. Well, mother nature didn’t like that plan, so we headed back to St. Cecilia for the shoot in order to avoid the rain. As the rain continued and plans for a Mt. Bonnell ceremony began to look bleak, the decision was made to have the ceremony on the patio of their room at St. Cecilia and, since I was there with my cameras and all, well, of course I photographed the ceremony as well! It was such a change of pace not having hundreds of guests watching, and I felt very lucky to be a part of something so unique and intimate. Congrats guys, I hope you enjoy Alaska…you can always go visit Spain on your honeymoon!

Friend and fellow photographer Annie Ray was just selected by Rare magazine as a 2010 “Up and Comer,” and I was asked to do the photographing honors. What an awful gig, I thought – photographing a friend and her cats. And then I remembered that I like friends, and I like cats, so I graciously accepted. You can check out the January issue of Rare online (page 62!) or throughout our fair city in the time-tested and always classy printed format. BTW, the orange guy’s name is Cowboy, but I’m not sure about the other one…what can I say, I’m partial to the orange ones.