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!

Ashley and John chose one of the most original wedding venues that I’ve ever seen – The Confederate Air Force hangar at the San Marcos Airport. I’d been excited about this wedding for months, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. While some may have been nonplussed at the prospect of having a large caliber machine gun pointed directly at them during their wedding ceremony, Ashley and John didn’t seem to mind one bit, and it sure made for some one-of-a-kind photos…and I succeeded in not hitting my head on a wing or propeller, surprisingly. And by the way, John actually owns that amazing automobile. Jealous.

My friend Jenny needed some new headshots, and I wanted to try out some fun new portrait ideas in a couple of new locations, so we headed out on a trek across south-central Austin. We started at Jo’s coffee and ended up at the awesome Lustre Pearl, where, somewhere between discussing the finer points of sidecar mixology and draining my laptop battery to 0%, we managed to somehow take a few photos. Sugared rim! Sugared rim!

The third annual Austin Ice Cream Festival took place last Saturday at Waterloo Park, and while I attended simply as a fan of ice cream, I always take my camera to events with such potential – and good timing, a friend in the right place and having a camera that looks the part got me front and center with the media for the ice cream eating contest. These guys and gals ate a half gallon in mere minutes, something I’m not quite sure if I admire or not. Nonetheless, it made for good photos…