Shooting with Sammy Hagar – The Red Rocker

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My day shooting Sammy Hagar.

So it was a phone call somewhat out of the blue. A good friend of mine, and fellow photographer, down in LA reached out to me on a Wednesday to see if I would be around that weekend. I was momentarily caught off guard because he knows I no longer live in Southern California. But it turned out he was asking if I would be in the San Francisco Bay Area and available that weekend.
He said he might have a lead for me on a project he knew I would dig.

And after a few various emails that afternoon, and confirmation the following day, I was booked to shoot Sammy Hagar for AXS TV and Mercury Insurance!

How.Cool.

Growing up I had listened to Van Halen, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and all those classic rock groups with my dad. So I knew of Sammy and his music.

This would be awesome.

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The Przybyla Wedding – Gilroy, Calif.

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About a week ago I got to spend a couple days in Gilroy with Kevin and Nichole to photograph their wedding!
I want to say the three of us first met at Ernesto and Sarah’s wedding… but I could be wrong. We might have met at another wedding before that and I’m remembering incorrectly. I’ve had the opportunity to shoot for several couples within the same group of friends – which is very cool but makes it easy to lose track.

Either way, it meant that I saw Kevin and Nichole a couple times before they reached out and asked me about shooting their wedding for the two of them!
Ironically months before the wedding they moved down to SoCal, where I had been living, and I re-located back up to the the Bay Area. So instead of needing to travel for this wedding like I first thought, it was the bride and groom that had to make the trip up to the Bay.

Kevin and Nichole’s weekend was beautiful. The weather worked out great – warm but not scorching hot like the week leading up to it. Their venue in the foothills in Gilroy was lovely, and Nichole and her sister Tammy had everything planned out, made up, and ready to go when it came to decorations. Ok, to be fair the girls said they finished all the arrangements/etc in the days leading up to the wedding, but that’s normal and their work was so good you’d think they did it professionally.

So, for those ready to scroll through the Przybyla wedding.. Read on!
I have a couple hundred images from weekend to share with you all!

As usual, I saved a lot of info for the captions rather than typing it all out here..

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The Lanza Wedding, New Jersey

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The Lanza Wedding.

I just returned home to California from Joe and Erin’s wedding out in Jersey. At I have to say spending the last three weeks with these two was a blast. Yep. Three weeks.
So let elaborate a bit more on who I am for those who might just know me as “Joe’s California friend”. I’ve known Joe for 13 years. We did the Disney College Program together. Ironically, while we knew each other somewhat during that 9 months at Disney, we moved in different social circles. So we actually never hung out. It wasn’t until a few months after returning home, and re-connecting online as all us former-lifeguards did to keep in touch, that was when Joe and I realized how much we had in common.
He’s been a very dear friend of mine ever since.

And while many friendships since our days at Disney have changed, I would quickly point out that Joe and I have only become better friends over the years.
During my many trips back out to Florida I stayed with Joe over half of them. And on those trips spending most of the time sitting around talking was pretty much the norm.
Joe would joke with me that “Your room is always available” about his guest room in his apartment. And when him and Erin recently bought their house, one of the spare rooms they both refer to as “John’s room”. It’s funny, but also very sweet.

But what the most fun part of the entire Lanza wedding as a whole? In any aspect?

That’s easy. It’s having been part of Joe’s life, and now Joe-and-Erin’s-life, long enough to go from those college-years-conversations with Joe about “I don’t think I’ll get married, John” to “Things are pretty serious with Erin, man..” and eventually “I’m going to propose.”

That was very cool.

And I love Erin – she and Joe are great together. And to be part of their wedding weekend (and entire wedding month pretty much) was great. But before I get into all that, let’s have some fun and take a stroll down memory lane. Shall we?
I have the most extensive photo record of our circle of friends since ’03… so this’ll be fun to zip through real quick ;)

What do you say, you guys ready to scroll through tons of photos?
How about you, Joe?

FLA Jan 2006 191

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The #PrincessMen return to Disneyworld’s 2016 PHM Weekend

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It’s already been a year since our appearance as the #PrincessMen at the Disneyworld Princess Half Marathon weekend in Orlando. And while this year was much smaller than last year in terms of the size of our group, it was arguably a race we were looking forward to even more.

(For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, check out my huge writeup from last year here: Princess Half 2015 )

Planning this year’s race was somewhat tricky in the sense that, well, Life happens. And what I mean by that is 50% of last year’s group wasn’t going to be attending. This was a huge disappointment for me because I knew how much the other runners were looking forward to our return. As I wrote last year, a lot of ladies out on the course found extra energy to continue running and paced with us for a portion of their race. And I knew they were looking forward to us coming back again.

…we even made Buzzfeed this year

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So Buzzfeed reached out to me several days after the race. We were featured in the Top 10 list of Best Costumes from the race. We came in at Number 1! How awesome is that! Thanks for the support everyone! We’ll be back to full-strength in our numbers next year!

…and on the topic of the smaller-group thing…

Half the group

This year we would be missing Charming, Mulan, Anna, and Beast. For various reasons they couldn’t make the race work with their schedules. Whether it was due to travel during that timeframe. Scheduling and simply not having time to train. Or in the case of Charming, running elsewhere in the race and not with us this year.

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So this was going to be the group.
Smaller, yes. But we were still going to have a great time.

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The Do Wedding – San Jose, Calif.

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Two weeks ago while most people were focused on Thanksgiving and which sales they were going to hit up the following day, I was with Maria and Tri as they were rehearsing their wedding here in San Jose. Then, two days later, on Black Friday while everyone was shopping or laying around sleeping after the Thanksgiving holiday we were all at their wedding.
So I wasn’t originally quite positive on how exactly Maria and Tri found me. At first I thought it was simply through Maryann, their wedding coordinator and an old friend from high school. Turns out that Maria is the sister of my friend Manny – also from high school, and someone who I’ve been to a couple weddings with over the years. Ha! That turned into a funny conversation the morning of the wedding when I finally put all that together.
Maria and Tri actually live in SoCal, and even though I had been living down there timing just never quite worked out to meet in person. Maria joked that in the weeks leading up to the wedding she became mildly concerned that no one had heard much from me. Whoops! I was actually caught up in the middle of an unexpected move from LA back to the SF Bay Area. But still was looking forward to their wedding and ready to rock it out.

Maria and Tri put on a lovely ceremony in San Jose, followed by an absolutely awesome reception – I’m pretty sure their families danced the entire night as soon as the music started.
Anyway, I have hundreds of photos below for all of you to check out. Whether you missed the event or just want to relive it, I hope you guys enjoy this recap of Maria and Tri’s wedding.

And, like usual, I’ve saved a lot more comments for the captions below..

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Riker Wedding – Marina Del Rey, Calif.

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The Riker Wedding this past weekend was only my third wedding that was local here in SoCal – and it was awesome.

Joel and Jenny got married on Saturday on a yacht in Marina Del Rey. And surprisingly there were no “I’m on a boat!” jokes – at least none that I heard.
So I met Joel 12 years ago. We also both worked at DisneyWorld (like Ryan who’s wedding I shot last week). And even though Ryan, Joel and me all worked at the same place, Joel and I were in different social circles. He told me last summer he always thought I was quiet. I’m actually far from quiet, but Joel was in a supervisor/coordinator role when I worked there. So.. that’s my reason for never really talking to him. HE was the quiet one doing manager-ish stuff back at Base at the water park we worked at. So we never really got to know each other.

Last summer at some point I was referred to him by our mutual friend Theresa. Theresa was a lifeguard, too, and even though I was a guest at her wedding years ago I took some photos for her while in Washington for her and Scott.

So somewhere along the line in planning Theresa referred me to Jenny and Joel, I met them very briefly last summer, and they later got in touch with me about shooting their wedding.

And here we are now.
The new Mr. and Mrs. Riker are married, and I have 450 images of the whole celebration to share with you!

Click past the break for a ton of images of Jenny and Joel’s weekend. I saved more comments for the captions as usual. So I hope you have some time to kill, because there are a lot of fun moments to enjoy below!

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Bedford Wedding – Livermore, Calif.

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Last weekend was Ryan and Lisette’s wedding reception here in California.
So although the two of them had actually flown to Hawaii for a destination wedding, they waited til they were back on the mainland to celebrate with a reception for the rest of their family and friends.
Unfortunately I was busy at a triathlon the weekend of their ceremony on Maui – they had actually reached out to see about me coming with them to shoot the wedding day, too. And honestly that would have been a lot of fun and I’m bummed that I missed it. However I was still able to be a part of their reception and photograph that, as well as meet their friends and family.

Ryan and I go way back. We met twelve years ago, in college, while we were working at DisneyWorld as lifeguards. So I have a ton of great memories with Ryan and he’s remained part of our core group of friends that still keeps in touch and gets together occasionally for reunion trips.
I met Lisette a couple years ago during our 10-year reunion trip. Ryan brought her along to introduce her to this “last” group of friends of his that she hadn’t met. I remember talking to Ryan and he told me something along the lines of: “This is it.. If she can put up with me around you guys then I’m going to ask her to marry me.” For those who don’t know, our old lifeguard group is still pretty close. And when we get to together it’s a lot of laughing, joking, giving each other a ton of crap, and all around just having fun. But whereas some people might not like getting thrown into a group of old friends like that, Lisette seemed to have a great time with everyone that week. And a few months later (if I recall correctly) I was hearing more about proposal plans from Ryan when we caught up briefly.

Their wedding reception was held in Livermore, on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in the South Bay Area, so it was simply a matter of going home to visit around the time of Ryan and Lisette’s reception.

I’m going to save some other comments for the captions, as I usually do in my blog write ups.

But first, let’s go for a brief stroll down memory lane with Bedford all the way back to our Disney College Program days, yes? Yes.

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The Rettke Wedding – Portland, OR.

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Just over two weeks ago I was in Portland, Oregon, for a couple days for the Rettke wedding.
Rhett and Kendra are the brother, and sister-in-law of my brother-in-law… you guys follow? My sister is married to Matt, Rhett’s brother. So when Rhett and Kendra started planning their wedding they reached out to me to see about my availability for their wedding.

It was a beautiful weekend up in Portland – although we managed to be there during a brief heatwave and some very warm weather for the late-summer timeframe. But it made for an absolutely beautiful evening with guests being able to enjoy warm weather long into the night during the outdoor ceremony and reception.
That weekend was also a very busy weekend for me, too. Which is why there has been a delay on my typically quick updates after shooting a wedding. You see, the next morning my sister, mother, step-dad, and father all had to fly back to California and drive out to Santa Cruz for a relay triathlon I was going to be doing with my Mom and Sister two days after the ceremony. And then my step-dad and I left from that triathlon and drove back to Lake Tahoe where we had been living and training for the Lake Tahoe Ironman for several weeks.
So even though I was in the middle of my own training, it was a really fun break to see extended family and be able to do something like this for Rhett and Kendra.

I’ve made a large selection of photos and edits to share with you all below. I’ll save more comments for the captions, so, click past the break for just over 300 images from Rhett and Kendra’s wedding weekend!

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The Soria Wedding – Carmel by the Sea, Calif.

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Recently I returned from Carmel by the Sea where I photographed Alison and Sean’s wedding at Rancho Cañada during a gorgeous weekend in the last days of July. While I had not met Alison prior to the wedding, Sean is someone I worked with many years ago. We had met while working together for Riverview Systems in San Jose. I had spent just over a year and a half with Riverview as part of a traveling tech team around the US for trade shows and corporate events. Sean worked on the installs team that I ended up joining my last few months with the company over the summer.
We spent my last couple weeks there working at San Jose State University on a huge project – but to be honest things with the project started so disorganized that a lot of our time was spent chatting and joking during the confusion of “we don’t have the right supplies/tools for today’s part of the job…”

Shortly after that I moved to LA to pursue photography full time and Sean continued with Riverview before leaving for another job as well. But we loosely kept in touch online and Sean had continued to follow my work over the years.
And when he decided to propose to Alison, Sean later reached out to me about coming back up to the Bay Area to photograph their wedding weekend in Carmel.

Once plans were in place we locked down the dates and I made my way up to the Bay Area to meet up with the Soria and Lionbarger families.

It was a great weekend with everyone and we had some absolutely gorgeous weather. There was a break in the heatwave that had been going on which resulted in a very comfortable two days for the ceremony.

So, read on!
I’ve uploaded about 350 or so images from the entire weekend for you guys to enjoy. I’m sure there were several friends and family that weren’t able to be there, so hopefully this gives you an idea of what you missed!

Enjoy!

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Dale Dwelle & Brooks Andrews’ Atlanta wedding

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Dale and Brooks… gettin’ married and making history at the same time!

Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of shooting Dale and Brooks’ wedding in Atlanta, Georgia at the Swan House and Historical Center – which was the first gay wedding ceremony at that venue we found out! How cool is that! Not only did these two amazing men have an absolutely gorgeous ceremony and wedding day, but they also got to do something no one has done there before! Awesome.

Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with my relationship to Dale over the years I’ll break it all down for you guys..
I’m willing to bet many of the friends and family members of Dale (and Brooks) have seen my photos over the years, even if you didn’t know it at the time. Dale is basically my wedding BFF. And I’m thinking that should be a thing. Yep. That’s it. It’s now a thing. #weddingBFF. Dale and I have been at SEVEN weddings together (eight if you include his!). But I’ve actually known Dale 17 years? 18 years? We went to school together. And while admittedly, he was much closer friends with my sister (who was in the same grade level, one behind me) he was always a great guy to catch up with when our busy lives and paths crossed over the years.

It was obviously later on that I met Brooks. And it was actually, appropriately, that I met Brooks at a wedding. My sisters.

As Brooks and Dale got closer to the point of planning their own wedding they reached out to me about being a part of it. I was thrilled! Not only had I got to know both of them better over the years at all the weddings we attended together, but I had also photographed Dale’s sister Denay’s wedding. When Denay and Omar were planning their wedding Dale reached out to be so he could recommend me to Denay. So by the time of the Dwelle-Andrews wedding I already had met and got to know a lot of the Dwelle side of the family!

And as a photographer it is very special to be a part of multiple family events.

After Brooks and Dale had locked down dates, a location, and several other details about their weekend they got in touch with me again. Dale explained to me that as part of a destination-style wedding (at least one that required travel for many of the guests) they were going to host multiple events and mini-parties of sorts for their guests. I was asked if it would be possible to capture photos during these events, too.

So, as any of you who have seen one of my wedding blogs knows.. I’m going to save the rest of my comments for the captions.

And as we all heard during the speeches at the rehearsal dinner, there are so many great things that can be said about these two. I’m particularly lucky because I get to share my thoughts and memories through this blog – and most appropriately, though photos.

That being said..

You ready to break that scroll-wheel on your mouse and check out just over 850 images from Brooks and Dale’s amazing, and beautiful, wedding weekend and celebration in Atlanta?! As well as a brief stroll down memory lane with the past weddings we’ve been at together?

I hope so.

Go pour yourself a cup of…whatever you want to drink.. maybe one of those Dark & Stormy’s everyone was drinking at the wedding. Grab a snack. And get ready to re-live the Dwelle-Andrews wedding weekend!
And those of you who couldn’t make it.. I hope this helps you feel like you were still part of it all. I know I certainly missed some of you who couldn’t be there.

 

Read on!

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