Formula Drift Finals 2012

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Last weekend was the Formula Drift Finals in Irwindale, Calif.
I was invited to attend by Falken Tire – one of my clients who I’ve done a lot of race work for this year. I actually hadn’t shot Drift in a couple years; not since my days handling K&N Filters photography when I was on staff with them. So I jumped at the opportunity to go out and shoot a bunch of new images as well as hang out with my friends on the Falken staff.

It’s funny that after living right next to Irwindale for two years and never doing any shooting there that I would have the chance to do so right after moving to San Diego for the remainder of the year.
I was able to stay with friends in OC, so it was just a brief trip right up 605 to get to the races.

I didn’t shoot this event the same way that I cover Le Mans. So unfortunately I do not have a bunch of behind the scenes photos and stories for everyone like I usually would. Since I was a guest of Falken rather than there working I did my best to stay out of the way as much as possible.
So, scroll down after the break and check out shots mostly from the track of the various teams ripping through the turns and destroying their tires for sport.

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The Dwelle-Muñoz wedding

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To say that Dwelle-Muñoz wedding was just an average wedding would be a bit of an understatement. An old Catholic church, a packed party bus, a beautiful reception venue, and a couple hundred of your closest friends and family… topped off with a mariachi band. You guys missed out!

I met Denay and Omar through Denay’s brother, Dale. I’ve known Dale for something like 13 years – and he’s quickly setting the record the the Most Weddings We’ve Been In Together. I actually am part of a couple weddings a year with Dale I think – clearly it means we both know everyone. hahaha!

Denay and Omar contacted me and asked about my availability to come up to the Bay and shoot for them in San Jose. It was incredibly sweet to be referred by an old friend to his younger, and only, sister. And I all I kept hearing about Denay from everyone I talked to was “she’s so nice!”.
I met up with Denay and Omar several months before their wedding – after booking and working out the details. This was my chance to sit and talk to them a bit and get to know them. Turns out they’re big Disney fans and had seen my Engagement shoot with the Nguyen’s at Disneyland a long time before planning their own wedding. We went over a number of ideas and talked about different stories. Cassandra, a close friend and photographer who would be assisting me, came along to meet them too. When we left we were both excited to be working with such a wonderful couple and looked forward to when their wedding weekend would finally arrive.

Denay and Omar were married on a Friday at St. Joseph’s in Downtown San Jose. It was the same church that I shot the Nguyen wedding in last year, so not only was I familiar with the venue and the lighting, but the Dwelle and Muñoz families would have a small idea what the images might turn out like. Win-Win.

My day started with the bride and her girls, as always. The difference with this wedding is that I wasn’t going to have to break away and try to meet up with the guys while they got ready. This worked out great for many reasons. One of them is that Denay and Omar each had eight people in their wedding party. The other reason is it turned out Omar was busy running around most of the morning with errands. As a surprise to Denay he went about bought roses to decorate their room with rose petals for later that night – and had to squeeze that into all the other things he had to do that morning.

It also turned out that the hair and makeup for so many girls went later than planned – so it was great that Cassandra was spending the morning with the guys. However, even as we were running behind and Denay was ready to bolt out the door I was still able to take a few minutes and create some gorgeous bridal portraits of her . But believe me, she hauled ass down the hallway when we were done, and when we got to the limo she turned around asked where all the girls were.

The ceremony was beautiful – as I said I’ve shot there before and it really is a pretty church. But, the majority of the cermony was in Spanish. Between my incredibly broken Spanish left over from what I learned in high school and having shot several full-mass weddings, I was able to follow along pretty well.
After the ceremony we had a TON of family portraits to get through before piling onto the buses and heading to Gilroy for the reception. But we stopped at 7-11 first to get drink for everyone. The singing alone was worth the trip on the bus though, hahaha!

The reception was great, and I think the only thing that Omar and Denay would have changed would have been if they could have somehow stopped and talked to everyone that was there. I have a ton of photos from everything and I will talk more about the reception through the captions – so click down below for those.

Overall I had a great time and am incredibly pleased with the images that we created. Denay was an absolutely stunning bride. Omar even joked with Cassandra “Yeah, I thought she was going to dump me after like a year!” when explaining how amazing his wife is to him. Omar was looking damn sharp that day, too. My only regret for the wedding is that I didn’t get to spend nearly the amount of time getting to know Omar and his boys as I did getting to know Denay and her girls.

Click the break below to read on about my weekend with the Dwelle and Muñoz families! I have over 225 images from the day. I hope you all enjoy and laugh as much as I did.

To Denay and Omar,
I had an amazing time and both your families are wonderful. You two brought so much energy and love to your images it’s hard to not look at them and smile. Even people that have never met you have already been sending me messages online about the previews I’ve shared so far. Thank you for letting us be part of such an important day.

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Road America – American Le Mans with Falken Tire

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Road America, with the Falken Tire racing team.. and what a beautiful weekend it was out in Wisconsin!

Yes. We crashed. Let me start with first saying that I don’t know any details about the crash beyond this: Whatever the end cause was, it sent Bryan into a wall at an incredibly high speed. It wasn’t head-on, so, Bryan escaped with a few bumps and was cleared quickly by medical. As for the cause or crazy photos – I don’t know, nor do I have any. I was at a different location on the track when it happened. And the cause is being investigated so changes (if needed) can be made before Baltimore in 11 days.

Now, onto to details of the rest of the weekend..

Any sort of East Coast travel always means very little sleep the night before. Going to bed early doesn’t really work well for me, and first-flight-out typically means leaving the house at 5am. So I only got about four hours of sleep that evening. The travel day went surprisingly smooth. Funny that with all the flying that I do the best service I have is consistently “budget-airline” Southwest.

That first afternoon in Wisconsin was spent with Cale and Qazi, two of Falken’s video team. We were going around town doing some filming and shooting of the city for b-roll type footage that they could use for their final piece on the Road America race. We found a couple cool locations and the guys did their thing as I wandered around on my own. I didn’t really have much use for any of the shots I would have taken, so I pretty much just took behind the scenes stuff.
Later that evening we checked into our hotel to get ready for a busy Saturday at the track. Oh, and we stayed at the Osthoff Resort which was incredible. I was in an awesome two-bedroom suite on the top floor with a view of the pools and lake.

Practice day for me started early. The photographer meeting was at 730am. So, I was up early to get ready and get out of the hotel in time. Plus it was a new track so making sure I figured out my way around was important, too.
Overall the practice day went really well. I was able to check about half the track during the various practice sessions. Road America is a 4 mile track, so that’s either a LOT of walking… or a lot of driving if you are lucky enough to have a golf cart. Our video crew used the golf cart the majority of the time, which means I was on foot. Qazi, one of the videographers, actually joked “You’re in the best shape out of all of us, John. So you get to walk.” Hahaha!

Race day was a different story… as we arrived at the track the first GT practice of the day was getting started. So, I had the guys drop me off so I could start shooting right then. I rather have every opportunity I can to get shots of the car on the track than risk not getting enough images. The rest of the day was whirlwind of bouncing around the paddocks, grabbing breakfast/lunch at whatever point I had a few minutes to do so, and hiking pretty much the entire track to check out possible new areas to shoot.

And as everyone is aware, our race day was cut short due to a crash – a very disappointing end of the race for us when Falken was bouncing between 3rd and 5th place at the time.

Anyway, I’ll stop typing. Read on for a ton of images and captions from my weekend with Falken’s ALMS team at Elkhart Lake.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – as humans

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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – the four brothers, as humans.

My idea and interpretation of what my favorite childhood characters might look like if it were shot with humans instead of mutant turtles.
A project that has been over a year in the making and still has a long way to go before I would consider it complete.

From left to right: Beau as Raphael, Chase as Donatello, Me/John as Leonardo, and Mike as Michelangelo

The idea stems from two things… First, was my desire and interest in doing a ninja-inspired shoot. I love movie imagery and movie posters, and one of my favorite movies for hard-light, rough imagery, is Ninja Assassin with the Korean pop star Rain. He reached an incredible level of fitness for the role and the movie images were hard and rough – to really accent his physique and darker theme.
The twist of doing turtles came from my friend Katie, who was always a huge supporter of my work and different shoots. She joked one night that I should “DO A NINJA TURTLE SHOOT!” since it was my favorite thing as child. My response was “How the hell am I going to do Ninja Turtles?”
It wasn’t until a couple days later that I figured out a way to mix the two.

I figured that if I could assemble four physically-fit, lean, willing models that all I needed to do was match the weapons to the colors of each brother and people would “get it”. The idea of using makeup/face-paint came from my good friend, Makeup Artist Elle Favorule who casually pointed out in conversation “you can just paint on eye-bands instead of trying to figure out a sash or something”. Boom. Done. MUCH easier.

I knew immediately that if I was going to do this then I would be Leonardo. He was my favorite character growing up… and let’s be real, it’s my project. Personally I’m in pretty good shape year round. For this project I doubled my workouts and the amount of food I was eating. Leo is the oldest of the four and the leader – so I knew I had to not only be at top physical condition, but also look like I should be leading. haha

For Raphael it was an easy choice as well. Beau is one of my best friends and in ridiculous shape. I texted him and told him the concept, and said something like “so… uh… stay in shape…” since I knew he was very likely already where he needed to be to shoot. Plus Beau photographs really well and is always down for whatever idea I come up with. Raph is the hothead of the four with an attitude problem and relies on his incredible strength – and I knew Beau could do attitude for me with this shoot.

Michelangelo was an easy choice as well. For the youngest of the four brothers I needed someone high energy and goofy…. well, that’s my good friend Crazy Mike Gaboff – a stuntman and video personality here in Los Angeles. I’d shot with Mike a couple times and knew his smaller, but super lean build would fit the character great. And I figured he would have a lot of fun with it.

Donatello was the most difficult to fill… I went through a couple models, honestly. Ultimately I decided that I wanted someone taller than I am (and I’m 6’2), someone that was lean and even possibly more bulked than me in the photo was the goal. Donny was the calculated, stoic brother and I had a hard time finding someone that I was happy with the final look. Chase is a model I worked with a while back and for some reason, never considered asking. He randomly contacted me, and after pitching the idea, he was down to shoot and help me round out the group. And at 6’4″ and leaned-out he fit the look I wanted.

So what’s next? Click the break for several photos from behind the scenes at the shoots and hear about the next phase of this project.

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My shoots with the Budweiser Girls

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So I’ve done two different shoots with the Budweiser Girls over the last couple months… and keep forgetting to share the images here.
They’re already on my website in my portfolio, and several of you probably already saw them on Facebook if you follow my work there. But, I figured I’d post them on my blog for everyone who hasn’t seen them yet.

Our first shoot was down in Orange County a few months ago. That proved to be a very long day as several of the girls flaked out or were running late. Haha, oh models…
The second shoot went a lot smoother, there were still a few cancellations, which always happens with groups it seems like. Oh well, the ones that made it will have new photos at least. Most of my time was spent joking with Liz (who is an old friend that I’ve worked with several times – you guys got a copy of my Christmas card with her, right?). And as girls were ready we’d do a number of shots to get the poses and variety that was needed, and move on to the next. Pretty simple and straight forward, really.

Honestly, there’s not a ton to say about the shoot since it’s girls in bikinis and corsets on a white backdrop… So, I’ll just get on to the photos. Click the past the break for more..

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Back to Michigan for the Gilding Wedding

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Another old classmate and journalism friend got married two weeks ago – and I was there in Michigan to be part of it!

As many of you know, I just spent about 10 days out in the Midwest… the first time I’ve been back out that way in nearly two years. I was there to shoot Katie and Ryan’s wedding in Michigan. Katie and I used to work at the paper together in college while attending Central Michigan University. Many times we were the ones that would run out to cover some small spot news assignment like car accidents or things like that. Honestly, it’s funny to look back on the thing that we would go out to photograph and write about for the paper. Small town life during college was pretty different for someone like me.

Since college I returned home to California and Katie, over time, switched from journalism and writing to become a teacher. She now lives outside of her home state of Michigan and laughed with me about old stories from college and how things never really go how you expect them to when you’re working on your degree. My first evening with Katie and Ryan’s families was spent at the wedding rehearsal and dinner. And while there we caught up on other old friends and who still keep in touch with and who has gone where since those long nights in the newsroom working on the next mornings edition.

When I first met Ryan earlier that afternoon one of the first things he said to me was “it’s nice to finally meet you.. I’ve recently become a big fan of your work!” Receiving compliments is always flattering, and I responded with “Oh! Great! You’ve looked at it!” Haha! You guys would be surprised how many people I shoot for that haven’t really taken a look at my photography. Typically I’m booked by one of the two who has either met me, seen my work, or was referred to me by a friend of theirs. And it’s great to get referrals that way, but it’s equally funny when I hear that the other person in the wedding may not have seen any of my work.

The rehearsal started off a bit bumpy… oddly enough the wedding coordinator at the country club didn’t come out to help us, show us around, or give any sort of direction like “here’s where things are and here’s a basic idea of how things will go tomorrow”. Luckily we found one guy that was able to tell us approximately how things would be set up and where everyone would be getting ready.
Then once that part was sorted out I ended up helping everyone organize and figure out timing and details of the entrance/exit.  Typically I only have to stand back and watch at rehearsals, but, if people are a little unsure of which order things should go then that’s where it helps that I’ve done this a bunch of times. Katie and Ryan were great about it too and laughed and thanked me for helping keep everyone moving through the rehearsal. Personally I think the funniest part was after we did a run through and I had to tell everyone to walk through it once more so I could actually take a photo or two instead of just directing!

The next morning started out a little slower since it was an afternoon wedding which meant the girls were going to be getting ready a bit later in the day. I made my way out of the hotel and out to the golf course. Katie and Ryan would both be getting ready at this location so there was only going to be one stop the whole day for all of us.

When I arrived at the venue Katie and her bridesmaids were already bouncing around getting things set up. Katie’s dad Mr. Maurer was also running around making sure things with the reception hall were looking good and organized, too.
And after the last part of the morning rush was done (which I fortunately missed) it was time to have a small lunch and then get ready to get ready. The next two hours or so was spent in the bridal room preparing with hair, makeup, and of course stories about college, work and other things in life. I was able to catch up with Katie a little more as well as get to know her bridesmaids a bit and hear about their lives – like Amy who works with sea turtles in the South.

Their ceremony was beautiful. Even though it was June in Michigan, it was breezy and perfect temperature in the shade under the trees where Ryan and Katie had their ceremony. Afterward we had just a bit of time to run out to the golf course for a few photos with everyone before the reception started.

The rest of the evening was a blast with plenty of dancing, drinks, and fun had by everyone that was there. I’ll save a lot more of the details for the captions as usual. I invite you to read on past the break for about 160 images of Katie and Ryan Gilding’s wedding.

 

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Ana and Daniel Godoy’s Socal Wedding

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Ana and I have been talking about her wedding since last year – and now it’s already over and they’re returning from their honeymoon! And when I really stop and think about it, it doesn’t seem like that long ago that me, Ana, and several of our other friends were sitting around in college playing pool and ordering food late at night at Santa Clara University.

I’ve actually known Ana for nearly nine years – I met her through a couple friends of mine back in college when we both still were in living in the Bay Area. Since then I’ve traveled around the US while completing my degree – and now for my photography. Ana went on to move to Los Angeles, continue even more schooling and become a doctor. But we would keep in touch online over the years. And then, last year, when Daniel asked Ana to marry him, Ana asked me to be her photographer.

For those of you guys that follow my work on Facebook, you may remember seeing their engagement photos that we shot at the LA Zoo. Those were actually somewhat recent since all of our schedules are pretty hectic and it took a while to lock down a date that worked with everyone’s schedules.

Daniel and Ana were married last week in a gorgeous catholic ceremony in Southern California.  When I arrived that morning the men were just heading out to another house for the day. The ladies would actually be using Daniel’s families house to prepare for the morning. So I said my hellos and goodbyes to guys and waited and for Ana to arrive after getting the all-clear that Daniel wasn’t there any longer.

The plan was to eventually make it over to meet up with the men as they got ready… and that just didn’t end up happening since things with all the ladies ran a bit later than we expected. Oh well, they have to wait for the bride anyway, right?

The ceremony was beautiful, and the church was surprisingly well-lit. Typically for church weddings that I’ve shot they tend to be very dark with very few windows, so it was awesome that this location had tons of light pouring in and made it very easy to shoot plenty of images for Ana and Daniel.
At the end of the ceremony, after the pastor introduced Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Godoy to everyone in the audience, Daniel turned and said “So can I kiss her now?” to which the preacher started laughing and said “YOU BETTER KISS HER!”

From there we headed out to the golf course where the reception was being held. The first hour or so we spent outside taking photos and getting a few more group shots and fun shots in with everyone. And, of course, there HAD to that jerk-golfer-guy that clearly sees us taking photos yet seemingly tries to walk into each of our shots and stand on the practice putting green in the background. There were several times that we had to wait because he walked closer to us to “practice” or whatever. Haha, there is ALWAYS someone like that. You think people would be polite enough to wait 5 or 10 minutes til were were done taking a few photos at that spot and had moved on.

Ana and Daniel’s reception was a blast. They seriously had one of the best DJ’s I’ve heard at a wedding as far as his music selection for the night. And there were several family members that didn’t seem to leave the dance floor the entire night – they seriously danced for like 6 hours it seemed like. I stuck around and chatted with Ana as the night went on, and even though I wasn’t really shooting any more at that point it was nice to get to know everyone a bit more and talk.

As I do with every wedding blog, I’ll leave the rest of my comments for the captions. The biggest “problem” with this blog is that Ana is a very old friend of mine, which made it very hard for me to narrow down the image choices to share. So, click past the break for over 200 images from the Vargas-Godoy wedding in Los Angeles a week ago…

And to Ana and Daniel, Thank You for having me be part of your day!

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Molly and Alan Rowe’s Los Gatos Wedding

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Two weeks ago I was back in the Bay Area to shoot the wedding of Molly and Alan Rowe. Being asked by Alan to shoot for him and Molly came as a complete surprise to me, to be honest. I knew Alan back during high school from playing sports together. But, I’ve known him much more over the years as “Monica’s friend Alan” since he’s very good friends with my sister and is part of their high school group. So, it was a big compliment for a second wedding couple from my sister’s circle of friends to contact me about shooting for them – the first was Nicole and Will Machallister a couple years ago.

I’ve ALWAYS remembered Alan as that upbeat, goofy crazy kinda person – and that side was totalllly apparent during the wedding weekend I spent with Alan and Molly’s families. The best part is that his goofiness totally compliments his wife’s quieter, shy demeanor. And when they interact you can see how much they care about each other – even while Alan was doing ridiculous things like “now dip me!” during their first dance! HAHAHA!!!

Molly and Alan got married in Los Gatos at a family friends house in a beautiful little ceremony in the backyard – it’s a huge backyard though, don’t be fooled everyone. LOL.
The day started out normally enough… with me meeting all the girls at the hotel while they started their hair and makeup for the morning. I was met with groans and “um, don’t take pictures of me looking like this!!” when Molly’s sisters realized a boy was going to be hanging out with them all morning. Sorry ladies! Hope you approve of the shots!
I broke away later on to head over to Alan’s house where all the guys would be getting ready before heading to the wedding location. The men had started their morning a bit slower, and Mrs. Rowe was teasing me saying “Waittt! No photos here! I’m not ready!” when she realized I was showing up to the Rowe residence, camera in hand.
Shortly after getting a few of the various shots I wanted I took Alan’s sister with me back to meet up with all the ladies as they finished preparing Molly for that afternoon. As Molly’s Mom and sisters all helped her with her dress and the last bit of preparations, the guys started to arrive. We were going to do a first-look due to timing of the events that afternoon. The family was starting to rush around thinking we were running late – all the while Molly was casually just waiting for her moment to go see her husband-to-be, as she laughed with her bridesmaids.
Alan and Molly’s first look was really cute. I think at first they seemed to feel like “so we just look surprised?” but after a minute or two they quickly seemed to ignore both myself and the family watching from the balcony and chatted with each other, talked and walked around the ceremony area, and even (completely on their own) walked over and stood in their positions they were about to get married in. Too cute.

The ceremony went off great with both lots of laughs and several tears from parents and family. The reception was a blast – and I wouldn’t expect any less. As I mentioned this is the second wedding I’ve been part of for this group of friends – and I’ve always known them to be a lot of fun. A couple hours of food, toasts, cake, and dancing later the evening was coming to an end – but not before Alan had to go through a car full of balloons with the car key hidden in one of them! How’s that for one last “Congrats” from your buddies before you leave for the hotel?

As always, I’ll post other details in my captions. But please read on and enjoy 150 shots from my weekend with the Rowe, McSpadden and Ward families!

Click the break for more:

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The Tickle-Ripp wedding in Baltimore

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Angela and Kevin’s wedding, also known as “The wedding I shot because of the wedding I shot because of the wedding I shot…”

Makes perfect sense right? I just returned from the East Coast and shooting the Tickle-Ripp wedding in Baltimore. I joked with several friends about the wedding any time I was asked how I ended up shooting way out in Maryland. “Oh! Well, I met Kevin and Angela at a wedding I was shooting in Michigan. Kevin was the Best Man to Ray, who married Alison. And I met Alison two years prior when she was a bridesmaid for Jessica…. did you follow all that?”

For those of you reading, here’s a easy-to-understand graphic…

I constantly say how flattering it is that my clients bring me all over the country to shoot for them. And connections like this one (the Ripp wedding) are an incredible example of friendships made during business trips.

When I first met Kevin and Angela it was during the Johnson wedding – during the rehearsal dinner. I was among the first to arrive at the restaurant along with Kevin and Angela. We all were sitting at the bar talking about various things, including how I was there from California and they were in town from DC.
From just the first 20 minutes or so sitting with the two of them chatting about nothing important it was clear how much they cared about each other. Several of us joke about how they’re disgustingly cute together – and that’s the truth. But at the same time it’s so awesome when you see people that can be totally genuine around each other AND others at the same time.
We kept in touch through facebook and followed each others photos after returning to our home states. And after they were engaged I was thrilled when I got an email from Kevin asking about coming out to Baltimore to shoot for them!

I was excited to arrive in Baltimore and meet up with everyone when that Friday afternoon for the rehearsal finally rolled around. If the Tickle and Ripp families and friends were anything like Kevin and Angela, then it was going to be an awesome couple days!
We all met up at the hotel and then headed out to the church for practice – there was a ton of traffic. On my cab ride there I talked to the driver about how he had come to the US and built a new life for himself. As we talked about travel and travel-times he laughingly said that as much as he misses home back in Africa the long plane flight keeps him from ever visiting. LOL!

Once at the rehearsal the pastor was shocked when I hadn’t heard about “the photo”… Turns out that Angela wanted a group shot with everyone at the wedding directly after the ceremony. The pastor said in 37 years he had never done anything like that and hoped it would work out well. I smiled and said “No problem! I just did that two weeks ago out in Yosemite at a wedding”. The rehearsal dinner was out on the water at the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Lots of laughs and lots of story telling. My favorite part of the dinners are getting a chance to know everyone a little bit, and also making them more comfortable around me and a camera since I’ll be running around the next day with them non-stop.

The wedding day started as normal – hanging out with all the girls as they did all their hair and makeup prep. It’s always hilarious to sit and listen to the stories the girls laugh about throughout the morning. Poor Michelle was being picked on and teased about being “The Drunk Bridesmaid” because she finished Kevin’s drinks the night prior at the after party. Realistically though she gets bonus points for taking them for the team since she was keeping Kevin from having too many drinks before his big day. Team player all the way! Haha!

The ceremony was beautiful, and the pastor was awesome. There were several points where he needed to be directly in front of the bride and groom for ceremonial reasons. However the rest of the time he stepped off to the side. He had told me “the ceremony is NOT about me. I don’t understand the pastors who make it about them, but I try to give as much attention to the bride and groom as possible.” How great is that?

After the ceremony we went up to Federal Hill to do a few photos with the skyline in the background. I also did a dip shot (top of this blog) as I do with most of my weddings.. We had quite an audience that day, too. It was nice out and there were lots of families sitting and watching us. One lady actually came up to Angela to congratulate her, and then said that everyone looked like they were having fun and that she wished her wedding photographer took fun ones like we were doing that afternoon. I can’t even take any credit for that comment either, we were just joking around and not doing anything too specific.

The reception was back at the hotel and everyone celebrated through the evening hours. There is plenty more I could continue to write about, but I’ll save a lot more for the captions. I always feel like I have so many wonderful stories and things to say about each wedding I do. But I’m fairly sure you’re here to see photos and not just read about it. So, click past the break for 170 images from the Tickle-Ripp wedding.

Click below to read on

 

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Michelle and Eric’s Yosemite Wedding

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“We live near the beach… and we can go any time. So we decided to get married somewhere different.”

Michelle explained to me that both her and Eric had put a lot of thought into location ideas for their wedding. And that after considering several typical locations/settings they ended up deciding on Yosemite for their ceremony. Rather than do a rushed ceremony in the main valley, the Boyko’s selected Evergreen Lodge for a much more relaxed and intimate weekend with their closest friends and family.
I had met Eric and Michelle a year ago, through the car community which both Eric and I are active in. I remember during that evening that Michelle stood and talked to me for quite a while about wedding photography and some of the various traveling I had done with my work. And as things turned out, I ended up being asked to shoot for them later on in their finalization of their wedding plans!

The weekend at Evergreen was awesome. Eric and Michelle kept their wedding very small – only their oldest and closest friends and family members were in attendance. And Evergreen keeps their weddings to a one-per-weekend setup. This is incredibly rare and also quite amazing because it allows the Lodge to be available and tend to their wedding party’s needs throughout those couple days. Michelle said that was actually a major factor in their decision – that it avoided the assembly-line feel of getting married in a location with two weddings per day or more.

So Eric and Michelle were married in a meadow. It was beautiful, and the weather that day was perfect. Actually, the weather the whole weekend was pretty amazing. Everyone arrived on Friday afternoon and checked in. After a short rehearsal and walk-through of the ceremony we all joined the rest of the wedding guests for a barbeque at the John Muir House. The lodge-chef had prepared some pretty awesome food options, and had previously told Michelle that he believes if you serve amazing food at your facility that guests will remember that and come back again.
That night there were drinks to be had, smores to be made, and plenty of stories shared around the campfire after “the adults” had all gone back to their cabins, hahaha!

The wedding day started slowly as many guests tried to figure out where they would go hiking that morning. As usual, I tagged along with Michelle and chatted with her and her family members getting to know everyone a bit better throughout the early afternoon. As the ceremony time approached, I headed over to meet up with the guys and get a few shots of them as well. As I arrived at the Muir House where everyone was staying, I found most of them scrambling a bit to finish getting ready. It seemed as though they misjudged just how long the hiking would take! Uh-oh!

But the ceremony started without issue, went beautifully, and the reception was a blast. I’ll save most of what I have to say for the captions on the images below. I had a great time though, and was thrilled to be part of the Boyko wedding so unexpectedly.

Click past the break for 130 images from my weekend with the Boyko and Cronin families

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