Senior!: Anjli!

Anjli has aspirations of becoming a journalist and I was all too happy to impart my little bit of knowledge about working in the media. It's been quite a few years since I worked as a press photographer but I still look back on it fondly as one of the best experiences ever. I was so in love with that AP stylebook for writing captions that I still have it on my bookshelf to this day.

Anjli was a lot of fun and we shot around the Capital grounds and the warehouse district.

ENGAGE! Nichelle and Darren

These two were very shy in front of the camera but warmed up after a little bit and have become one of my favorite engagements shoots! Wow! They requested the couch multiple times and I obliged happily dragging out to the shoot. These two were very sweet and I just loved the locations that we found to juxtapose them against.



This will be on my studio wall some time in the future. Could there be anyone with more passion besides these two?



I still don't know what to think of this shot and they sure as heck didn't know what I was going for either. It just had an interesting feel to it. Was it forbidden love between a beautiful lady and a cage fighter or something else. I'll let you interpret it how you like.

The doors would fall of this car if we had opened the door. At least that's what was written in the windows.

Senior: Madison!

Madison is a dancer and her and her mom had a couple ideas for shooting outside that were fun including shooting in a fountain at the Arboretum. She found a formal dress that fit for an incredible steal of $20 and decided to see how she felt about getting it wet and taking pictures of the event. It was fun!




Love the shoes!

Engage: Ashley and Larkin!

What a whirlwind of a shoot Ashley and Larkin had. They live in a small town in Louisiana that is really in the middle of nowhere and it took 6 hours to reach Austin for their engagement. They brought their dogs and Ashley rode with two dogs on her lap because the back seat was filled with people. Rain was forecast for the exact time of the shoot and Ashley needed to be on a plane for Jamaica the next day so this was truly their only window of opportunity to shoot their engagement. By the grace of God, it sprinkled a little for the entire shoot and just as we were saying our goodbyes began to hammer us with rain. What an amazing bit of luck that everything worked out so well and the shoot turned out so fabulously besides all that happened.

Couple: Michelle and Josh!

My old friend Josh found himself Michelle, a nice girl from Glendale, CA and here's a few pictures from a shoot I did for them. We only could meet after it got dark so just about every shot needed to be lit which made shooting a little harder than usual. The sun is a wonderful light source and you've got to be a little more creative and patient when shooting in the dark.

Josh has a job in Hollywood working at a digital HD camera rental house for motion picture and television production which I have visited on several occasion. He has free reign of the place and all of the gear that's not rented and we have had a great deal of fun experimenting with the same cameras that were used to shoot Star Wars, Episode II and III. On our last visit we didn't have time to come up with some crazy HD project to shoot so we didn't visit the rental house but Josh was telling me that they have the new Red Camera, made by the folks at Oakley Sunglasses which is supposed to be the most revolutionary HD camera in the world with something like 12 MP per frame at 30 frames a second. The biggest problem right now is that most places aren't set up to edit a digital file with that much information. Maybe we'll get one of these if these two decided to get married and we shoot his wedding. Wouldn't that be a treat?!

Toilet To The Stars

My uncle is in the portable toilet business. Not the Andy Gumps or Capital Chem Cans that you are used to seeing on job sites around Austin or wherever. These are really deluxe trailers with running water and apparently are clean enough for the most discriminating of Hollywood stars to leave their waste and feel good knowing that the paper towels they used were recycled.

During the writers strike, my uncle found himself bored out of his mind because there wasn't anything to do. Apparently, no one had to go during that time either. I talked to him a few days before the writers strike ended and asked him what he thought about the writers demands. He said they were greedy and they should stop complaining. He said that he would love to be paid for the rest of his life for the job he does today. He said that the production stops just as quick if there isn't a toilet somewhere nearby. He was obviously unhappy with the writers and told me that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars during the three month strike.

Looming in the distance there looks to be a actor strike coming up fast. The actors have many of the same gripes that the writers had with the exception of one that I thought interesting: Product placement. That's right, they want a piece of the action every time the studio gets paid something by Coke, Disney, Apple, or whoever to have their soda, Donald Duck, or a computer used or held or spoken about by the actors in a film or television show. Wow. These people want to get paid extra if they hold a Coke instead of generic brand X. Talk about greed.

If it was up to me I'd fire them all. For every writer and actor there is in the guilds in Hollywood there are ten others waiting behind them. Waiting to be discovered. Most of them have talent, have the look, have what it takes to make it in the business but can't do it because the business is all tied up by the guilds. The theory is that if the studios fire all of the guild writers and hire non-guild writers that every other guild or union from the actors to the directors to the laziest teamster grips would all strike and nothing would get done at all. Most of these people are all replaceable as far I'm concerned. Just because you are a teamster and your only duty is to move the camera from point A to point B and not from point B to point A doesn't mean you should make $100k a year and it doesn't mean you are guaranteed work forever. Let's fire every single one of them and replace them with a fresh batch of people excited to be in the business. Maybe there would be entertainment that was actually entertaining rather than one crummy show after another sinking to the lowest common denominator. Fire them all and let's see what happens. Maybe you'll be sitting in a stall next to Cameron Diaz or Tom Cruise in one of my uncle's extremely high end toilet trailers on a break from shooting something new that is better.

Have a different opinion? I'd love to hear it.

ENGAGE: Allison and Trey!

Allison and Trey seem to be obsessed with my couch. They were surprised when I showed up at their shoot and didn't have the couch lodged in the backseat of my Scion Xb. Apparently they thought I just took the couch with me everywhere I went and used it as a prop in every shoot. That's not exactly the case though if you ask my really nicely, I might throw it in the back of the car and bring it out to your shoot. To make up for not bringing it to the shoot I promised that I could bring it out to their wedding in Houston in April which may or may not be a good idea. This couch has been around a lot lately. Maybe I should register a domain just for the couch. How does www.rebelwithacouch.com sound?

Aside from not shooting on the couch, the shoot went well and we were able to make many unique images around Austin!

Bride on The Run: Sara at the Barr Mansion!

Sara was tired. She had been up at the crack of dawn to have her hair and make-up done. I was tired , but didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn for my hair and make-up. That generally makes me happy. Anyhoo, Sara was a little nervous but looked good had a fabulous dress and we met at the Barr Mansion for the shoot and these are some of the images that we created around the grounds and in the buildings there. Absolutely fabulous!

Two Rings Bind Them: Brittnee and Robert at Vintage Villas!

Brittnee and Robert had a really wild time planning their wedding. Robert is stationed in Iraq and only had an 18 day leave to return for his wedding. He arrived two days later than they expected only 5-days before the wedding. I suppose they were just so happy to see each other that they glossed over the incredible amount of stress they were under during planning. I can only imagine how much of my hair would fall out under that kind of stress! They decided on an indoor ceremony because the weather was a little nippy as the sun set and the breeze coming off the lake was like a frozen hell that I even could feel through my down coat. Brittnee and the ladies braved the cold to take advantage of the beautiful sunset at Vintage Villas. It was a great wedding with a great deal of happy family clearly overjoyed at seeing Robert home after almost 8-months.










Wow, this is an incredible cake! Simon Lee can make anything and it always is the best tasting cake around!

Bridal: Brittnee!

I met Brittnee at Janna and Ryan's wedding that I shot in May at Villa Antonia within site of Lake Travis. Her fiance had just left the day before on a tour Iraq.

Her bridal was on a pretty cool day which Brittnee refused to call 'freezing' though I think her mom and sister-in-law all agreed that it was FREEZING! Other than the FREEZING weather, it was a fantastic day. We shot at the Capital but worked hard to make it not really look like a tradition Capital shoot with the Capital Building in the background. Hey, that's what I do: Something different. After FREEZING at the Capital for a period of time, Brittnee was very happy to hop into the warm car and drive downtown for a while to shoot around the warehouse district, one of those places that I never get bored of shooting. It was awesome!






I love it! So undignified for a bride to be shouting at a public pay phone but it's so perfect at the same time! It's just so rebelious!