Epic and Long

You may remember if you follow my blog the engagement session I had with Nick and Sofia. Well they got married this year, and they had an epic wedding with an epic story, and this will be a long blog with more pictures than I usually post. If you read the previous blog then you would know that their story intertwines with Lianne and I's engagement. I was planning to ask Lianne to marry me the same weekend that Sofia predicted when Nick would ask her to marry him. Since it was such a bold prediction, I offered to do her wedding photos if her prediction came true. Well, it came true, and she called me, and so we began the process of getting things in order for me to be able to take care of all of her photography details.

They intended to have a large wedding so I would need help to do their wedding properly. Its been pretty easy to meet other photographers along my journey as a photographer, but this wedding was special in that I wanted to work with photographers that would personally know Sofia like I did. So I chose John Arroyo and Bob Church. They both went to high school with Sofia and I, and because of the story behind this wedding for me they were perfect choices. Bob Church has expressed a great interest in photography in the past few years and is well on his way to starting out on his own. John Arroyo on the other hand has been working on his photography for quite a bit longer and has done wedding work on his own and we have worked together on a couple occasions. Both of them do great work on their own, and I was confident in having them work with me on this wedding. On weddings in general it can be much less stressful to have more eyes on things. So having extra guys I could count on makes a difference.

Their wedding was absolutely beautiful and classy, and working with both of them was a real pleasure. I hope the pictures do our experience justice, and you enjoy their wedding day through pictures. I am grateful to have friends to whom have shared this wedding work with, and proud of both of them for pursuing photography and doing great work! Any of the photos that I have posted of theirs will have a hover over photo credit and link to their public social media outlooks where you can follow them or see more of their photography.

This last photo was extra special because it was an STA photo! Proud to be an STA alumn, and it was great to share this photo at Sofia and Nick's wedding with so many others who went to high school with us and could understand that STA pride.

Short and Sweet

Short and sweet, this couple's engagement took place during the Ultra Concert week in Miami, so the fact that we started earlier in the afternoon, and finished just at sunset was perfect for traffic and getting to the spots we needed to shoot. The majority of work I do is for old friends that I have gone to school with who have seen my photography on Facebook and like my work, other than that its current friends and referrals from those friends that get me work outside of the friend zone. I have been fortunate to be working for over seven years and continue to get jobs that I really enjoy doing. I really don't market or try to sell out my photography. There was a time where I heavily pursued, volunteered, and solicited work earlier in my just starting out days, and in that past few years with blog posting it was really a great platform to advertise my work as a service and a product. Now outside of posting in Facebook and the less than occasional blog posts I really do not actively pursue extra work anymore.

While posting about personal travels and family photos is pretty great marketing, and these blogs don't hurt either as far as people seeing my work, I seem to stay busy enough without the ambitious hustle I had at one time, working by word of mouth and friends has been just fine lately. The personal posts are just natural and a more organic way for me to share my work. Its a luxury really and I am grateful for the work I get, and happy that I don't have to be a salesman. I went to school with Minh at University of Miami, and it was the same for him when he asked me about taking photos for his wedding. His fiance on the other hand took some convincing probably not so much by me, but Minh for sure was laying it on her to like my photography and trust me when it came to taking her photos. This engagement photo session was probably more of an interview for their wedding than I knew it was, but I wasn't too worried about it. It was an honor to work with them and having them both be Vietnamese was special too since my mother is Vietnamese. My mom was thrilled I would be shooting a Vietnamese couple.

While I have learned so much since beginning photography in 2001, one common theme about the work aspect has been about fine tuning processes to become more efficient at the parts of the creative process that take time and are tedious. Post processing can be that black hole that photographers can get stuck in that eats up all of their time. From shot selection, editing, to finally publishing work either through print or some other online media, there is value in that time for each part of the creative post-process that excludes the actual photographing part. There are several solutions to those parts of photography, they can be outsourced, they can be automated, or even they can be learned and poured over so that every single photo can be treated as if it were a masterpiece. I have taken the longer route, but then have made every attempt to automate my processes and fine tune my post-processing to match my shooting style, and selectively choose which photos need or not need to be poured over as if they were a masterpieces.

I find great freedom in posting directly from my camera now-a-days, but I also enjoy the art of post-processing to make some really spectacular works of art whether it be of people, landscapes, sport, or wildlife. Currently with my blogging I am learning the short and sweet posting without spending too much time or thought. I use to spend weeks on planning, writing, and shot selection in a season where I was learning how to be great at blogging and really showcase my work. Now I am learning to be a factory that churns out a blog post in one 30 minute session from planning, shot selection/editing, to writing and posting every couple days. It is liberating, and I hope you enjoy the frequency and the journey as you follow my posts from the work I have done over the past year!

3 Pre-Honeymoons and 1 Official

Our marriage began going from one honeymoon to the next for the rest of the year after our wedding. You have already been previewed to my working vacation to California and to our family trip to Chile. We were really fortunate to spend very little money in all of our travels and even delay our official honeymoon for that reason only to feel like we spent a fortune with all of the travelling we did. From a company trip scheduled for the weekend after our wedding to the Portofino Resort in Orlando, FL, to San Jose and San Francisco, CA for a working vacation, Santiago and Viña del Mar Chile, and finally to our official honeymoon in Costa Rica, we couldn’t have asked for any better start to our marriage.

The three previous photos were from the bay area at the Portofino Resort, Orlando during Sunset. The colors were magical. For our official honeymoon, I didn’t take too many photos either; I did take my camera and my point and shoot, but just as accessories. It was just great to be in such a beautiful place with beautiful scenery relaxing with Lianne. Neither of us had been to Costa Rica before and so we went with a blank slate. We both researched things we would like to do before we went, but didn’t set anything in stone prior to being there. From having no real agenda other than being there together, to finding spontaneous day adventures in which we both picked something that we really enjoyed, Costa Rica had everything we could want for our official honeymoon. For anyone considering Costa Rica, we highly recommend it and going just before peak tourism season in December worked out just great for us.

Enjoy!

Jose + Jamie

Being contacted by friends who have since moved away is always great to hear from and catch up with. Although I didn't know Jamie very well, I did get to spend time with Jose while I lived in Miami, and what a great guy. His genuine love and passion for life was visible both from a distant and in close relationship with him. I always admired his outlook on life and really felt his sincerity when speaking to him. Speaking to them now, they both seemed to have grown so much more than I could have imagined in the short time they were away. Such wisdom and experience has been instilled in them. It was an honor to capture this post marriage engagement shoot for Jose and Jamie as they are both working side by side in youth ministry together on an awesome adventure fully trusting in God and all of the great paths He has set before them together as one. Hope you enjoy this sweet couple's photos!

Working Vacation

Shortly after Lianne and I were married, I had a scheduled work training planned in Orlando, FL; a week before the training, I found out it was cancelled. My plan was to take Lianne and spend the week in Orlando. To make a long story short, I was forced to re-book for the next available training in San Jose, CA. I didn't mind, and neither did Lianne. Fortunately, Lianne's mom is retired from Delta, so this means she travels very cheaply. It has been something that she has learned to take advantage of when she can. Although I had to work while I was there, it was still nice to get away, bring Lianne, and plan for some extra time at the end of our trip to do some sight seeing. Lianne had never been to San Jose, nor had she drove the Pacific Coast Highway. So the last day of the week for me was a half day, so we took our time and found the rose garden in San Jose, and spent the rest of the day there. The next day, we made our way up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. We stopped along the way, went to the beach, took some scenic hikes, and really just took it all in. Once we got to San Francisco we spent the rest of the daylight hours in Sausalito. There was an art festival there, and the weather was just absolutely perfect so we walked through the town, and came to a nice little restaurant on the water. There was bocci ball and great tapas. Before heading to the airport for the red-eye, we hit a local favorite Afghan Restaurant in San Francisco.