Engagement - Yia & Sal

I spent yesterday afternoon in San Diego for Yia & Sal's Engagement session.

Yia and Sal have been dating for over 7 years. In my afternoon with them, I definitely can feel the love and devolution they have for each other.

Here are some of my favorite pictures.

Enjoy the Slideshow!

Meridian Vineyards - Paso Robles, CA

Erin and I wrapped up our last October wedding at the beautiful Meridian Vineyards up in Paso Robles. Our couple Kate and Tyronne live in NYC but both of them have lots of families and friends out in California. 

I think Tyronne had found us through the Wedding Photo Journalist Association website. Our first meeting was the day of the wedding. Prior to that, we mostly communicated via email and with a couple phone calls.  Kate and Tyronne are so sweet and cute. And, definitely they have a sophisticated culinary palette. The reception menu was unbelievable.  I want a list of their favorite NYC restaurants for my next visit to the Big Apple

Jolie at Accompli Event Design & Coordination did a wonderful job of put the day together. 

Here are a couple of my favorite photos:

Here is their slideshow : )

Marina & Mike - Malibu Beach, Ca

Surrounded by an friends and families from Spain, Texas and New York; the ceremony was held near sunset. Thank you Mike and Marina - for sharing your special day. You guys are beautiful, kind, earthy and sincere. The day was full of emotions and happiness.

Greeting of the guests:
The ceremony started with Mike greeting each guest and handing out steams of white flowers. Upon descending from the staircase to the cove, the guests returned the flowers to Marina. They became her bouquet.

Last Shots

Thank you Mayra and Jasson for posing for these two shots.  More pictures and the slideshow to come.

Heather & Ciaran's Slideshow!

Enjoy,

Cheers,
-Erin

Heather and Ciaran's Wedding

There is something to be said for shooting late in the day. The light is so magical. So many people worry about having enough light, but it always seem to me that when you are almost out of light, that is when the magic happens. Last night my wife Courtney and I shot Heather and Ciaran's wedding. We had a lot of fun and shot a ton of images. It will take a few weeks for me to comb through everything, but I wanted to pick one to share.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

Cheers,
-Erin

A couple of Engagement Sessions

Hi Everyone! I shot a few engagement sessions this past weekend. The first couple was Rebecca and Ryan. Rebecca is a fellow Art Center Alumni and wanted something a little more urban for their engagement session. I found this great location and we had a lot of fun.









The next day I was hanging out with Brett and Bowen. We hung out around Old Town Pasadena. I played with the color on a few of these as they are going to use on of these images for their save the date which has a mid thirties old California feel a la Steinbeck. At the end of the night we went for Gelato and enjoyed the warm summer night.









Cheers! Erin

Thanks to Little Winter Bride

We were recently discovered (via my wife's webstite: Flush Designs) and written up by a cool blog called Little Winter Bride. She's a New Yorker living in Milan writing about cool stuff from all around. Not too bad of a life. I would say that's getting pretty close to the Dolce Vita if you ask me. If you get a chance, hop over to Little Winter Bride. Check it out, subscribe, post and enjoy.

Thanks!!
-Erin

Album - Queensberry

Many of our clients are extremely excited with our new Queensberry album. We,too, are in love with it.

Queensberry is a New Zealand based album company. I definitely think it is one of the best in the market. There are numerous cover options. All mats are laser-cut so we are not confined to pre-designed templates. The end result is a one-of-the-kind heirloom!

Courtney & Erin

Inspired by the aged brick wall of the wedding site, Courtney chose this plum leather with heavy grains for the album cover.

This spread showcases a fold-out flip page.

See below for an album slideshow with more images.

How to Be A Bridesmaid

Bigger Pictures

I just updated our blog template. Check it out, we can finally post pictures that are 935 pixels wide. The format is a bit overwhelming because many people's monitor may not be able to handle the large dimension.

Here are more pictures from Boston. Technically, it was a "vacation" but I really spent most of my time testing, researching, thinking on ways to improve on photography. Boston is like a second home town to me. I love all the public spaces and cityscapes.

Edit: ok.  Apparently I didn't get it right. My blog is bigger in format but the pictures are still the small under whelming size.  I will keep trying.

Edit 2:  I figured it out.  Apparently there is no easy way of doing this.  I had to individually edit the image size in html.  Currently the horizontal images are 600 pixels wide.  And the vertical images are 400 pixels wide.  All images are hosted off site for best results.  

My niece Anja and my sister.

Julieanne & Lauren

I've known Julieanne for over 20 years.  Scary to say we are both in our early 30's.  She's married with a child.  Me - I have dogs.  In high school, we were inseparable.  People thought we were sisters.  She was the outgoing attention grabber; at a very tall 5 ft 2' in, she's the noisy drunk( ok.. not necessary in high school, maybe just a couple times.)  I was the reserved conservative observer who made sure that everyone made it home at the end of the night.

Life takes everyone down very different paths.  Living in SoCal means you don't always see the people you care about on the regular basis.  So, it was very special to have her, Lauren and daddy visiting me  on the 5th of July : )  

Annie and Matt's Slideshow

Finally finished Annie and Matt's slideshow. I'm really liking this new piece of software that we bought. It is so great that our clients will now be able to purchase DVDs of the slideshows! We really enjoyed the simplicity of our old software, but the publisher had no plans of upgrading it to a DVD output. What a shame. 

I hope you enjoy!

Best,

-Erin

Wedding Bliss, The Marriage of Art and Ceremony

The Peabody Essex Museum is Salem, MA is currently running an exhibit on "Wedding Bliss, the Marriage of Art and Ceremony."

Here is link I found on the website with some of the displayed pieces http://pem.org/exhibitions/showcase.php#id=WeddedBliss&num=1

The exhibit awed me with a beautiful Vera Wang dress, typical of what we'd expect of a high-end western wedding. As it continued, I got to see the transgression the wedding couture. Right up the the Victoria era, western wedding dresses were in pale blue, or a just a "nice dress" that could be worn again. I believe it was Queen Victoria who woren the first white wedding gown.. as we know the rest is history. I'm still waiting for one of my brides to break the white wedding dress tradition : )

The exhibit also showed other objects and traditions from non-western cultures including China, Japan, and India.

The most impressive item in the exhibit was a Russian nuptial crown of Alexandra Feodorovna. All the women at the exhibit were surrounding this little crown counting the diamonds...
All images courtesy of the Museum website.

Boston

Everyone needs a little bit of R&R.  I finally took a much needed break and went to Boston for a family visit.  My sister is rooted there with her husband and a 2 year-old daughter.  I like to think my little niece is a child genius.  She forms full sentences and recognizes names and faces better then most adults.  She can easily recall names of aunties, uncles, children and animals from trips she's taken as a 1 year old.  

Here is a picture of Charles River on a nice sunny day.

The Knot Article

Here's a scan of our article on the Knot (SoCal Edition) Magazine. It is hard to believe that all of this happened over a year ago! Makes me wonder how it is going with our past clients. I always try to drop them an e-mail wishing them the best.

Enjoy,

-Erin

Testing of new slide show for blog

This is just a test..  

We have a new slide show software.  I'm pretty excited that now I can post slideshows directly to the blog.  I'm testing the program using a recent photo shoot.  We have not finished the editing nor included Erin's photographs. So this is just a quick test : )

One Year Anniversary and The Knot SoCal

Today is my one year anniversary with my wife Courtney. When we got back from breakfast, we found a package on our door step. It was from The Knot. What you guys don't know is that after Fontaine photographed our wedding, it was selected to be in the The Knot So Cal edition. Well, we received our issues and I am sure that is out on the stands. So, go to your local magazine seller and grab The Knot Fall/Winter Southern California to check out my wedding and Fontaine's photography!

Gizmo

Gizmo is a survivor.  The poor thing and the rest of his siblings were knock off their nest.  Annie managed to nourish the little guy from a featherless and helpless creature, the size of a finger nail, to a wing flopping chick.

I was absolutely amazed by the story when Annie showed me Gizmo a couple days before the wedding.  It's the best illustration of Annie's kind heart and warm hugs.

This is the best part of the job - meeting nice couples who make me smile just being in their presence.  Matt is equally sincere and kind as an individual.  He's devoted to Armenian Apostolic Church and is on the path to priesthood.

Their wedding celebration was an amazing day long event with over 300 guests, dancing and party on until mid night @ the Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles.

Here are just a couple images off my camera.  We'll post the slideshow in a couple weeks : )

Annie with brother on his scooter