Susan and Andres Wedding

Oroville, CA was the location of my latest photographic journey. Susan and Andres were married at her gracious parents beautiful home Saturday evening in an outdoor bi-lengual English/Spanish ceremony as the sun was about to set. Andres' parents, wonderful couple, flew in from Mexico to attend the wedding, their first time in the U.S. To smile for the camera, I learned in Mexico, instead of saying cheese (queso) you say, Whiskey (pr. weeskey), makes perfect sense! Angel, a family friend, played the harp, what a beautiful instrument. Lots of ring bearers, flower girls, and other youngsters to photograph, ..always fun. A pinata was set up after dinner so the kiddos could release some pentup energy. I almost got whacked a couple times ... don't try that at home! Susan and Andres are a warm, beautiful couple and I wish them all the very best!
All of their photos may be viewed at Pictage.com in 7 to 10 days.

Janelle and William Engagement

Want to see what a good time looks like? Check out some of Janelle and William's engagement photos below! What a cute couple and they like posing (oh, yeah)! Team them up with a great photographer, and ... wehlaaah ... super photos! We started the photo session late enough to take full advantage of the great light before sunset and worked the sun into a few of the shots. I'm glad I asked them if there was a pose that they would like to try, 'cause they came up with a really cool one. Check out the shot of William holding tiny Janelle in his hand for a fairy kiss. No photoshop there, folks, although I've got some ideas to put some fairy wings on Janelle, like my photographer friend Tommy likes to do. The proper positioning on this eye deceiving shot is half the battle. You have to set your camera to max depth of field (high aperture setting) so that both the near and far subject are both in focus.
This fun session was done at the old, historic, Placer County Courthouse, just a couple of blocks from where they will be married at the Victoria Hill Gardens in Auburn, CA. We started the photo session late enough to take full advantage of the great light before sunset and worked the sun into a few of the shots. The wedding will be in Sept and I'm very much looking forward to telling the story of their special day through photos.

Bear River High School Dance Performance

The students in Joyce Gouveia's dance classes at Bear River High School put on an awesome performance on May 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. The performance, "Bringing Imagintion to Life", was produced by Gaia Weiss. Please see the write up in The Union at http://www.theunion.com/article/20090521/PROSPECTOR/905209951/1020/NONE&parentprofile=1055
It was wonderful to see all their hard work, sore muscles, and dedication to their passion come to fruition in their big year end performance. My daughter, Sonya, was one of the dancers and choreographers so I was fortunate to photograph 2 dress rehearsals and 2 of the performances. Of course, the performances took place in the middle of my busy season of weddings and engagement photography so the processing of all the thousands of photos have had to take a back seat for a while but I'm a quarter of the way through them now and making progress. Hope to have them finished in a couple of weeks then all sent to Pictage for posting online for all to see. I'll update this blog as those time frames become known.

I've selected a few of the photos and posted them below as a preview of those to come. The performance was spectacular and the dancers did an amazing job!