The Expressive Blog

Adam and Jennalee were recently married, in Sonoma, California. They are one of the most fun couples I have worked with, in a long time! They met when Adam's company was contracted to build a water tower (which is actually a cellular phone tower) on land owned by Jennalee's family. I loved hearing the romantic, sweet story of how they fell totally in love, during the construction of the tower, and later decided to hold their wedding at the family estate, with the tower as the backdrop. I have decided to call it the Tower of Love! I would also like to thank Diana Casanova for her help photographing this wedding. You can click this link, to see some of her photos from this wedding. If you like the beautiful bouquets and floral arrangements, by Wendy Scott, be sure to check out her stuff at Wendy Floral Design, San Francisco!

Here a few of my images from their day.

The amazing floral creations were made by Wendy Scott.

Erika and Steven, were recently married, at the Saint Ignatius Church, in San Francisco. I had a great time working with them and their families and guests! If you have never been to the Saint Ignatius Church, you should definitely visit this beautiful historic church, on the USF campus. Here are a few images from their wedding day...

Michelle and David, tied the knot, last Saturday, in Alamo, California. Their wedding and reception were held at the Round Hill Country Club. Also shooting with me at this wedding, was the talented Jason Lee. Thanks Jason, for the good times, and your beautiful work! You can see some of Jason's images here. Here are a few selections from my images of the day.

You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.

WOW! What a beautiful wedding Lindsay and Eddie had, last weekend! It was at the Cinnabar Hills Golf Club, in San Jose, and I will be posting about 100 of the best images here, over the next several days. You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.

To see more of the images, please click the "Read More!" link below

=> Read more!

This is a last-minute notice, but a very worthy cause...

Nancy Grace, Santa Cruz local musician, teacher and community leader, was severely injured when she was struck by a car, last December. Her miraculous journey to independent living continues, but she still needs our help. You are welcome at the auction, even if you cannot attend the other presentations. It will also be available while you are enjoying the music and other activities featured at Nancy's upcoming celebration & fundraiser on May 31st (at Inner Light Ministries, 5630 Soquel Drive, Soquel CA) A Time For Grace, please do take a stroll to see and bid on some of the wonderful merchandise, services, vacation opportunities, art, and other items being offered at the Silent Auction, being held from 4:00 PM -- 8:40 PM. Please see flyer below, for details.

Expressive Photographics has donated a creative portrait session and a 20x30 portrait. If you have been wanting to do a photo-session with us this could be a great opportunity!

I appreciate all of my clients, because they give me the opportunity to do this work that I love so much. There are, however, certain very special people who have been returning to Expressive Photographics for many years, and I am especially grateful to them. I first met Ron and Stephanie when they hired me to photograph their wedding. That was at least 16 or 17 years ago. Stephanie, feel free to help me out here on how long ago that was! Well, life has certainly moved forward in beautiful ways for them, and they are now a family of 7... Um, that's four humans and three doggies!

I've had the honor of documenting some really beautiful times of their lives with photographs, like the portraits of Ron with their first daughter, Abigail, when she was just so tiny and only a few months old. There have been some great family portrait sessions at gorgeous locations, such as Panther Beach. There was Abigail's Bat-mitzvah, in August of 2006, and now it's just about a week until Rebecca's Bat-mitzvah. For all of these important times, they have called on me to help them commemorate the occasion with photographs.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for so many opportunities to work creatively with them! All of this is a lengthy introduction to my latest portrait session for the Morse family. Last Wednesday, we did a portrait session for Rebecca, in honor of her upcoming Bat-mitzvah. We also had the pleasure of including Abigail in this session.

This is my first post of photos taken with the new Nikon D3, which is my ultimate dream-camera! Here are some of my favorite images.

You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.

Here is the original version of the previous image.

Allison and Nick told me that they are not only in love with each other - but they also love the forest, trees and nature. The perfect location they have selected to hold their wedding is among the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, at Roaring Camp, in Felton. That's also where we did their engagement session. The old growth redwoods in nearby Henry Cowell State Park are too big for hugging though, so they had to stick to squeezing each other. They did not seem to mind that one bit though!

Here are some of my favorites from their session.

You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.

Tony and Lelia wanted to include their Rat Terrier, making this something more like a family photo-session. I usually don't recommend including pets in an engagement session, but their furry friend was super nice and easy to work with. We had a blast!

You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.
In this session we photographed at Panther Beach, and downtown Santa Cruz.

This final image may be some sort of 60's flashback. Even though I was just a little kid in the 60's, I think I was artistically influenced by the music - Beatles, Steppinwolf etc - and all the cool record album art. I have been collecting images of interesting textures and colors for use as overlays in photoshop. I was browsing through my texture images of flowers, when these flowers seemed to almost jump off the computer screen at me. With a bit of experimentation and perhaps more than a little photoshop know-how, this was my result!

Since returning from the amazing WPPI conference, in Las Vegas, I have been very busy shooting engagement sessions. Not only are the e-sessions a great warm-up for the busy wedding season ahead, I also love doing these creative sessions with my brides and grooms, because it's a great opportunity to get better acquainted prior to the wedding. I also find that shooting the engagement helps me do an even better job for them on their wedding day, simply because I've had that previous opportunity to work with them - noting what works to make them look their absolute best in photographs.

This will be the first of several posts, showing some of the recent engagement shoots. As always, I really enjoyed having the opportunity of working with these couples recently, and am excited about shooting the weddings later this year!

This is Eddie and Lindsay, not only a gorgeous-looking couple, but great sports too, as they went along with my idea for a marathon engagement session of over three hours! I look forward to their amazing wedding, at Cinnabar Hills Golf Club!

You can also see my other online galleries, at the Expressive Photographics website. Just click this link.

At the stairs to Cowells Beach, Santa Cruz

We finished up near Natural Bridges Beach, in Santa Cruz.

A colleague recently asked me to select my 10 favorite wedding shots from 2007. That turned out to be impossible, and I actually showed him 14 images. In the process of selecting those 14 images out of thousands that I created during my 2007 weddings,(I typically shoot 1200 to 2000 images for a full-day wedding!) I came up with a collection of about 100 photos that are now viewable in my Best Weddings of 2007 Gallery. I hope you enjoy them! As a teaser, here are a few of them...