First Fish Tacos!

It's true, up until today, I had never had fish tacos before. Never. Not once. Make fun of me all you want, but I just don't like seafood. Erin and I both don't like seafood enough that we actually have it in our contract that at the weddings we do that we don't want seafood (are we too picky you think?)

Well anyways, when I fist met Kelly & Flip, we met at Wahoo's and somehow we got on the topic of me never having fish Tacos, and Kelly decided that needed to change. So she gave me some gift certificates, and Erin and I made the trip over to Wahoo's and did it. Video evidence below. My impressions? They weren't that bad, but they weren't that good either. If I was choosing between blackened chicken and fish, I'd choose the chicken, but maybe the fish will grow on me!

Check out the uber dork moment like 5 seconds in. Oh yes.

Dave & Connie: Engagement

I feel so lucky to get to hang out with such rad couples and make so many new friends and get to take some pretty sweet pictures, but every once in a while I snap a frame that the instant I take the picture, the moment just resonates with me. This is one of those pictures:

We were in Dana Point for Dave & Connie's e-session, and we'd been shooting for probably an hour and a half a this point, and the sun was just going below the horizon. The beach was clear, it was just us, and the two of them just stood in the waves smiling and loving on each other...it was a really cool moment.

Dave & Connie are a really fun couple, and Dave actually hit up Dana Point a few days prior to do some location scouting, so when we showed up he had the whole thing planned out! Note to self: hire a full time location scout! Their wedding is just a few weeks away, and I'm really excited for it! Check out the slideshow:

Angela & Ken: Engagement

A few weeks back Erin and I got to meet up with Angela, Ken and Ken's son Jordan up in Dana Point, and we had an absolute blast! These two are getting married in November, I'm really excited 1) because they're super fun, and 2) the wedding is going to be broadcast on the internet, live, how cool is that?

Anyway, we grabbed a few shots of the three of them, and then focused the rest of the time on photographing just Angela and Ken, and so while Erin and I were shooting, I gave Jordan a little point and shoot, and he had so much fun getting in there and grabbing the angles...it was hysterical. If you watch the slideshow (below) you'll see Jordan getting right in there. I'm really giving serious thought to bringing this guy onboard the team!!!

BBQ Part II

This one goes out to Stan. I got this bad boy hotter, but didn't take a picture. Next time, though. I love my new grill. If you want to know what you can bring me if you're in the area, the answer is lots of meat.

David Crowder Band: Remedy

I just got this CD yesterday, and it's awesome! If you're a fan of the David Crowder Band, you need to pick up this album. It's WAY different than all the other albums. Like WAY different. The first time through listening to it, I was like, "What the?" but now it's totally grown on me, and I love it!

I'm totally digging this track, right now:



"Can you feel it?"

Look who got a new camera :)

My mom!

Isn't she hilarious? My mom and dad were over not too long ago, and my mom was showing off here brand new Canon Powershot SD650is, which is a totally sweet point and shoot, if you're in the market for one. It's got the best image stabilization/vibration reduction/noise reduction I've seen in a little point and shoot, outside of Canon's G7 or their new G9. I'm a dork.

Anyway, I was just editing through some stuff and came across this picture, and i just had to post it because it made me laugh.

New Business Cards!

I know, it's kind of a lame blog post, but I'm stoked on my new business cards that I got a few weeks ago, and I just thought I'd share them with you! Each of the images I put on the front have a very significant purpose for being there (besides being sweet pics!), but I think that's probably pretty boring, so if you want to know more just shoot me an e-mail or something.

The first batch I had printed I had them leave the back white, because I thought I'd use it to write stuff on, but as I've been using them for the past little while, I don't think I've used the back at all, so for the next batch I'm going to do some more cool visual elements on the back, but I haven't decided upon that yet! If any of you would like some of these (besides my mom) just shoot me a message with your address and I'll send you a stack!

I'm not quite sure why I'm blogging about my business cards at 2:30am, but I think that's a sign that it's time for me to go to sleepy-time :) Have a great day!!!

60,000 BTU's of RAW Power!

You may remember last year when my parents gave me my first BBQ Grill for my birthday, and how excited I was. I love cooking, and especially grilling, and I couldn't have been more happy to have my very own awesome grill.

Well, just yesterday, my parents gave us another grill, and this one is AWESOME! It's got 60,000 BTU's of power, and that sounds like an impressive number, but I don't really know what it means. It's a big number, so that's gotta mean it's good, right? All I know is that a BTU stands for "British Thermal Unit" and that's about it. That, and our old grill racked up about 25,000 BTU's of power.

You can read more about this sweet thing here, if you're so inclined.

Direct quote from my wife: "You're such a guy." True, but I can now cook like 30 hamburgers at once. Boo-yah.

Josh and Adam now how our old grill, and I'm confident those dudes will put it to great use.

Another one from the Kissing Booth

I was just unpacking from last week and I found another picture that we took in the Kiss booth at PartnerCon! How funny is this one? I love the look on Erin's face in the first frame, it's the "why is that thing counting down from 3 to 1 face." My wife is adorable, I love her :)

Avast Matee!!

Ahoy! It's one of my favorite days of the year today, International Talk Like A Pirate Day! I'm a huge fan of pirates, and I've always dreamed of one day being one, it just sounds so glamorous and fun :) If you're having trouble talking like a pirate today, check out the english-to-pirate translator here.

The above, translated:

The pirate speaks,"Ahoy! It's one o' me favorite days o' t' year today, International Talk Like A Pirate Day! I'm a huge fan o' pirates, and I've always dreamed o' one day bein' one, it just sounds so glamorous and fun :) If you're havin' trouble talkin' like a pirate today, check out t' english-to-pirate translator here."

Here's some quick tips for all you landlubbers:

Ahoy! - "Hello!"

Avast! - Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"

Aye! - "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."

Aye aye! - "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."

Arrr! - This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

For your enjoyment:

My Buddy Patrick

My good buddy Patrick passed away last week, and today was his funeral, and so I thought that I'd post up some of my thoughts about the whole thing here, kind of as a memoir, or something. Patrick was an amazing friend to me, and from my very first day at Biogen Idec, we totally hit it off. He took me under his wing and was instrumental in helping me get through the first few months of working for the company, and welcomed me as a friend.

His kind an tender personality is something that I heard folks talk about over and over again today, you couldn't come in contact with the guy without feeling cared about in such a genuine way. I knew Patrick had impacted my life, but I was floored by the number of people who came to the funeral! I'm not surprised, though, he was one great dude. It's really comforting to know that now he is no longer in pain, suffering, and is in a better place. Really comforting.

He had a long battle with cancer, and he fought so so hard, but ultimately lost. I'm so proud of him for the character that he exhibited during the whole ordeal, and I am so proud to be his friend. Here's one of my favorite pictures that I have of him, taken one of the times we were out golfing...just look at that stellar form!

Patrick Edward Ancmon
1975-2007

San Diego Airport

So Erin and I are sitting here in the San Diego Airport, and they've finally got free wi-fi, which is sweet! Our flight leaves in an hour, and we got checked in and through security super quick, so now we're just sitting.

Erin and I have been married for almost a year and a half, and I just realized something. She loves pizza when we travel. Not when we're at home. Just when we travel. Pizza never sounds good when we're at home, but within 1 minute of walking through security, Erin was in line for a personal pizza from Uno's. Don't get me wrong, Uno's makes some of the best deep-dish pizza outside of Chicago, it's just funny. She's laughing in agreement right now, since she just peeked over my shoulder :)

I feel bad for our cat, Gracie, though. We've been traveling so much lately, she probably feels super neglected :( We were home for less than 24 hours this time, and she looked so sad seeing us go. Poor kitty.

Kissing Booth

At PartnerCon this year Kiss and ShowIt had a "Kissing Booth" set up, which was basically a sweet little photo booth. We DEFINITELY had a ton of fun! I think that there must have been thousands of shots taken over the course of the conference; I mean we are all photographers who LOVE taking tons of pictures!!!

Me and Stacy Cross, one of the most amazing photographers in all of Texas (Seriously, check her out, she's a-m-a-z-i-n-g! I'm not kidding, if you live in Texas, you need to have Stacy come shoot your wedding. And tell her to fly me out, too :)

Me and the wifey. Don't ask what the look in the first picture is all about...

Us and the gang from Shoot.Dot.Edit...you've got Jared, Bronson, Erin, John, and Me!

Ok, I have to go because I have a flight to Sacramento that leaves in an hour, I'm going to go shoot Scott & Bekah's wedding! See ya'll later (that one was for all my new Texas friends!)

PartnerCon | Sweet.

Erin and I spent the last few days in LA at the annual Pictage PartnerCon, and we had such a blast! We basically got to hang out with tons of cool wedding photographers, sharing with each other and learning. We've got so many awesome ideas about taking our photography to the next level running around in our heads right now, I'm like going dizzy!

I didn't really take any pictures, which is kind of funny, but I guess I was too busy hanging out and meeting new folks! I did, however capture a sweet video (below) at the party that KISS and ShowIt threw on Wednesday night. The party was awesome, tons of great music, dancing, and cool people. They had an amazing hula-hoop girl there, and some go-go dancers (which was marginally awkward). Anyway, so we're all hanging out talking and dancing, and then we look over, and there our buddy John is, on the bar, dancing with the Go-Go dancers. For obvious reasons, I'm not linking to John's website, but I will tell you that he works closely with the guys who's company name rhymes with Flute Slot Credit. ;)

The funny thing is that you wouldn't expect this from John, it was like out of left field. Gotta love it :)


Oh, one more video :) Wedding photographers can have fun too!

Look what came in the mail today?

I'm real excited, can you guess which of these three things came in the mail today? New toys are always fun :) Happy Friday, everyone! Tonight we're going to The Waterfront down in Little Italy, which is San Diego's oldest bar - definitely a cool spot. I'll be leaving the new lens and flash at home, though. I'll be sure to update you on my thoughts on the 580EXII as it compares to the older version in the next few days. The 50mm is super sweet, a really juicy lens if you ask me.

Kelly & Eran: Engagement

I was so excited when I first started talking to Kelly & Eran about their engagement session because they were basically like "let's do whatever you want, we want you to just go nuts and be creative!" Which was like music to my ears. Fortunately, nearly all the couples I work with let me just have fun and be creative and I am so lucky!

Anyway, we went down to Little Italy and walked around and had fun, laughed, and took some real fun shots. I really enjoy shooting in Little Italy because of all the cool colors and backgrounds, it's really probably one of the most colorful places in San Diego. Time for some of my favorites:

Eran had the sweetest shoes. I'm begging him to wear something like this for the wedding :)

The fire station in Little Italy is so cool with the big red doors...especially right before the sun goes down!

I love this little corner in Little Italy. It's basically amazing about 5 minutes after sunset...

I snapped this one by laying on the sidewalk, and shooting through some wild grass that was sprouting up. You can't tell we're downtown, huh?

Thanks you guys! I had so much fun with you, and I'm so excited for your wedding. PS: Kelly is the master planner- they're getting married next year, 4th of July, and they booked me 6 months ago!

Labor Day...yes!

After a wonderful Saturday and Sunday, today is a day to relax, and I'm pumped! I'm reading "The Four Hour Work Week" and so far, it's really good! I'll give a full review once I'm done with it, since I like to read a book in it's entirety before deciding what I really think of it. Erin just went to grab the last Harry Potter book, and plans to read that today. We're going to be sitting by the pool with some friends, which is going to be great.

Weekend recap: Stacy & John's wedding on Saturday was AWESOME! Like I said earlier, we got to be guests, and we definitely enjoyed that! I've got some videos that I didn't know Erin was taking that I'll have to put up sometime soon, they're pretty funny. Words won't do them justice. (EDIT, videos posted at the end of this post!)

Sunday we met up with Kelly & Flip for their super-secret photo shoot (which turned out AMAZING, by the way) and did the shoot in 105 degree weather! It was SO HOT, but we had so much fun. I'll post up some favorites in the next day or two (is the suspense killing you?)

Flip and Kelly took us to this super-authentic mexican deli and we got a total of 20 tacos between the 5 of us, and they were incredible. I'm really glad that Flip was there with us because it was definitely the kind of place where most everybody was speaking Spanish, which incidentally, I'm not good at.

Then we headed down to Dana Point and spent some time napping under some trees, which was wonderful, and then we hit up Starbucks for some iced tea and had the remaining tacos before meeting up with Connie & Dave for their e-session. We had so much fun photographing them! Dave had gone to Dana Point a few days prior and had all the locations scouted out, and had it all planned out (I was in heaven) and we got some amazing shots. Here's a favorite, taken right before sunset outside the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point:

Fun Weekend!

I'm all packed up and ready to head up to Stacy & John's wedding up in Simi Valley in a few minutes. I'm real excited, though, because Erin and I get to attend the wedding as guests! We absolutely love photographing weddings, but it's really fun to get to just "go" sometimes, and get our dance on!

Stacy has been a good friend of mine for years, and her soon-to-be-hubby is AWESOME! I'm super stoked for these two! When they got engaged, right after Stacy told me, she was like "and you get to come to the wedding, and leave your cameras at home!" I did get to shoot their engagement session, though, and help them find a photographer for the big day!

Tomorrow, though, we're meeting up with Kelly & Flip in Santa Ana to do a SWEET shoot that I can't tell you about yet, but trust me, it's going to be so cool! It's been in the works for months, and everything is a go for tomorrow!

After that, we'll head over to Dana Point to meet up with Connie & David for a fun, relaxed engagement session on the beach & cliffs. We're shooting their wedding in October, which is going to ROCK!

Monday will be filled with NOTHING, which I'm super excited about. I'm just taking the day off from everything...I'll probably hang out with my wife by the pool for most of the day, nap a little, maybe read. Who knows?!