I've been away a while. I know. I know. It's been too long. Instead of groveling and trying to explain my absence I thought I'd make a list about what's gone on since I've last blogged... events, trips, gifts, purchases... whatever. If it's awesome and it's happened in the past couple of months its on the list.

(These are not in order of importance, just the order that they came to me.)

Cyndie and I went to New York... again. I don't think I need to explain to you again my love for New York City and more specifically Manhattan. Now I know I haven't seen the whole world, but, I've seen a lot of it and I can say with some degree of certainty that New York is my favorite place. I know it's not for everyone but for me and Cyndie there's nowhere better. The city, central park, the shopping, the restaurants... I love it all. This was actually the first time that Cyndie and I had gone to New York just for fun. Every other time I've had work there and while we always have a good time when I'm not working it was nice to not have anything but fun on the schedule for our trip.

Also it was our 10 year anniversary.

TEN YEARS!

I can't believe we've been married that long! Here are a few pics I dug out from our proofs from our wedding photos. Don't judge, it was 1999! Sorry the scans are so bad.

And here we are now, this was in December in New York.



Which brings us to food. Our favorite thing to do, aside from going to New York, is go to really great restaurants. In the past two months we have eaten some incredible meals.  I could go on and on about them but there's probably only a few of you out there that would care so I'll just list a few of them.

DBGB. Super Chef, Daniel Boulud's less formal restaurant near the site of the famous old CBGB club in the East Village. Incredible burgers, amazing house made sausages, great beer list.

Jean Georges. Wow. One of New York's five Michelin 3 Star Restaurants. Incredible

Gramercy Tavern. I've heard about Gramercy Tavern for years and in December while we were in New York we totally lucked out and scored what is one of Manhattan's toughest reservations. It did not disappoint.

Animal. A sweet restaurant in West Hollywood that is a vegan's worst nightmare. Luckily I'm no vegan.  Pork Belly sliders, chicken liver toast, veal breast, rabbit legs... even the desert had bacon in it! Mmmmmmeat!

A16. San Francisco's famous restaurant that specializes in not just Italian food, but food from the Campania region of Italy. You have to respect a restaurant that is that focused on what they do. Its easy to try to be all things to all people and end up doing nothing well. A16 does and few things and is the best at them.

And finally the culinary version of Mecca... the place all foodies aspire to eat... perhaps the most famous restaurant in the world...

THE FRENCH LAUNDRY! This was Cyndie's Christmas gift to me. I had a wedding last weekend up in the Bay Area and Cyndie thought ahead two months ago and scored us a table. It was without a doubt the best dining experience of my life. Trying to come up with enough superlatives to describe this meal is futile. I'll probably devote an entire blog post to the meal so we'll save the details for later.

Christmas! As I said, we've been married for 10 years now and this was Makenzie's 6th Christmas and we've always been with our extended family. And while that's always been great we chose, this year, to spend it alone and create our own traditions. So this year it was just the three of us and it was awesome. We definitely missed our families but it was so much fun making things up as we went, creating traditions that will hopefully last for a long time.

I got a new camera. Not really that exciting but its always fun to get new toys.

I got a Sous Vide Supreme! This is way more exciting than a camera... at least to me. We've been getting into cooking amazing food at home and this machine has allowed us to take dinner to a whole 'nother level. We had some friends over last week for a dinner party and I made shortribs that had been cooked for 72 hours! Oh my gosh, they were amazing.

Weddings in San Diego, Hollywood and Dallas and San Francisco. Those blogs are coming up soon, I promise.

Finally, I got a book that is so incredibly inspiring. Its not a photography book, or a business book, it's about a chef named Ferran Adria who is, by many accounts, the best chef in the world. What's inspiring about this book is that it takes you through a typical day with him. He's someone that has dedicated his life to being creative. Not just making food, but creating something that's never been made before. His restaurant is only open 160 days a year because he needs the rest of the time to create. Every day the restaurant is open the first 9 hours of the day is dedicated to creating new dishes. His diners are served between 28 and 36 courses and every course a diner is served is put into a database so that if they come back to the restaurant in the future they will not be served the same dish. The have hundreds of notebooks filled with thousands of dishes they've created, not one of them something the diner will have ever seen or been served before. The 205 days a year the the restaurant is closed is spent developing new processes to make food. Inventing machines and tools if necessary to facilitate the making of whatever dish the have in their heads. That kind of commitment to creativity is just astounding to me and is really inspiring as well. I want to put that much effort into being creative for my clients.

So now you're caught up! I promise it won't be 2 months before I blog again! :)

Side note to photographers... Every time I think about blogging I get this pit in my stomach. I mean, I love blogging but it always takes soooo loooooong getting the images ready to post. It's not the processing of the images, its the resizing, sharpening, putting my logo on, saving a version for web and a full size version that I dread. Well a couple of months ago that changed. I found out about a product called Blogstomp that does all of these things with literally just a few clicks. I still probably don't blog enough but there's definitely one less excuse. Haha. If you're a photographer, or just a blogger that posts lots of pictures go check them out and get yourself an early Christmas present. They are AWESOME.

I'd go through and tell you about my favorites but I love them all.

Last weekend I traveled to Dallas to shoot Taylor and Amanda's engagement photos. Taylor's a photographer based in Dallas. It's always fun shooting photographers because they're always up for anything, and know that even if you feel funny doing it, you have to work it in front of the camera. Taylor and Amanda were a ton of fun and I love these images and can't wait to go back to shoot their wedding in January at the Old Red Courthouse in Downtown Dallas.

I love New York. I might even go so far as to say that its my favorite place on earth. Luckily, several times a year, work takes me there and Cyndie and I always take a little time for ourselves as well. We've spent a good amount of time there and don't really do the touristy thing anymore. We just spend the days shopping, walking the streets of Manhattan and planning out where our next meal will be.

A couple of the days we went up to Central Park. It was so incredible. All of the leaves were turning, the weather was perfect and crisp and there was even a jazz band playing one day. Could there be a more quintessential fall day?

I don't always bring my big camera along but this morning I did and I took a few shots of the city, park and even a few of Cyndie. Here are some of my favorites.

Sunday I shot Patti and Ji's intimate rooftop wedding at the amazing L'Auberge Del Mar. They're from Maryland so this was a destination wedding for them. About 40 of their closest friends and family made the trek with them. I think if I were doing it all over again I'd have something about that size. It was perfect. The day was coordinated by one of my new favorite people, Merilee Hennings, of Ever After Events. Merilee and her assistant, Alesha, were so helpful and wonderful to work with and made the day go so smoothly!

A couple details from the super swank L'Auberge.

I love how on your wedding day people do things for you that they never would otherwise... like putting on your suspenders, shoes, jewelery. :)

I LOVE the lobby at L'Auberge!

The ceremony site was so incredible... maybe the best lighting I've ever had during a ceremony.

Seriously. Look at these images under the chuppah. I need to bring that thing everywhere. Its like a softbox.

After the ceremony we headed down to a park for some images and then down to the beach. You can't come all the way to California for your wedding and not hit the beach for a little bit!

A few reception details.

I was going through my images today and came across a wedding I shot a few months ago. In May, I went with my friend, Travis, to Aruba. What an incredible place. If it weren't for the humidity, I'd pack up and move tomorrow.

I was thumbing through a past issue of Grace Ormonde a few days ago and noticed that my good friend and dad to new twins, Mike Colon, shot Timbaland's wedding on the same beach on Renaissance Island. Small world.

Anyway here are a few shots from the wedding.

How amazing is this place? We had a little free time and took a few personal pics too. Not a ton though as we spent most of the time swimming in the most incredible water I've ever seen.

Karin and Dan got married at Descanso Gardens. I love outdoor ceremonies and this is one of my favorite locations. The wedding site is positioned perfectly for beautiful backlit ceremonies.

Here are some images from their day.

They chose to see each other before their wedding so we were able to get most of the portraits done before the ceremony.

Of course after the ceremony we had some amazing light so I stole them away before heading off to the reception!

Last week Brandon and Stacey Gresham came out from Alabama to do a private WOODSHOP. At the end of the day we went out on a shoot and I had some friends of mine come model for me.

They did an incredible job and were so natural in front of the camera. The only bummer about the shoot was that it was cut a bit short after I was almost killed by a rattlesnake. It might have been the most terrifying moment of my life.

Here are a few favorites from the shoot!

A few weeks ago Cyndie, Makenzie and I went camping up near Yosemite. We spent one of the days in the Yosemite valley and I can't tell you how inspiring that place is. Every time I'm there I'm amazed. It's so incredible it doesn't even look real. Man I would do anything to shoot a wedding there!

After taking an afternoon swim in the frigid river we took a few pictures. I've posted plenty of images of Makenzie but Cyndie's a little more camera shy. Its time she made an appearance on the blog! :)

It took a little work getting this image... self timer, no tripod, using rocks and sticks to hold the camera in place, haha. Here's my beautiful family!

I had a tourist offer to take this picture of us. He was sure that because he had a Nikon D40 that he knew what to do with my camera. He took like 6 pictures and got one in focus, haha.

Cyndie took this one. She's never cared too much about it but I'm slowly getting her into shooting. She's getting pretty good. Maybe its time to put her to work?

Last month I shot Terry and Bernice's wedding at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. That place is so amazing. I think I could shoot there every weekend and be happy... at least for a few months.

I shot some film that day and recently got it back from the lab and wanted to share it. There's nothing like medium format Fuji Pro400h. Love it..