Holidays!

Time for the holiday update! After finishing up with editing my weddings from November, I headed down to San Luis Obispo to visit with my family for the Christmas/New Year's break. I spend a few great days on the family ranch resting up and taking a few nice hikes. I also managed to do all of my Christmas shoping during a 4-hour crazed trip around town (very proud of myself). My family then went up to my aunt's house in Los Altos for Christmas itself and engaged in our famous epicurean activities involving copious amounts of food and adventurous new recipes. My aunt is a garden photographer and book writer. I got the chance to talk shop for hours and shoot some pictures with her while talking about lighting and composition (especially as it relates to shooting vegetables). It's amazing the different complexities that go into different fields of photography. I was in charge of cooking up our Dungeness Crabs for Christmas Eve, and managed to get by. I must say that that the pressure to perform well while cooking the main meal for Christmas in my family easily rivals a fast paced wedding. I also got to try out a new recipe for crab dipping sauce:

-Lightly sauteed shallots in butter
-A splash of sherry and juice from 1 lemon
-Add more butter to the pan to suit the total volume needed


Our tree was over-the-top as usual. Buy hey...my family motto has always been "what's worth doing, is always worth over-doing." I've learned to love it.



After Christmas I headed back down to San Luis Obispo (where I grew up) to spend some time with friends. I also did my last wedding of the year in Paso Robles, helping my friend Colleen Rosenthal photograph the wedding of Liz and Anthony. The wedding was quite a hit, a full of love, tears, and two great families. Also a fun addition- as I was invited to the bride's family's New Year's Eve party. It was fun to see everybody in their "normal" getup, and to spend some time with some fantastic people. 2007 brought my first year of wedding photography to a close, and I couldn't have found a better way to celebrate. A big thanks to Sarah and Collin for opening up their house, to Anna for the invite, and to the whole group of family and friends there. I hope you enjoy your pictures. A post with the wedding pictures and slideshow will follow shortly.