Last weekend I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of Lance Stewart and Sarah Giammichele in the Rose Garden at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. The couple, who live in San Francisco, were one of the first to book me after I moved to Los Angeles, well in advance of the big day. It was wonderful to finally witness their wedding after such a long time planning.

The couple started the day at the luxurious Langham Hotel in Pasadena where they each prepared for the day with their families. Then we all moved down the road to the equally beautiful grounds of the L.A. Arboretum for the ceremony and reception. Both were held in the Arboretum’s Rose Garden, which was the perfect setting for a small wedding such as theirs. The ceremony was held just at as the sun was setting, providing a beautiful warm glow to the scene. During the ceremony they had a unique ceremony called a ‘ring warming,’ in which the rings are passed from guest to guest before being exchanged by the couple. Following the reception I went off with the couple to take some portraits in the nearby herb garden while the guests enjoyed cocktails as the ceremonial space was converted to a reception space. A delicious dinner was then was prepared and presented by Contemporary Catering of Encino. After the reception wound down the couple then stayed behind to share a quiet and touching moment alone before exiting to a grand a sparkler send off. Following the affair everyone moved back to the Langham for a fun afterparty in the couple’s bungalow suite.

Overall it was a great day and I wish the couple much success in the future!

4th of July fireworks, Marina Del Rey

4th of July fireworks, Marina Del Rey

Just a quick post of a couple shots from the 4th of July. For this year’s 4th Erinn and I, along with my visiting mom and kid sister, hiked a mile or so down Speedway Avenue to join thousands of revelers in taking in the annual fireworks spectacular held in Marina Del Rey. Having shot fireworks numerous times during my newspaper days, I wasn’t that interested in shooting them again, but couldn’t help myself from taking a few once they started booming. I’m a sucker for bright and shiny things I guess. Speaking of bright and shiny things, I tried to at least put a different twist on the photos after noticing the glare of four balding heads staggered perfectly in front of me, tilted upward as their respective owners took in the spectacle. Possibly mean, but kind of funny I thought. From there I noticed that fireworks were as pretty out of focus as they are in focus, so I took a few that way as well. When the show was over we hiked back home, ready to call it a night after a long, active day that included a bike ride to Manhattan Beach and plenty of good food and beer.

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine at the Thom Thom Club, Interscope Records, Santa Monica, Calif.

Last Friday I received a last minute call from the Financial Times in London asking me to head over to Interscope Records in Santa Monica to photograph Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder of Interscope Records, for a story they were doing on Iovine’s latest business venture, Beats by Dre, a line of high-end headphones that he is hoping brings about a higher level of appreciation for the quality of music being produced in the studio, but which is most often listened to using laptop speakers or iPod’s ear buds. When I got on the phone with his PR rep, she informed me that a last minute change of plans was making it possible that Dr. Dre, the company co-creator and namesake, not to mention hip-hop legend, would be available for the shoot. With little time and no budget for an assistant, I woke Erinn up and asked if she wanted to go meet Dr. Dre. After thinking about it for, say, 1.5 seconds she agreed to come along and help me out.

When we got there the initial plan was to shoot in Iovine’s office, which looks more like a typical fancy living room, except that along the oak-paneled walls are numerous photos of Iovine with the various rock legends he has produced or recorded over the years. I recall seeing photos of Tom Petty and Bob Dylan among others. More recently, Interscope produces Lady GaGa, Puff Daddy and Eminem. He is credited with handing Eminem’s demo tape to Dr. Dre, who produced him on his Aftermath label and also produced the Curtis Hanson film 8-Mile. Despite the nice setting I asked if we could go to one of their recording studios across the street, which is where we initially set up for the shoot. While they were waiting for one of his assistants to bring down a few sets of earphones, he invited us to look around the rest of the studio and it turns out there’s a full-blown nightclub in the back, called the Thom Thom club, with a DJ booth that has a custom sign saying ‘The Dr.’s In!” that’s only to be lit up when Dre is in the house. As you can see, we decided to forego the cliched studio shot. The whole facility was pretty amazing. There were a couple full-sized recording studios with soundboards wider than my living room and tray tables covered with bottles of Hennessy, vodka, candy bars and chewing gum. Down hallways from there are a full kitchen and a rec room with a pingpong table. It looks like a pretty comfortable place to hole up for a multi-day recording session.

After we set the location, the shoot was pretty simple. We brought the lights in and, with some help from his assistants, rearranged the DJ booth to suit our needs and began shooting. Both subjects were very cool and patient during the shoot, making my job pretty easy. Ten minutes later we were done.

From there we packed everything up and headed out. On the way home a bolt came loose on my right front caliper, causing it to grind into the wheel rim. But that’s another story. At least the first half of the day was good.

The article just posted today and can be seen here.

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

Last week I shot production stills for an independent film called “First Dream Called Ocean.” I’m still not quite sure what it was about, but I had a fun time spending two days on set while they filmed in the Watts neighborhood and out around the California Poppy Reserve in the Antelope Valley, which, as you can see, was still blooming. I’ve recently begun shooting stills for small productions. It’s both something I can add to my repertoire and, better yet, something I’m actually interested in, given the film studies degree I earned prior to focusing on photojournalism in grad school. I’m not sure that I personally want to get back into filmmaking, but I do enjoy being around the process and also shooting video, which is good now that multimedia has become so prominent in everything from journalism to commercial work. Though I did find myself wanting to jump behind their camera during the shoot!  Perhaps I’ll get back into cinematography at some point, but for now shooting stills and some video is good enough. This film just wrapped up last week and I’m actually heading out the door in two hours to attend the wrap party in Culver City. Should be fun! More pics post-jump.

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

Production still for "First Dream Called Ocean"

A spotlit grunion on Venice Beach

I went out last night to join the Venice Oceanarium‘s Grunion Run Party at the Venice Breakwater. The grunion are apparently abundant in the South Bay and their unique mating ritual brings them up on the beach during full moons on spring and summer nights, allowing them to be easily observed and even picked up. They’re supposed to be good to eat too, though most see it as more trouble than it’s worth to scale so many of them for such little meat. I went out at 11 p.m., when the party was starting and after 20 minutes they started popping up on shore one or two at a time. There they flopped about as they did their thing before being washed back to sea by the next big wave. It was a fun thing to see and the sizable crowd that turned out was very entertained. More can be learned about grunions and the specifics of their spawning practices here.

A member of the Venice Oceanarium holds a grunion on Venice Beach

A crowd gathers for the Grunion Run Party on Venice Beach

Writer Adam Baer at Sunset Junction Organic Medicine in Los Angeles

Adam Baer shows his medical marijuana prescription

The first of a couple assignments I recently shot for the London-based Financial Times Weekend Magazine just published. The story was a first-person account by L.A. writer Adam Baer addressing his experience with medical marijuana following neuromuscular complications that arose several years after a bout with Hodgkin’s disease. His story’s an interesting read and can be found here.

Medical marijuana collectives have sprung up throughout Los Angeles in the past couple of years, growing from around 200 establishments when I moved here a couple years ago, to nearly 1000 citywide. Within 2 blocks of my door I can think of 4 or 5 places to were I to shell out the dough for an easy-to-obtain prescription. They’re about to get a little harder to find, however, as the L.A. City Council just passed an ordinance that will shut down all but 200 or so. Basically, it’ll be going back to the way it was before a 2007 moratorium that was supposed to curb the proliferation, but was pretty much ignored.

Fashion shoot in front of The Brig, Venice, Calif.

I’ve been doing a few portfolio shoots lately, teaming up with models, stylists and makeup artists and just seeing what we can come up with. This is from a recent collaboration with model Keira Kitagawa and makeup artist Dee (last name to follow). After doing a number of shots in the studio we went out around Venice to find interesting locations. We ended in the parking lot of The Brig, a popular bar and landmark along Abbot Kinney Blvd. I had noticed the lights before while scouting for locations and thought this would make a great place to shoot. Our timing wasn’t great though. We finally made our way to this location just as the attendant was starting to charge for parking and cars were starting to pull in. He tried to charge us to park, but I told him we were looking for places to shoot my friend and asked if we could quickly take a shot and move on. He agreed, but was probably surprised when I pulled a big light out of the trunk. Dee helped Keira get ready in the car and we literally shot for less than 5 minutes, popping frames between crossing cars and pedestrians. Hard to get a clean shot! Finally it all came together and as an added bonus, a car that was turning in to park provided a nice edge light on her legs, giving it something the other frames were lacking. Overall it turned out pretty well I think. Nothing like working on the fly and under the gun! Thanks Keira and Dee for a successful collaboration!

After a long day staking out a second day of possible mudslides in La Canada Flintridge, which fortunately never came, I pulled off for gas in the town of Eagle Rock, just north of Los Angeles and came across some of the most incredible afternoon light I’ve seen since leaving Florida. I hopped out of the car and started pacing up and down the street looking for something interesting to shoot and when I turned around saw this giant rainbow arching over the entire skyline. I was hoping to find some human activity to shoot against this background, but unfortunately there was none to be found. Still, it was a nice scene so I took a few shots. After the light went away I continued walking around and found myself on an overpass looking down at traffic driving east along the highway. I like the shine of the lights on the wet road. After taking a few frames I looked at my monitor and noticed I had a padiddle right up front. That was good enough for me so I hopped back into the car and made my way home.

On looking up the spelling of padiddle, I came across a wikipedia page with some interesting variations on the game I grew up playing on long nighttime drives across midwestern highways. Now that I’m all grown up I like the Canadian version called “beer” as well as the one called “sex.” I’ll have to remember those.

I was downtown for an assignment that went bust the other day and figured I better shoot something to make the trek worthwhile. The Disney Concert Hall is as overphotographed a landmark as there is in LA, but I figured I’d rarely seen it in the rain so I hopped out of the car and took a couple shots as people walked by with umbrellas.

“Usted no es nada sino un perro de caza Y no es ningún amigo mío.”

Not his words, but from a Spanish translation of Hound Dog I found online. I was walking around Silver Lake last weekend with Erinn and my friend Matt when we came across Raphael “Elvis” Coca, a San Salvadorian Elvis look-alike, sitting on a bench in front of the La Parrilla Mexican restaurant on West Sunset Blvd., where he works. I asked to take a picture and then we spent about ten minutes talking to him in Spanish. Good to know that my language skills are still good enough to carry on a basic conversation, but I do need some work! He was a really friendly guy and a fun person to meet while out for a stroll. The Maybe I’ll go back and watch him perform sometime soon.