Japanese Tea Garden and North Beach Engagement Session

Steve and Jody rock! We started their engagement shoot at the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park and then went to North Beach to keep shooting. I like to shoot for a couple hours if the client is willing and Steve and Jody were all for it so I think we were out gallivanting around town for about 3 hours. Yeah!

They own a web-based image management and sales platform service called Spit Fire Photo It gives organizations and photographers a place to archive images and have e-commerce store fronts.

This first image below is probably my favorite of the day! It wasn't posed at all! Or at least I didn't pose her. :^)

We found this really old looking brick wall while walking around North Beach. I so love it. Then we waited around til we could catch a cable car. We successfully caught a few quick images without disturbing the cable car driver or passengers.

How can you not have fun shooting in the middle of traffic on Columbus? Notice the nice officer in the background who asked us to stay on the pavement, but didn't give us a ticket (center image).

Engagement Session at San Jose Rose Garden

Wow! I am so far behind in blogging! Its just been so busy and I have to put shooting and editing first. But I'm in the mood to write so I'll be working on a few new posts for sure.

I shot David and Leah's engagement session at the San Jose Rose Gardens prior to their wedding in September. Leah is able to go from a happy in love look to super sexy in a split second so they were really easy to work with.
The makeup artist had run a little late so we only had about 50 minutes, but we were still able to get some amazing photos.

My favorite images has to be the bottom middle shot. It just rocks!

I'll be blogging their wedding images soon!

Publishing Party with Jay Kelly Photography

We just needed a reason to have a party! Ever since Bryon and I moved in to the new place with the huge backyard I had been dying to give a party. So when I was published in the Fall issue of The Knot Northern CA that gave me all the reason I needed. I just had to wait a little while to find an available weekend.

My co-host for the party was my buddy Jay Kelly (fellow photographer) who had also recently been published in a book called Style Your Dream Wedding.

I had my mom fly in from Arizona so she and our friend Lisa could cater the event. They are both foodies so they had a lot of fun making the mouth watering menu! Chocolate dipped figs filled with marzipan, 4 different gourmet cupcakes, Thai chicken and beef skewers, and baby red potatoes with caviar; to name a few.

We set up a bar (manned by our favorite bartender Wyatt), some cocktail tables for mingling and a dance floor so we could get our boogie on. The below images are of me hiding behind my mohito, Chad showing off the cupcakes he frosted (Chad was such a huge help), and Melanie owner of Dutchess Boutique in Campbell, sipping her glass of cab.

Below are the 2 chefs and their assistant (Donna, Mom and Lisa). They joined the party after we were done with all the food prep. I was also happy that my long time friend Sherree and her daughter Jasmine were able to make the party (see them in image on right with me).

My favorite picture of the night is of Melanie and her hubby Jeremy at the bar. Picture on left is of Jay and me hamming it up for the camera.
Thanks to Jennifer Low for taking most of the pictures!