Kara and Rusty were married at the Sacred Heart Church in Ocean Beach, and aftwerwards they treated their guests to a four hour cruise aboard the Hornblower “High Spirits” for their reception. It made for a long schedule, between getting ready at the hotel, the wedding itself, hitting sunset clifffs after the wedding, and finally, the cruise. It went by really fast!
All of Rusty’s 9 siblings were there ( Yes, NINE ) along with a bunch of family and friends from both sides. Rusty’s family is local, as Russ Sr. has been a family dentist here in San Diego for decades. Kara hails from further north in California.
Everybody was checking the program before the ceremony…”Who goes first?”
The Ceremony went perfectly! 
On the way to the reception cruise, we stopped off at Sunset Cliffs for more group shots and a few more of Kara and Rusty.
The recpetion was a real treat for everybody. I’ve shot on the High Spirits before and it’s always been a real pleasure. Even though so many of us live in San Diego, it’s surprising how many people never get out on the bay!
I
always like to close the night with a parting shot, and here is Kara and Rusty’s. We took a few extra minutes to light them up at the end of Broadway for a cool goodnight shot. : )
Way back when….like, waaaay back when, I was given a camera by my grandmother. It was an old medium-format body with two lenses that she’d bought sometime in the early 1970’s when she was taking photography classes. This camera was basically a box with a lens on it, and an eyepiece on top that you looked down into to see the focusing screen. There were no batteries, no light meters, no auto focus, etc. I am a self-taught photographer, and that is what I learned with. I had a little ‘Luna-Pro’ light meter that I used to measure light with, and after a while I developed a feel for how to get a good exposure.
I settled in Athens, GA at the end of 1992, having driven across the country by myself to see what it would be like to live outside my native San Diego. Part of why I chose Athens was the music scene, because it was a college town and home to REM, which was one of my favorites bands at the time. I was able to bring my camera into the 40 Watt club a few times, and I just came across the negatives from one of those nights just last week (they were in a shoebox). I scanned a few just to share here for fun, because it was the night the 40 Watt hosted a long line up of bands for a charity show. Michael Stipe of REM sang a short set with local songwriter/singer Vic Chesnutt. Today is Michael Stipe’s birthday, so I though it would be a fun to share a few images. Here are a couple of frames, scanned from the negatives:
When it came to shooting in low light, I really didn’t know what I was doing back then. I had a Vivitar 283 flash on a bracket, ISO 400 film, and I just flashed the bejeesus out everything I shot. I cringe now, thinking of the flashes I put a few audienes through! Well, times have changed, and now I can shoot at crazy high film speeds with super expensive wide-aperture lenses and forego flash all together…so I haven’t popped a flash in a music venue for years.
It has been over a year since the last time I photographed Bella and her family, and I’m pleased to say that everybody is doing really well. Bella’s personality just grows and grows along with her, she’s such a character. I was really happy to be able to spend a few minutes doing some back yard portraits with her around the Thanksgiving holiday. Kids are so much fun to photograph, especially when they are into it too.
This first one was a special request by Bella after eating a brownie : “Got Milk?”
Okay, we did manage to get Mom in there for a few!
The last time I saw Michelle and Eric, we were shooting their engagement portraits at Disneyland. You might recognize them from the blog, or their images on the my main site. I travelled to Los Angeles for the wedding at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles in October.
The Park Plaza Hotel hasn’t really been open for business for decades, but becase it’s such a cool building and so wonderfully preserved, it’s very popular as a set for the motion picture industry. It’s really something to have a building like this all to yourself for a wedding! Michelle and Eric put together a very special evening for everybody with a great mix of nostalgia, history, and promise for the future all at once.
All the tables were named after films that used the Park Plaza Hotel as a set!
Michelle and Eric surprised everybody with their dance. They had rehearsed it for weeks and it was definitely worth it. Everybody loved the dance and they looked so great out there, using up the whole floor from corner to corner.
It was dark outside by the time the ceremony was over, so we took a few minutes to go outside and shoot around the lobby while everybody was dancing the night away.
