Our First Wedding.

No not mine, but a cute young couple local to the bay area.

Andrew Cichowski, one of our good friends, was asked by one of his colleagues to document their wedding. Because Andrew was hard at work in Med School over in Chicago and was no longer local to Santa Cruz, he was unable to photograph the wedding. He threw our names out there for her to consider as replacements, and after a few emails, we were hired!

I've filmed one wedding in the past, but have never photographed one. After some discussion, I turned the bride-to-be on to the idea of having a video done in addition to photographs. She loved the idea.

We met the couple for the first time back in June to talk and take some photos for their photo engagement. We decide upon Panther Beach as our location, and man was it beautiful! We ended up getting some great sunset, golden hour shots.











A month later, the big day came. We all had butterflies, but we knew what we had to do. Jenny, armed with a Canon 5D and a Nikon D80, was in charge of photos. A friend, Ben Bunch, and I were in charge of capturing video. We mapped out all our locations beforehand so we could reduce the risk of getting in each other's shots. All in all, a very stressful day that went very well. We came back with hundreds of great captures as well as some absolutely stunning HD video. I can't wait to show the happy couple our work!

Here are some of our favorite captures from the day.























We just finished making them a custom book and are still hard at work on the edit. I'll post the final edit of the day as soon it's done.

If you're interested in any wedding or event coverage please don't hesitate to contact us at info@athousandwordsandframes.com or check out our site at AThousandWordsAndFrames.com

They See Me Rolling.

Rolling shots are something I've been meaning to do for a longgg time! The only problem was that we needed another car to take pictures from. Luckily my friend ben, who has been getting the mod bug as of recent, came to our aid and offered his car.

Friday afternoon around sunset, Ben, Jenny, and I headed North on Highway 1 along the coast just as the sun was setting. Ben drove his car while Jenny leaned out to snap some photos of my car. After some time, we turned around and swapped positions so that I could take a few rolling shots of my friend Ben's Versa. Here's one of my favs that Jenny shot.



After this, we dropped my car off back at home, grabbed Jenny's '93 Miata, and headed to a nearby parking lot. Along with trying to the get the hang of Jenny's stick shift, we just hung out and snapped some more photos. The photo below is one fo my favorites. In order to achieve the shot I had to be in Jenny's trunk hanging my camera and fisheye out as far as it could go. Not to mention I was attempting to shoot each frame at 1/10 of a second while she was turning around the light post. Not as sharp as i would have liked, but I love the feeling of movement in the frame. Looks almost like she's drifting around the corner.



Had a great time last night, hope to do it again after I get some more stuff for my car!

Spontaneous Trip to the City.

To relieve the stress of school and bills, I headed up to San Francisco with a few friends and the pug. There was nothing in particular we went there for, but just needed an excuse to hang out in the city we all love.



While there, I mentioned that I wanted to get some shirts so my friend Shelby took us to The Hundreds store by Union Square. This place looked like the bat cave inside. The lights were dimmed and store appeared to be carved out of the inside of a rock. Props to them on the look and feel of the place. I definitely got the hater vibes from some of the employees because I wasn't decked out in Hundreds gear, but that's what expected in those high end clothing boutiques. I picked out a limited San Francisco Hundreds shirt, and we were off.



Eventually, we wound up on Haight Street again. We grabbed a bite at a place called Cha Cha Cha. The Fried Platanos (bananas) were delicious. Definitely a place I'd love to go back to. We peeked in a few of the other stores and I ended up getting another cool shirt featuring the Star Wars AT-AT walker with a dog cone on. Around 7pm, all the stores started closing so we figured it was a good time to head out.

Before heading home, I took Jenny and Shelby up to a place that looks out over the city. The sun just so happened to be setting so I snapped a few images while there was still some light left. The image below is heavily photoshopped, but the sky was gorgeous.



While walking around trying to find the best angle for the city with my telephoto lens, I noticed my car was looking extremely photogenic. I snapped a few hundred photos or so of my car just hanging out on the side of the road with the wheels turned in. I think a few of them came out pretty cool.









Overall, had a great time with some great people. Hope to go back again soon!

Bazooka Lens.

I was a bit hesitant about loaning out a Canon battery to a friend this weekend, but once he said I could borrow his Canon 100-400mm L lens in return, I was sold. Needless to say, I spent a good amount fo time this weekend playing with the new glass.



At 400mm, the background is soft and creamy, giving the image an almost dream-like element. It was a bit tiresome to hold this beast of a lens up, but the trade-off was well worth the sore muscles. My only qualm is that the auto focusing mechanism was a bit slow. This could aslo be the result of my Canon 5D's measly number of AF points. My girlfriend and I took our pug to romp on the beach while I snapped some photos. Because of the slow autofocus, only about 10% of the images were in focus. After awhile, I gave up on the autofocus and just went straight manual. This was a little better, but it was still hard to tell if I was shooting at critical focus. I'm sure with some more training and use with the lens, I'd get the hang of it much quicker. Luckily, I was able to get some really awesome photos that I'm happy to walk away with.

Thanks Eric for letting me shoot on your beast of a lens!

Here are some of my favorite captures from the day, most of which were shot at 400mm.

I ♥ Tea

A few weeks back, Gizmodo had a "bokeh" photo challenge in which the assignment was to take a creative picture of out of focus light. Jenny and I had an awesome idea for a photo, but because of school and midterms, we were unable to put our idea into motion. Fast forward a few weeks, and we finally found the time to take our bokeh photo!

Jenny and I are both avid tea drinkers. We both have at least two cups of tea a day. Nothing beats that feeling of a nice hot cup of tea in the morning to warm the soul. With this idea in mind, we decided to take a photo that highlighted our love for tea.



To capture this image, we set up our Bodum mug and mini muffin on a dark wooden stool. A small desk lamp was used to spotlight the cup of tea from above. About three feet back, we hung up some old xmas lights in order to get our "bokeh effect". We strategically placed the lights, so that it looked as if the bokeh was coming out of the cup like steam. Finally, we poured the tea into the cup and began snapping away. As seen in the image above, we also played with paper cut-outs. If you cut a shape out of paper and hold it over your lens, you can manipulate the form of the bokeh. This proved to be a very cool effect in making the lights look like little mini hearts.

Because Jenny was ultimately the mastermind behind the initial idea, I acted as an assistant, and kind of let her do her thing. I tend to be a backseat photographer, so I really tried hard to just offer advice when called upon. Jenny also shot an exposure on her Mamiya RB67 MF film camera. Hopefully, when we get that back in a few weeks, it'll look just as good as the digital captures from that night.

When Jenny uploaded the picture to her Flickr, she wrote a sweet little poem to accompany the image.

"Every morning I wake up,
go to the kitchen,
make him tea,
wake him with a kiss,
and a nice warm mug
to start his day

this one's for you Doug
xoxoxo"

I don't know how I ever got so lucky. Thank you so much Jenny. The best part of my day is waking up next to you xoxo.