So… the week after I got back from Vegas, I spent 2 nights in my own bed, and then we were off to to meet up with my parents in Mendocino in a minivan. I always forget how between Los Angeles and San Fransisco there really isn’t much urban landscape… at least not in the sense of huge metropolis and sky scrapers. For me, I love getting out of the city, away from all the noise and pollution. Mendocino is a small coastal town, and we had rented a cabin up in the hills between Mendocino and Fort Bragg, where there is zero cell phone reception and no internet. That was such a strange experience: all these things that weren’t around when I was in high school, I am now addicted to. A fun, but tiring, trip and we got back home on Monday. These are some pictures from the trip, with a heavy emphasis on the “painting with (flash)light” portraits that my sister and I collaborated on.

If you love the outdoors, try to check out one of their tour stops. Here’s the trailer for the entire show.

I’m having to jump all over the place in terms of blogging because I’m realizing that some things are just easier to blog than others. =) Before the WPPI events, I was actually in downtown Las Vegas for the Antiworkshop with awesome instructors and some amazing photographers from all over the world. One of the workshop activities was being given a list of techniques and situations to capture, going out with a team of photographers and really cool models, and then putting together a collection to show. I got to shoot with Emily, Alli, and Scott, and here are some of my pictures of Mark and Yessenia (who rocked, by the way).

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On a personal note, I learned so much from Doug, Chenin and John Michael on this trip. It’s incredible to grow and develop as a photographer… and even better to do it alongside other passionate photographers. When I was going to yoga, I had an instructor who would say “You learn the skills and techniques so that you can then fully express.” I think of that often when it comes to photography. All the stuff about lighting, shutter-speed, f-stop - they are all just means to new avenues of expression.

Did y’all miss me?! I haven’t posted in awhile because I was in Las Vegas all last week, and got back yesterday. For a city as modern as Las Vegas, they aren’t very generous with internet connectivity… plus with everything going on, I didn’t really get a chance to stop and blog. Anyway, so there are a few things coming up that I will be trying to blog about, but I’ll just start with this.

There is a big convention held by Wedding & Portrait Photographers Int’l (WPPI) every year in Vegas around this time. There happens to be a 16×20 print competition each year that photographers from all over the world submit for scoring. Prints that score above 80 points receive an Award of Excellence get hung in this really cool gallery for people to walk through and see a lot of great work from a lot of different photographers around the world. Two of my prints made the gallery, and it was incredibly humbling to see my work hung next to amazing artists and pioneers such as Joe Bussink, Marcus Bell, Jerry Ghionis and Jesh De Rox. I really want to just thank my clients who let me do this kind of work.

Here are my two prints that won 2008 WPPI Awards of Excellence:

I absolutely LOVE crying babies. I don’t mean the fake “oh i want to get my way” whimpering stuff. We’re talking about full-blown, cry-my-eyes-out bawling. It’s not that I enjoy the noise, but I ADORE the faces and the physical expression. There is so much passion there. I suppose when you don’t have verbal/rational language yet, your full expression can come out in one single act of crying. I mean, the entire body cries, not just the mouth, versus the disconnect between our (adult) body language and the (adult) words we often speak. If you ever watch crying babies, they clench their hands and feet in a intense expression, unified with the entire act of crying. It’s powerful stuff to me.

I think because of the way I look at a baby’s passion when crying, I get to also really enjoy the purity of baby’s joy. I was just going through an old baby session that I shot and I found this picture. When I first saw it again, I was caught between laughing and crying, which in itself is such a silly adult tension of emotions. (It’s not like babies really think about whether or not they are supposed to be laughing or crying in any given moment.) This kind of purity in expression is so hard to find as an adult, and yet kids do it every day. How much do we need to unlearn before we can fully express again?

(Thank you, Reza, for reminding me to stop thinking so much… and find wonder in just staring at walls.)