Guess who's back??? Me...and I brought along Gabe - from a year ago. He's walking now! Things have been pretty busy at work so photography has a taken a back seat. Look at this good lookin guy! These were taken at the beautiful Japanese gardens here.

Meet Alessandra!

Mateus is lookin mighty handsome these days. Look at that smile!

Karen, Anand, Mateus, and now, Alessandra - turning out to be quite a handsome family going on here! If you look back at the archives I have a few pics of them when Mateus was a baby. Look at him now with his smile that brightens up the room. I'm doing my photo rounds in SoCal. Next up: a guest that's new to the world (hopefully).

Guess Who's Pregnant (again)?!!

Guess who's pregnant again?!

This was Sienna's idea to sit at a bench

Someone was extremely excited about feeding ducks

Today is the last SoCal day, sniff. The weather was perfect, roughly 79 degrees, sunny and clear. Let's see...DFW, 39. Ouch. I took some doggie pics the other day too but I haven't had a chance to get to the pictures yet. So I think I'll work on a few on the plane. This is it for Sienna for the next few months.

More Gabey Baby!

I thought I'd squeeze this post in before I take off to Cali. Next up are some more Sienna and doggies pictures. Oh, and San Francisco too!

I finally get to take a few days off. The last few months have been a marathon for me - just physically and mentally draining. I've been on a diet and doing more exercises but I haven't been sleeping as much as I should. Probably because I'm up late doing this haha.

Finally, I have been sold on shooting in RAW format. I'm not sure if I'm going to shoot a whole wedding with it, but I'm getting some razor sharp pictures right out of the camera. It takes longer to process and convert them but for small jobs I think it's the way to go...for now. I learn something new about photos every time I shoot. Much more soon - Merry Christmas everyone!

World, Meet Gabe!

Mom, Dad, and Brother Ben

Move over Silas and Sienna, here comes the newest cute sensation to hit this blog, Gabe! He's only 7 weeks old and learning to smile. I wasn't going to post any pictures because I've been swamped lately but I couldn't help taking some time off for this. I'll be posting more pictures soon.

Also, this is the first time I've shot RAW (NEF) format and so far I really like it. I do notice the pictures are coming out crisp if I've done everything right. The bad news is that I don't think this lappy can hang with the 10MB pictures. I'll eventually need to get a more powerful machine with giant monitor. But that's later. Anyway, back to cute overload.

Some Christmas Family Photos

Paige and Cody

Black and white version

Here's Pam (in the red) with her family plus Cody (next to her) and Maggie (the dog). This was the fastest, most freezing, photo shoot. Lasted about 5 minutes. I didn't do a good job with this shoot with the focusing and settings. A lot of pictures were blurry but it was getting pretty dark out there.

Holy Crap! An Update!

A little blue tone for ya

*blows dust off the blog* Hi again to the one or two people who check this photo blog. Here are a couple of pictures of Anisa's brother Nason and his lady friend Emmy. This was during their annual craw-fest.  My lappy was out for service (again) so I didn't have access to photoshop.  I got a new HP netbook but that thing doesn't have the horsepower to do any photo editing.  So now I'm back.  I'll post some family pictures in a few days when I get a chance to shop em.  

Update:  The last picture is new :) 

Sienna The Slideshow

Ok this is the last Sienna post for a long while, as I am only documenting the first year of her life. It's a good thing Kris has a nice camera so he can take over from here. It's amazing to see someone grow up so fast. She's developing quite the personality as you can tell by the pictures. She's got a split personality, so goes back and forth between all-business like dad and silly/funny like mom with her own goofy style added in. My regular blog readers have shared this experience with me. If you like the pics you can see most of them in the archives. Enjoy :)

Mateus (and Sienna) @ the Park

7lb Mateus had his first outing yesterday to the park for a quick photo shoot. I think this is the furthest he's been away from home literally (kind of like a Hobbit) so it was nice for me to share in that. Not to be out-cuted, Sienna came along too all dolled up and sporting her new hair clip, so I guess you can consider this their first date - look at what I'm starting! Anyway, I think the pics turned out great. You must excuse his little bald spots, they're from the I.V. at the hospital. The poor little guy almost died if it weren't for an emergency c-section. Anyway, you know parents are very happy and proud when Dad dresses up and comes out to take pics too.

On photography

Being the "I hear you take pictures" guy amongst my friends, I get asked a lot what kind of camera they should get or what kind of equipment I use etc. What I always tell them is pretty much, it really doesn't matter. Any modern DSLR will do the trick as long as the person shooting knows what he or she is doing in the right lighting - which takes practice and doing a little homework. If you've noticed in this blog, it's not about Canon versus Nikon because it takes away from the REAL stars and the heart and soul of this blog: the pictures and the people. However, being the geek that I am, it's inevitable that I will chat about the gear sometimes, especially if I get something new.

* Update: I've added the feedblitz email subscription so now you can get an email notifying you when I've updated the blog, which I'll try to do more frequently.

Laguna Beach Blowout:: Sienna

I warned you these were gonna be devastatingly cute. It's awesome when you actually capture "love" in a picture. Kris and Susy are just beaming - and Kris never smiles. Sometimes I get stuff out of my camera that even surprises me and in this case, it was the sky and water, which was perfect despite the earlier rain. In fact, the rain made it a lot more interesting. More pics to come soon.