DC / Smathers & Branson Update

I've been in DC for the past few days getting a sleep study done for my possible slapnea (sleep apnea) and staying with Peter & Michelle in their gorgeous George-townhouse.



Peter's company, Smathers & Branson, has been BLOWING UP over the past couple years, this year especially.

Today President Clinton rocked one of his belts!



And you can find their stuff now at many Brooks Brothers stores.

So awesome!

Their current website is somewhat terrible and their long overdue NEW website featuring all my photos from the Spring Island shoot has been in development for almost two years now. (Their web developer is THE WORST.)

But here's a sneak peek!






The link you see there above isn't live yet. I just registered it and will be launching a product photography website soon because, well, as a photographer (and a human) there's no such thing as too many streams of income!

Lip-Dub Proposal

If you haven't seen this yet, it's crazy amazing.



Watch it fullscreen!

Conlix Wedding!

The past weekend was a Conlix Wedding Extravaganza.

We had rehearsal for the entire wedding party.



Then we had an Indian Sangeet Saturday night...



And then the wedding was on Sunday.

Our groomsmen line was funny-looking. Which one of these is not like the others?



Beautiful wonderful weekend for a beautiful wonder couple.

Hundreds more pics to come!

American Ninja Warrior

Some of you might remember Dorian, my very first pseudo-friend in LA.

He recently competed in American Ninja Warrior and will be on tonight's show at 9pm.

Here's a vid from his preliminary qualifier.

People like this make me feel bad about my fitness.

New Jersey Wedding!

Over the weekend I shot wedding #4 of 28 for 2012. (Though I may have picked up a 29th wedding in the process.)

Who knew Jersey could look like this?



My couple again was gorgeous.



The bride was Jen, one of Katie and Megoon's best friends from high school who I've now known for several years.

LOVE shooting a wedding that all my friends are at!



Jen didn't hire a makeup artist, so I had her bridemaids gave her a hand.




The mean priest at the church had very strict rules and would not allow me to go anywhere near the altar for pictures. Lame.

I did still manage to get a few decent shots though.



The boys wore suspenders, which, sans jackets made them look like German lads.



George and his groomboys were all trackstars, so I had them sprint around trying to grab each others batons.



Katie made a lovely bridesmatron.





Yay dancings.



Yay embarrassing speeches.




Yay pop music!







They played One Direction, OBVIOUSLY.







KP girls unite!



Loves a KP wedding!

Congratulations Jen and George!

Next up: CONLIX'S WEDDING!!!! FINALLY!!!!

Pretty awe$ome

According to the Wall Street Journal:

" As of the IPO on Friday, the average paper value of equity for a Facebook employee was $4.9 million, excluding Mr. Zuckerberg's share."

Wow.



OK I'll stop talking about this now.

Happy IPO Day!

It was a really fun wedding on its own...




But knowing they were all going to become millionaires in less than a week had to sweeten the deal A LITTLE bit.





Today Facebook goes public.

And basically everyone you see above becomes a 1%-er.

I am so happy and so envious at the same time.

Envious, because, well, who wouldn't want to be in their shoes by the age of 30?

And happy because everyone I met last weekend was just truly wonderful people. And when you see people that deliriously giddy, you can't really do anything but be happy for them.

It's weird what I do. As a wedding photographer, I spend anywhere from 12 to 24 of the most intimate hours possible with a bride on the most important day of her life thus far. I get to know her best friends and her closest family members. I hear their stories and their secrets and their jokes and their drama. And I soak it all up. And most of time, if things go well, by the end of it, I feel like I've known them for years. And hopefully, vice versa. That's why I love shooting my friends' weddings as well. As a guest, you get to spend maybe 10 minutes of quality time total with the bride or groom. As a photographer, it's your job to be at their side ALL DAY LONG.

So yes, after this wedding I felt like these were some of my closest friends and so I'm happy to be sharing in all their joy and success.

Crazy to think that just a few years ago, Facebook HQ was a bunch of young recent-grads or almost-grads drinking wine in a rented house....



And this is Facebook HQ yesterday, on the eve of its IPO.



Definitely inspiration to dream big and a reminder that a lot can happen in a year.

So Congratulations and Happy IPO Day to all my Facebook friends!

Facebook Wedding

Well. It was a BEAUTIFUL bride and BEAUTIFUL wedding.

I landed in SF Thursday afternoon in time to rush over to St Dominic's Church to catch the wedding party during rehearsal.



At 5'10" without heels, bride Christina should have been a supermodel.



Unfortunately, her brains got the best of her and from Stanford she went straight to working for Facebook.

Her mom and two older brothers were gorgeous too.

The gene pool is so unfair sometimes.



Everyone had radiant smiles.







And on wedding day, the bride REALLY cleaned up.



We LOVES a little groomsboy!



Loved the bridesmaid dresses and bridesmaids as well.




It was a large wedding.



Everyone was REALLY happy and pretty.








After the ceremony, we headed over to The Bentley Reserve for the reception.

The venue was phenomenal.



And the party was off the hook.

Anytime I went near a bar I'd be forced to a do a shot with whatever group was currently doing them.






Eventually the bartender was just filling up trays of shots and handing them out to the whole room.



The DJ was also one of the best wedding DJ's I'd ever heard. It helped that he played One Direction.



So fun!




Because this was a big Facebook wedding, I made sure to post some teaser photos on FB as soon as I woke up.

It paid off, by 2pm I had a request for another Facebook wedding!



Unfortunately I'm already booked that day. But hopefully I will become the Facebook crowd's go-to wedding photographer.

THAT would be sick.

Damn...I should have had them pay me in Facebook stock.