Renee and my surfing Buddha tshirt!!

Sometimes I find messages that inspire me in the most obscure places...on buildings, in books, bumper stickers, message boards, etc...today I found one right on an old tshirt I have worn over and over and never really paid attention to.

It is a god-awful bright orange tshirt that I picked up for $3.00. When we do beach photo sessions during the summer for Visual Photography, we wear orange shirts to stand out from all the other people on the beach so our clients can find us. I am in desperate need of doing laundry so, in need of a short sleeve shirt because of our summer-like temperatures in San Diego, I threw this tshirt on. Until today I never paid attention to what it said.

The message on my tshirt says..."You are safer moving forward than standing still..." Surfing Buddha

I realize as scary as stepping outside my "safe" box is...I am inspired again. Inspired enough that I photographed Renee at 8:00 this morning...

For anyone that knows me...I never willingly wake up early. Even on school days when Cassi has to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to go to school, I usually wake up long enough to get her to school (unbrushed hair, no make-up, clothes probably inside out-ME not her!) and then go straight back to bed and sleep until I absolutely have to wake up for work. I even have my morning routine down to the last second unless something distracts me and then I'm late for work!

So the surfing Buddha on my bright orange shirt speaks to me-I have even invited almost ten different people to view this blog. (welcome by the way!) As scary as that seems...as unsafe as moving forward seems to me...I can't keep staying in the same place anymore.

Anyways...enjoy the pics of Renee and the other fun things I found to photograph down at the beach. She was my willing subject at Mission Beach this morning. We normally walk in the morning (Yes, when I get my butt up!) at Lake Murray but the weather was too beautiful on our days off so we went to the beach.

Yesterday, while we were walking, I kept finding areas I wanted to photograph in and Renee offered to be my guinea pig this morning. Thanks Renee!

Enjoy!

Engagement Images

Can you tell how much in love they are? We had a wonderful time with this couple and they were a complete blast to work with. These images were taken a year ago at WindandSea beach in La Jolla, Ca for their engagement.

Their wedding was held in Greece (I know...romantic!) and then we photographed their reception here in San Diego at a Greek restaurant downtown San Diego (images to follow at a later date!). Recently I received a sonogram image from Stephanie and today found out that the baby is a boy and is due in July. I can't wait to see how beautiful their baby will be with parents that look this good! (Congratulations Stephanie!!!)

Enjoy!

Kikki and Patrick McCullough

I wanted to share some images from a wedding Angela Rhodes http://rhodesphotography.com and I photographed last October. Friday October 13th to be exact. Kikki is an employee of mine at Visual Photography and she was the most radiant bride I have ever seen. She truly was meant to be a bride. It's just too bad it only happens once. She was one of those brides devouring any magazine, website or bazaar she could find wedding related.

The weather forecast was rain, rain and more rain. Considering she chose a friday the 13th to get married, you would have expected it to pour. The weather was absolutely breathtaking for the wedding at the Grand Tradition in Fallbrook, California. It did pour buckets about 8:00pm during the reception once everyone was safely inside.

Kikki has a website devouted to her wedding pics, http://web.mac.com/pinkink1/iweb/Site/Welcome.html her MySpace page has multiple slideshows and in each and every picture you can just see that she was walking into this marriage 100% committed to upholding her vows.

When her Dad saw her for the first time...I am totally not kidding you...she stole his breathe away. He could not speak and actually gasped. If you know me personally, you know I am generally not a mushy person but...

The moment was magical.

That one moment defined why I love what I do. There is a quote that says (and I am going to butcher it here) but "Life isn't about the breathes you take, but the moments that take your breathe away. "

I believe this and am honored to be able to have photographed a wedding that defined this quote.

Enjoy!

Katelyn and Michael's wedding

This past Saturday I photographed a wedding with Angela Rhodes of Rhodes Photography http://rhodesphotography.com and as always, we had a blast. The couple was adorable and super easy to work with. Here's a few of their images from the wedding-Enjoy!

Disneyland

We (Diane, Amanda, Mike, Mackenzie, Brendon and my dear daughter Cassi) spent the day at Disneyland today. It was an amazingly clear, beautiful southern California day at Disneyland. The park was super super crowded but for some silly reason...we never really had to wait in long lines...the Disney gods must have been with us!

Mike, Amanda's boyfriend was forewarned before going to the park that Aunt Donna would make them take a bunch of pictures. I controlled myself...I really did...even sneaking off under the guise of getting Space Mountain Fast Passes so I could take pics without holding up everyone. I only shot 200 images and I have to say that more I use my Canon SD630, the more I love it.

I thought I'd share a few pics that I was able to take today. Enjoy! The images are straight out of the camera! Enjoy!

My list of 100 things I want to do in this life

I started this blog to be a visual reminder of things I want to do in my life. Last March I posted about wanting to post the 100 things I want to do in this lifetime. I read another photographer's blog (Jessica Claire) and she posted the 101 things she wants to do in the next 1,000 days. She must be a type A personality to want to achieve all of these things in the next 1,000 days but I'm a realist. I haven't even updated this blog to average once a month so I guess I'm a slacker.

I have been compiling my list of 100 things I want to do and am going to add them to this blog and as I come up with more goals will revise this. Hopefully, this will serve as my kick in the ass and I'll put my money where my mouth is and actually accomplish some of these things!

1. Blog at least once a week for a year

2.Take a web design/blog class

3. Go see the Padres play spring training

4. Take a random (wherever we end up) road trip with Cassi

5. Cruise to Alaska

6. Visit a chocolatier in Switzerland

7. Photograph on another continent

8. Start my own business

9. Take a healthy cooking class

10. Actually buy good utensils and pans for cooking

11. Go on a blind date

12. Make an album showcasing my favorite work

13. Create a website of my work

14. Start a real exercise program

15. Go back to my natural haircolor and add chunky highlights

16. Do the Three Day breast Cancer walk

17. Take Cassi to viist and volunteer at a rest home

18. Take Pilates

19. Run in a 5K

20. Do something charitable anonymously

21. Go to a playoff game (Go Chargers and Padres!)

22. Start a 401K

23. Drive to Vegas with the top down

24. Reconnect with at least three long lost friends

25. Cruise to the Bahamas

26. Go to New York and see World Trade Center Memorial

27. Take my Mom to Sun Valley Idaho

28. Read three classic masterpieces

29. Hang all the frames sitting on the floor

30. See fall foliage back east

31. Visit Great Great Aunt Carrie Chapman Catt's birthplace in Iowa

32. Organize my mounds of pictures

33. See a psychic/Tarot card reader

34. Live where it snows for one season

35. Host a foreign exchange student

36. Write an article to be published

37. Invent something

38. Go to Disney World again

39. Go to Disneyland without a camera

40. Watch the season of "Dirt" with Courtney Cox

41. Buy myself something frivolous from Tiffany's

42 Have a makeover done at a Mac counter and replace everything!

43. Watch all the podcasts on my iPod

44. See Joe Buissink speak DONE!!!

45. Second shoot a wedding for a photographer I idolize

46. Put all Cassi's class/team pics into one organized place

47. Become good enough friends with someone via computer (not for dating reasons) and travel to their hometown and have them visit me!

48. Purchase a laptop computer

49. Do laundry once a week for a whole month

50. Go o Salzburg Austria and take the "Sound of Music" Tour

51. Get my passport

52.

So far so good...definitely a trend of travel throughout this!

I will add more as they surface in my brain!

my new scrapbook

I used to be super passionate about scrapbooking. It was an obsession. I shopped the local scrapbook stores daily, purchased the best and newest stuff, and attend seminars and universities devoted to this art. I had boxes and boxes of "must-haves" that were going to help me archive Cassi's life...one day at a time. I stalked the message boards and devoted endless hours reading everyone's newest layouts. But then blogs started to appear. And I realized that what I loved about scrapbooking was being able to read about other people's lives. I have always been an inquisitive (yes...call it nosy if you will!)voyeuristic person and love to know other people's business. Now I have a new way to do it and the blogs just scream...come read me-

So most of the scrapbooking stuff went on ebay. I learned to use the computer to digitally scrapbook and devoted my freetime to reading about others through their blogs. Now I am sharing some of my favorite digital scrapbook pages on here so you can get a glimpse of my life. My blog is now my scrapbook.

Enjoy!