Congrats on your engagement!!

You’ve now got the monumental task of finding all your vendors.

Take a big breath. It’s going to get complicated. Your mother will have an opinion, your fiancé’s mother will have an opinion. Not to mention your bridesmaids.

Breathe.

What if there was one place to go?  One place that had all the vendors, and 2-3 options to choose from?

Planning a wedding can be super duper overwhelming.  Lots of information flying at you from all angles.  Lots of dollar signs, lots of people, lots and
lots
and lots
of opinions.

(Many of them not yours)

It’s overwhelming!  As a wedding photographer I’ve seen eyes glaze over and I know that person has seen so many wedding vendors they just aren’t registering the information any longer.

To help with that, I helped found a wedding vendor group.  Elite Vendor Group has many top notch wedding vendors to help point you in the direction you want to go when it comes to your wedding.  With everything from invitations, to the DJ and wedding planners to the photographers, Elite Vendor Group has at least 2 vendors per category to give you a couple of options.  And if any of then vendors doesn’t work with your idea or budget, they can point you to colleagues who can!  Whether they are part of Elite Vendor Group or not.  That’s the beauty of connecting with a group of professionals in the industry you’re looking into.  We all talk and share information, and we all refer to each other.  Guaranteed, if you need something and it’s not part of Elite Vendor Group, we can point you to the person who either knows what you’re looking for, or that person or business specifically.  And each vendor is located in the California Bay area and has worked with each other before, so when you plan your wedding, you know each person involved has experience in the location you’ve chosen and works well together.

When you have hundreds of options, how do you choose?!  We like to keep it simple.  Simple is always best and makes your life a lot easier and also your wedding and planning it a lot more fun!  When you have fun with your vendors, you wedding will be a complete success!  And you will be totally happy, not stressed, and totally free to enjoy your day.  Who doesn’t want that?!

To contact anyone in Elite Vendor Group, go to the website and check the categories out.  Emails, websites, and phone numbers are all listed in easy to find categories right at the top.  Totally easy to find and contact the vendor you’re looking for.  Ask us any question you want and we’ll do our best to answer it or find someone who can.

Make your wedding a blast!  For you and your guests.

I know it’s Tuesday, and the beginning of the week.  But remember, have fun!  Don’t take yourself too seriously today.

Oh you have to read THIS.

THIS is a very real and heartfelt gripe from a very good, very honest, and very, very talented photographer.

I don’t know her, never met her, and might never (HOT DAMN do I want to!).  But we belong to the same group.

The group of photographers struggling to make ends meet by trying to do what we love. (“We” being used plural, not royal.  We’re the janitor and CEO and everything in between in our One-Woman Businesses/One-Man Businesses).  WE are struggling in an economy that just tells you to grab a shitty ass day job you hate just to make the rent, put food on the table, and survive.  Desperate to get hired to do what we all love because we can’t NOT photograph, showing you something new from our eyes.  Photographers on our own, without the benefit of a spouse to foot every bill we have because he/she has a high paying tech job and you can go be “creative” on someone else’s dime.  The same group of photographers who put ourselves out there every damn day, planning, and most times just crossing our fingers, that today will be different.  That this is our year.  This year will be the year for photography, that each and every potential customer (visually over stimulated with the amazing advancements in technology) will realize how important photography is in their lives.  That today someone will both appreciate what we do, and realize their children are more important than that new hair cut or color.  That their wedding will only happen once (ideally), OK twice max (which is such a sad state of affairs in and of itself).  But after the day is over, what do you have to look back on? Do you have the moments frozen in time to look back on and cherish and pass down to your future family?  Or did you go and get your hair cut, go out to dinner and spend too much just because you could.

Photography is an appreciation of the mundane things around you, the things you look at every day, day in and day out, for DECADES and never see anything special in.  Photography allows you to take a step back, breathe, and take in your surroundings like nothing  else.  The artist who’s dedicated her life to learning this art and perfecting her talent, putting herself out there daily to show you her vision, helps you see magic in the mundane.  That way of seeing is innate, the learning is in the technology.

Every business owner has this feeling every morning, I think.  Maybe it’s just me.  I wake up, and have to fight at either being totally pissed at the world, or crying my head off in frustration and then burying myself back under my covers.  Some days that struggle is easier than others, some days it’s harder.  But I put one foot in front of the other every damn morning to get up and do yesterday all over again.  Market, work on images, photograph my surroundings, market, blog, market, network, market.  Did I mention market?  Because on a daily basis I’m marketing myself.  On a daily basis I’m trying to figure out if i can afford to pay for advertising.  Daily so I worry if I can make rent next month.  Owning your own business is the hardest damn thing I have ever done, and will ever do.

Thank you, Yan, for telling it like it is.  For being awesome and honest, because that’s what photography does too.  For embracing the reality and putting it out there.  You have more balls than any other photographer I know for doing that.

So many photographers out there blog, and talk like they’re the shit.  Like no one else can do what they can.  Everyone see’s something differently, but right now?  Right this second?  There’s a lot of the same going on.  That royal “we” gets tossed around left and right in postings.  There’s just me.  You contact me, Kati, and get me, Kati emailing you.  I am literally, the janitor picking up the shit I put out there, adn the CEO making those big executive decisions.  I’m up 6am and asleep at 2am, and I’m not a morning person.  I shoot daily, because I can’t NOT take photos.

Read this, ingest it, and I hope to hell it strikes a chord in your lives.  Now hire her. Hire the photographer whom you fell in love with, who’s work strikes a chord in your soul, who’s vision makes you see something new you’ve been looking every day for decades.    I don’t care if they’re 3 towns away or 6 states away.  Make a decision to document your life, your family, for the future generations.  Don’t wait for it to be too late.

So please Contact Yan, Contact Me, call someone  who can capture your family, your day, your special moment for you and.

Call us. You will be so happy you did.

Film Is Not Dead!  No sir-ree!

Recently (November) I had the opportunity to attend an all film workshop.  Totally getting back to my roots here.  I started my photography career (it was more of a hobby then, but I was getting a degree in it, so it was always going to be my career) in film (I was in LOVE with 4×5 view cameras, which if you’re not familiar with here is a link a la Wikipedia) back in New York.  I carried my 35mm around everywhere I went (yes I still have that camera and yes I still use it from time to time) and the 4×5 when I felt like lugging that amazing and huge camera around.  I photographed mostly street since walked everywhere.  It’s New York!  You walk, take the subway, and yell “I’m walking here!”  Ok well maybe not everyone does, but I did yell that a few times.

In 2003 I switched to digital fully.  I jumped right in with both feet and set my trusty EOS3 on the shelf until this year.  (It still had film in it!)  I never intended to get rid of it, even when it sat there for 8 years.  It was always a “I’ll pick that back up someday and photography with it again.”  Eight years of that, people.  I finally had enough.  I’d been photographing digitally for 8 years and haven’t been as inspired with my work as I should have been.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked my work.  Still like the work I’ve produced digitally.  But I’ve felt I’ve been in a creative rut.  And there’s no other cure than to continue photographing.  So, I went back to film.

Jonathan Canlas is a film photographer.  100% film for all his weddings, engagements, corporate, etc.  I know what you’re thinking, “People still use that?” or even “Wait, do they still make film?  I thought those companies stopped film production.”  LIES!  Film is still alive and well.  Thank God.  Many photographers try to shoot digital and have it come out looking the same as film, and in some cases succeed.  Now, however the grain I fell in love with as a film photographer is now noise and you wouldn’t want that in your photos.  The workshop I attended is Film Is Not Dead, which shortens interestingly enough to FIND.  I went because I wanted to fall back in love with photography.  And what better way than to go back to the beginning, the medium that started me on this crazy adventure.  As I mentioned I was a view camera photographer (when my school’s lab would let me take the camera out) but there was no way I was going to buy a view camera to cart around the Island of Maui for 3 days.  Actually, that’s an awesome idea.  I might just go again to take a view camera with me instead.

I can’t say enough good things about this workshop.  If you are just dipping your toe into the film pool and want a taste along with some business and photographic instruction, this is the workshop that will help you do a full cannonball in (if you want to, if you still just want to dip your toe in that’s fine too).  No question is unanswered and hopefully unasked.  Jon is an amazing instructor, patient, excited, and in love with his craft, which is just what you want your instructor to be.  As in love as you are or want to be.  His excitement leaks into you and your work and your days, helping you learn more, create more, and experience the place you’re in in a much more fulfilling way.

Our days were structured with a meet and great the day before, which was a sweet BBQ on he beach.  Jon introduces himself with a hug (why do we shake hands instead of hug people?) and everyone grabs a drink and gets to know the people you’re going to be spending a lot of time with over the next few days.  The mornings of the next 3 days consist of instruction and info in the mornings, then photographing in the afternoons.

Because of that workshop, those very very short 3 days, I am consciously looking at the world around me again the way I looked at it when I was walking through the streets of New York, photographing anything and anyone that I thought was beautiful, interesting, exciting.  I’m consciously looking for that again.  I can’t thank Jon enough for giving that back to me.  His excitement and creativity helped me get re-energized about the craft and medium I fell in love with 17 years ago.

Obviously if you go, your experience may differ.  I went in wanting exactly that.  I also went in with no other expectation that to shoot a lot of film, see some amazing sites, and have a blast.  This was the best workshop I’ve been to on a personal level.  I’ve attended a few, for business, for my craft, but this one definitely touched my soul as a photographer.

Because of that, expect to see a lot more film on here instead of digital!  But of course there will still be digital.  Until I’m totally comfortable, I’ll be hybrid for a while.

Just a little randomness for your Sunday viewing pleasure.  Yes, that’s a shake weight. Seriously.  Found this dude on the streets of the Gaslamp district in San Diego, CA last month for the Pictage Partnercon.  Crazy.  Snapped a few shots (I can’t explain his face in the right image, he kept making that face whenever I brought the camera up), showed them to him, and was rewarded with, “Man I need to loose more weight, I need to work out more.” And he then preceded to shake the shake weight.  Priceless.  I love being a photographer.

Super cool!  It was an ADORABLE party and Dylan’s mother did some amazing magic with the fondant sea creatures.

Dark, overcast, uninviting. Yesterday was beautiful. Today calls for rain and angry looking clouds on top of a sweet wind that blows right though my cotton hoodie. I planed for southern California weather. Yes I know it’s November, but I packed the hour before my flight. It’s how I roll.

Anyway, I’m here for the annual Pictage PartnerCon. That’s a conference, in case you didn’t get the “con” part . It’s usually held in New Orleans (“usually” here constitutes the past 2 years), which is by far one of my favorite US cities. You can see a previous post here and here with a video from last year here. This conference joins hundreds of photographers who use Pictage as their backend services company. Speakers, workshops, shooting, parties. It’s really one big party with hundreds of people who take photos for a living, toss in a few amazing speakers and you have a fun and inspiring 3 days.

Held at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego’s beautiful and visually rich Gaslamp District, and a stones throw from Petco Park, home of the Padres, today and tomorrow will see hundreds of photographers converging on this one small part of San Diego. Checking in, cameras in hand, or iPhones and iPads (I’m currently typing this on mine) excited to let loose and have our brains and hearts filled with the photographic community that we love as much as our photographic craft.

I came in yesterday to get acclimated, cause you know, San Jose has such a different climate and elevation that San Diego. Uh huh. It was more liked wanted to hang out In the Gaslamp have a few drinks, and enjoy a day before the craziness sets in tomorrow.

Plus when you have an area like this you should definitely explore! Breakfasts at the Broken Yolk Cafe (so so tasty), wine across from the hotel at the Italian restaurant, and pedicure and manicure. That’s my “acclimating” lol.

Especially when this is going on this week as well!

So I’m sitting in a Starbucks, enjoying my tea and a couple of these (thank god that’s about the size of them, it wouldn’t matter what size it is I’d devour it, they’re so dang good!)

And just enjoying the peace before the storm. Follow me on Instagram (lightsplash) to see photos all throughout the next few days!

Well, today, the Knotty Bride featured that shoot on her website!  How exciting!  You can see the full post here!

Here’s the skinny!  $95 for a 30 minutes session.  You get 30-60 images in an online gallery.  All prints are a la cart, and are 2 for 1 for the first 30 days.  2 for 1!!!  This is PERFECT for family, friends, businesses, babies, etc.  And so affordable you can’t NOT take advantage!

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