Koolina Wedding-- West Shore Oahu-- Iyanah and Steve

This was a beautiful January day at Koolina on Oahu's west side. I love shooting over here.

Moili Gardens Hawaii Wedding

Moili Gardens is a great location on the east side of Oahu.

Kawela Bay wedding-- North Shore Oahu

Kawela bay is a nice secluded bay on the north shore of Oahu. Great place to get married.

Laie LDS Temple Wedding-- Peter and Aileen

I have to be the worst blogger of any photographer I know but sooner or later I do get around to blogging. In a very random haphazard manner. Here's a few pics from a December wedding shot at Laie LDS Temple on the North shore of Oahu. Thanks Aileen and Peter-- I had a great time.

I love Lowepro

Just had my Dryzone camera backpack replace for free under Lowepro's lifetime warrantee. Having some zipper issues.

Got to love that. In my 20 years of shooting I've had a ton of their bags.

Lowepro.com

Inspirational photographers

One of the first photographers I fell in love with was Richard Avedon. He was a fashion photographer in New York who did some really beautiful portrait work. His book of portraits entitled "In the American West" impressed me a lot when I found in my second year of college. I miss being near a college with a large collection of great photo books. I just did a quick search on ebay for copies of the book and found them going for about $200. I love the internet because you can quickly find all kinds of photographers to inspire you but you really miss a lot of the nuances of photography that you can get from a really well produced photo book. I have a 30 inch monitor with a little over 4 million pixels but it doesn't compare to the detail you find on a large photo book.

Favorite portrait lens

My favorite lens is my Canon 50mm f1.2. When people talk about lenses they always talk about two things-- the focal length and the aperture. The focal length (50mm) determines the angle of view or the magnification of the subject. A 50mm lens sits right in the middle of the range-- not much magnification and not a particularly wide field of view. The second part of the lens description is the aperture-- in this case f/1.2. The aperture controls the amount of light let in the lens. The smaller the number the more light the lens lets in. Larger apertures also create a smooth blurry background behind the subject in focus. That is actually my favorite part about this lens. It's very flattering for portraits. When you put this lens on a 5dII like the one I use for all my weddings you can shoot all the way through the reception without turning on the flash. It's a great lens for shooting in a church where flash photography is off limits.

Blog Ideas

I've got a lot of friends and relatives with great blogs (Kitchen Corners and Little Foodie) and I've been getting some good advice from them about my blog but now I'd like to ask my blog readers what direction the would like to see my blog go. Any feedback at all will be greatly appreciated.

Some questions I have . . .

• Should my photography advice be more or less technical?
• Any particular types of photography that you are interested in and want a specific how to about?
• More weddings? More family pictures? More kids? More engagement or modeling shoots?
• Any specific kind of wedding photos you want to see (I shoot about 50-60 weddings a year and I only end up blogging a quarter of those.) I think I have seen it all (well maybe almost all. :)
• Any particular wedding location? I think I have shot at 85% of all the spots on Oahu.
• More landscape photos? I have so many unblogged landscape photos.
• If you are out there waiting for the next print give away let me know if there are enough of you I'll get one of those organized shortly.
  
• Do typos bug you? Should I spent more time proof reading?
  
• Are you a wedding client who would love to see your photos on the blog? Let me know and I'll post them. :)

Todd and Julie -- Turtle Bay, North Shore Oahu wedding

Turtle Bay on Dwellable

JD and Lisa-- north shore Oahu