My one wedding of the year.

It takes a special breed of shooter to be a wedding photog. I'm not one of them. Put me in the middle of a dangerous or miserable situation a I flourish. Put me in the middle of a wedding and I hate life. Much like landscape photography, wedding photography is just not in my blood. When I shoot a wedding I'm working and I hate when photography becomes work. Even my career as a full-time photojournalist rarely feels like work. That's why I only do one or two a year and always for friends.

It's not that I'm bad at it. I simply don't enjoy it.

A couple weeks ago I got my one wedding out of the way. Well, half a wedding really. I didn't shoot the ceremony because it was held in a temple in San Diego. I only shot the reception.

The location of the reception was great. The only problem was the time. It started around 4:30 pm on a cloudless summer day. For the candid shots later in the evening this was great. For the posed group shots at 5 there's not much worse. It's incredibly difficult to overpower  the sun at that time of day, even with multiple off-camera flashes.

Anyway, here are some of the mostly candid shots of the bride. Hope you like em.

Jeff Kooyman: A Life Renewed

So, it's been a long time since I've updated the blog. Sorry about that. I've been busy these last couple months. But I'm coming back strong with this one and I will try to give you guys more frequent updates. Soon I'll put a couple photos from the 2011 Lodi Cycle Fest and a wedding reception I recently shot.

For the last couple weeks Lauren, the Lodi Living editor at the LNS, and I have been working countless hours on a story about Jeff Kooyman. He's one of those people that everyone in town recognizes but few really know. So we set out to get to know him. Turns out he's actually a very interesting character.

I'm not going to bog down this blog with all the details about his life-that's what the story is for. But I will say what I thought I knew about him was all wrong.

I'm very pleased with the way the photos and video turned out on this one. I've only been shooting video for a few months, so I still have a lot to learn. But this video is the accumulation of everything I've learned so far.

So go read the great story by Lauren and take a gander at the video. There's also a ton of photos in the gallery. I think you guys will like it.