Mission Impossible Wedding (With an Uninvited Guest)

They gave their wedding a name -- "Mission Impossible". Little did they know that Hurricane Irene will crash their party. Thousands of people from New England evacuated their homes and are anxiously waiting out the storm. But this bride is staying completely zen in spite of the disaster looming outside. She is getting married, no matter how much water pours down on us. 

If you wonder how I achieved the red effect in the above photo, look at the color of fruit punch Gatorade. If you hold a bottle of a colorful drink right in front of the lens, you can get some intersting hues in the photo.

Liberty Hotel is a former prison, and a perfect background for the wedding photos! However, shooting this wedding was quite challenging because my second photographer had to cancel on me due to the hurricane and drive back to protect his house and family. The second challenge was the light. There was not enough natural light coming from the windows while the bride was getting dressed. Whatever little light did come through got mixed with a yellow incandescent indoor light. The ceremony got moved into a not very photogenic ballroom with another set of lighting challenges. The reception was in a dark restaurant with short ceilings and then we ended up in a nightclub that was even darker. I had to therefore use a lot of off camera flash, and also bounce the flash off the ceiling.

This is my favorite shot which shows how awesomely zen Anna was. I could not ask for a better bride...

... and for a more beautiful one ...

This coin purse means a lot to Anna. Her grandma gave it to her, along with a five kopeyka coin. Five is like A+, the best score you can get in Russian schools. Anna must have been a great girl to have deserved it.

Little Avery is getting pampered before her debut as a flower girl. 

Little Charlie showing how many dollars he got for loosing his tooth.

The not so typical first look. Charlie and Avery loved their bride.

Anna's mom Yurata is showing off the goods after she had her hair styled. Gunnar got dangerously close to Anna before the ceremony. But he kept his eyes closed and yelled at Anna all the way from the elevator.

Anna walks down the isle...

Shooting family formals is usually the most stressful part of the photographer's day. Not at this wedding!

This wedding was one huge love fest but it also involved a lot of crying. The speeches were coming from the heart and everyone in the room was weeping like a baby.

Anna, Gunnar, thank you for making me feel like part of your family. I loved capturing your day and spending the first hour of your Maine honeymoon with you. :)

Enjoy the slideshows below!

A Night With Gaga

We walked side by side, she wearing a pair of hot red stiletto boots. Me wearing my Google badge and a laptop. Worried, she asked if I was comfortable walking next to her dressed like a hooker. I said I loved her outfit and wished I could rock that same stuff to work.

We got to my place and ransacked my closet. We found TONS of gold stuff. Who would have thought my Betsey Johnson crinoline and a gold monokini would be useful one day. (Husband, see? Never question my clothing choices again.)

One very long night, two young coconuts, two bottles of Gewurztraminer (!!!), tons of Euro pop, and this is what we got. If you ask me, I'd say BITCHING!

Dear reader, how long did it take you to realize this was not the real Gaga? I did meet the real Gaga though, and even asked her a question when she was interviewed at Google. However, I did not get a chance to shoot her yet. My gorgeous model was Nat Rooke. Nat, thanks for a great night! I'm thankful I found someone who can listen to 1990s Euro pop with me. Eeeeeecuador!

If you love Nat in these pictures, leave a comment. If you don't, you need a new set of contact lenses.

Hiding In Plain Sight

I am a responsible driver and a great car DJ! Turns out, I am good at driving drunk people around Napa Valley, and play mediation music while they are zoning into their drunk minds during the transport to yet another wine tasting room. Today, I had the pleasure to drive three heavy drinkers and a (non-drinking) dog.

Here is a photo of Nat, Jon, and me... reflected off of a chrome trash can at Dean De Luca in Saint Helena. Which reminds me... I have done this before at the very same location. That makes it a tradition! I am becoming a trash-can fine-art photographer!

The morbidly obese dog in the below picture is Trixie Regusci. Her claim to fame is that she was featured in a book called Winery Dogs of Napa Valley. I met Trixie for the first time five years ago. A photo of me petting Trixie is from 2006. As you can see, she was not this fat back then.

Trixie spends her day in search of crumbs and other food bits around the tasting room and the picnic area. She has a very demanding hungry look, and it seems to be working on the visitors who seem to not notice the big "PLEASE DON'T FEED ME" label on her collar. Even though most dogs in the world would be jealous of her luxury life, we all felt bad for little Trixie today.

When people are drinking and you are not... well... you walk around, look at stuff, and take pictures.

Now onto the best part of the day. Muir Woods National Monument is basically a bunch of "stay on the trail" signs next to a bunch of prehistoric looking redwood trees. Walking through the park gives you a creepy feeling of being in a different era of the past. You expect to see giant dinosaurs strut right by you. It was getting dark, which only boosted the creepy feeling and our imagination. Our favorite story included an attack by an army of little evil elves with little evil bows and arrows.

A sign by the park entrance was depicting a dog on a leash, not a dog in a hot red patent bag. So we were fine. We hid Ada in plain sight. The red bag was probably the brightest most noticable thing in the whole park. Little did people know, it contained a little white furrus that soon stuck its nose out.

The last photo of the day is a photo of Jon and Nat relaxing on a redwood tree. I named the photo: "camera strap".

Don't Try This At Home

Who said slides and rides are for kids? Googlers were so excited about riding the Flowrider, it was almost impossible to get onto the platform to take these few pictures. After less than one minute I was told that the weight limit was reached. Right, my giant 120 pound body would sway this giant wave machine trailer and everyone would keep pouring down the driveway! I would be accused of attack on Google and banned from Google cafeterias. I would start eating junk food and having to pay for it (oh, this sounds scary!). So I backed off as they asked, giving them my evil eye and mumbling to myself something along the lines of "you have no idea how thankful would these Googlers be to get free surfing shots taken by someone who actually knows how to shoot in these horrible lighting conditions in full manual mode". And that marked the end of my wave riding photography career. 

As you can see, the previous photo is quite over-exposed. That's what happens when you don't throw artificial light at people whose faces are in shade. The water reflecting the sun rays did not help either. Action shots in the sharp sunlight are extremely difficult to take. You need to have a very fast shutter speed to avoid blurring, and you need to compromise on the exposure of the surrounding in order to properly expose your subject. Something's got to give.

After few minutes of intense sun blasting on our ghost-like white complexions, my girlfriend Anett and I went to hide. By the slide. We rode the slide over and over. I feel bad for the kids who had to wait for us crazy thirty-something year old madams to get off the slide. (No, I really don't feel bad. The slide was fun.)

Betrayed by Vespa

Don't worry, I won't bombard you with more animated gifs. I think I reached my animation limit for the week. This time, I'll just rant about today.

We had it all planned out. We planned on waking up early, hopping on a scooter, and going to have brunch at the SF Ferry Building Farmers Market. Well, I woke up at eleven, talked to my mom for an hour, got ready by one, hopped on a scooter, and scooter would not start. Booo!

Mad at my non-functional battery tender, we walked to the Ferry Building. Most of the good veggies were sold out, but we still found yummy open face smoked fish sandwiches (see bottom photo) and also bought few goodies for dinner. Can you guess which sandwich I picked?