A couple weeks back I headed out to shoot Nicole and James’ wedding out on Long Island with my friend, and AMAZING photographer, Angelica Glass. If you aren’t familiar with Angelica’s work you have to check it out, she is a true artist. Her work is so true to who she is, very cool to see that authenticity.
I got to New York City on Thursday evening and immediately headed into town to a couple of bars that I was not even close to cool enough to be in lol! I kept looking around and thinking “I remember the 80′s and this is more ’80′s than the ’80s were!” We also ate at some BBQ place that really did a number to my gut, it took me over a week to get over that food poisoning! Good times, right? Gotta love being super sick 2,500 miles from home and having to shoot a wedding!
Well, the good news, besides the fact that I felt okay for the wedding day, is that Nicole and James ROCKED! They were such an hot couple and truly in love with each other. Funny thing; they met because of a prank phone call, how great is that! They were totally down to shoot whatever we wanted and were not shy about their vices at all…quite a refreshing change from all those who go sneak a cigarette out back haha!
One fun fact about me shooting this wedding (for any tech geeks out there); I shot the entire wedding with my 1DsMKII, a 50L 1.2 lens, a set of pocket wizards and a 580 flash! Lol, I’ve always wanted to just shoot an entire wedding with just one focal length!

Great dress, great shoe, beautiful bride; what more could I ask for!?

This picture really sums up the weather, it was a cold day!

Nicole figuring out her dress

Yeah, nice to have good looking grooms too

With the cold, finding a good spot for the guys was tough but we made it work

I tried to adapt my style a bit so it would work better with Angelica’s

Beautiful details! You should have seen how much food there was. It was like, eat, dance, eat, dance, eat, dance and on and on!

In addition to his day job as a banker, James and his buddies all do a bit of DJ’ing so the company brought in quite a setup, it was rocking!

Every had a great time. I had to throw in the groomsmen dancing, too funny! They were a great group.

I had to throw in some Colin Michael style while I was there

Thanks to Nicole, James and their families for being so gracious. And a huge thanks to Angelica for flying me out to shoot with her, can’t wait to do it again!

Okay, I went underground for the past week and finally got my website update done… Yay, what a relief to be done!
If you haven’t seen it, check out ColinMichaelPhoto.com and see the new design. Many thanks to my friends at Big Folio (especially Jeff, thanks Jeff!) for all their help getting switched over to this new design.
I chose to organize my images there in a totally different way and added in some new content. I think the design is much more dynamic and showcases my work better. I also added in an Engagement/Day After and Boudoir sections as I’m always shooting those but didn’t put up a lot of it as I already had 100′s of images up. There’s so many great images from all my awesome couples that I had to make some room!
Over the next few months I will add many more new images so check back often as with my new site it is so much easier to add in new content!

One of my projects for this wedding “off-season” is to shoot much more commercial work so I had to clean up my studio to get it ready for some larger set shots. I finished cleaning it out on Thanksgiving morning so Steph started bugging me about doing some studio shots of the family. I was trained in the studio at Brooks Institute of Photography some years ago and while I apply my lighting knowledge to all my work, I generally stay away from standard studio family shots. But I have to admit, there is a certain appeal to shooting like this! Don’t worry though, I’m not giving up my fashion/photojournalism anytime soon! Here were a few of my favorites.

I’ve been so lucky with rain…I guess my streak had to end some time! I’ve had it rain just after we finished shooting and I’ve had it pouring while everyone was getting ready but this time my luck ran out! Not to fear, Desiree and Chris were so awesome and it hardly even bothered them! Luckily, we made it through the ceremony and had just started the family photo’s when it started really coming down. Of course I was prepared with umbrellas and all my lighting equipment so we jumped back into a hallway (there weren’t a whole lot of covered areas at Rancho Canada Golf Course!) and went to work. Of course as soon as we finished the rain stopped! lol At least it let me get some use from the umbrella’s that normally just sit in my trunk!
Thanks Desiree and Chris, you guys totally kept your cool and were so great to work with! Can’t wait to do our “Day After” shoot next week back in Monterey and Carmel!

This was just good times!
At the beginning of November I traveled up to Carmel Valley to the beautiful Gardiner’s Resort for Brian and Sophie’s wedding. November is such an odd time in California because you never know if it will be warm, cold, sunny or raining! Oddly enough, we got warm and rain! The other thing about this time of year is that plants and gardens tend to be out of their prime. However, I was amazed at how beautiful the staff at Gardiner’s keep the grounds! I’m not normally a flower picture kind of guy but it was just beautiful and amazing to see at this time of year.
Now, for those that remember from their engagement session, Brian and Sophie are biologists from the Monterey area and Brian is a great bird photographer. Sophie’s actually originally from Belgium by way of Mississippi (I knew that rhyme I learned in 3rd grade to spell Mississippi would come in handy sometime!). Brian is originally from New Jersey so pretty much everyone traveled quite a distance for their wedding! Both their families and all their friends were so much fun, great people all around. We had a great time and the rain held off (mostly) until the reception started so that was perfect!.I went out in the rain at night to get some night shots of the venue that I think are kind of cool. Besides, I need to give my tripod a workout every now and then!
Thanks Brian, Sophie and your families for making me feel so welcomed! And thanks to David Lee who did a great job helping me shoot!

This past August I was on my way up to some meetings and a commercial shoot in San Francisco when my friend Sara called me up to see if I could help her out with Stephanie and Blake’s wedding in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Having grown up just a few miles from the venue I just couldn’t say no! It was a beautiful and very warm day up on the summit. I do find that I’d much rather be the primary than the secondary photographer but I do think it’s fun to try to emulate the other photographer’s style so the client gets images that really work together.
Stephanie and Blake are a great couple and very gracious, I especially enjoyed that blue shot that is in the picture below, that was delicious! lol

A couple weeks ago I flew out to New York City to help my friends Jason Groupp and Gene Higa with their East Meets West Photography workshop. Ah, who am I kidding, I just went out for Jason’s pre-PhotoPlus party! lol. You can see in the last pic that I was having a good time!
Jason and Gene totally rocked the workshop and I got a chance to meet a lot of great people and see more of New York. The workshop was all about teaching photographers to get even more creative and to push themselves to be even better by both thinking differently and doing practice shoots. It’s too easy to get stuck in a rut so practice shoots are a great way to give yourself a chance to not just take the safe shot but also get angles and lighting you wouldn’t normally use. I even got the chance to work with some others on their lighting setups and explain how I light like I do on location. I love getting to share knowledge especially when it’s a collaborative effort where I can learn too.
Oddly enough, while we were shooting in Times Square, I ran into my buddy Mike Larson who was shooting an engagement session for one of his clients. Too funny! We live 20 miles apart in California but I only ever see him out of state! Last time was in Vegas!
I love walking to get to know a city, I estimated that I walked about 15 miles in 2 days (not in comfortable shoes!) while exploring, it was great! Don’t get me wrong, San Francisco is still my first love with London a close second but there is just no place on earth like New York! Even better, I get to go back in just a couple weeks to hang out with Angelica!

Thanks Corey for this pic of me double fisting! lol

Wow, have I ever been blessed with being a part of some awesome couple’s lives this year! Jenny and Tom’s wedding day started out at the beautiful Wine Valley Inn in Solvang, which is near Santa Barbara, with the ceremony at Old Mission Santa Inés, also in Solvang. Jenny is one of the sweetest people I have ever met and has a great sense of style so we were able to capture some wonderful moments while she was getting ready. She had this great cottage where a lot of her family and friends were getting ready and having a great time. Her family was so much fun and such a big group! The amazing part is just how close everyone is with each other, it was amazing to see all the love!
Tom and the guys were also at the Wine Valley Inn. Tom’s a great guy and a perfect match for Jenny, you often hear people say “they were made for each other” which may sound a bit cliché but is so true for these two! We got some great shots of Tom and the guys before heading over to the Mission for the ceremony. Tom is this burly looking guy but he is also one of the nicest people I’ve been lucky enough to work with, it’s so funny! The ceremony was beautiful and I found a great spot for the family photos out in the courtyard.
After that we headed over to the reception….WOW! Jenny, her family and Alyssah from Save the Date did such an great job with the design! Relatives were at the venue late into Friday night transforming the hall into an exception venue, very good work everyone! Lani at LBPS Events did an AMAZING job with the lighting, everything looked fantastic! Being a photographer who loves using lighting to enhance a scene, I can really appreciate what they did, it made my job even easier! Check out the dancing shot below, that was in the middle of the day which shows how good of work they do, all I had to do was add in some off camera strobes to balance to their accent light and it was beautiful!
The reception was a ton of fun and they even had a Photo Booth which is always a good time!
I will be getting together with Tom and Jenny again in about a week for a “Day After” shoot (yeah, I know, it’s not really the ‘day after’ and can’t wait to get to work on their wedding album as it will be delicious! I had such a great time, thanks to Jenny, Tom and their wonderful families!
This is such a small sampling of how many amazing image there are from this wedding! I want to put up more but I think I’ll save it for my website

For everyone who hasn’t already noticed, I’m in the process of updating my website. Seeing as it has been several months I figured it’s about time! I just switched out all the intro slide-show images and added a gallery to the weddings section, I think it’s much more representative of my total body of work. I’m going to be changing over the whole look of my website in the next few weeks (don’t worry, the blue is staying) so that’s all the changes for now but once I do the big change then you can expect to see several new weddings and a new engagement sessions section. A big thanks to my friend TJ for introducing me to “Buddy,” the band who plays the first song on my site.

Dajin and Cecylia’s wedding on October 4th was so much fun, I LOVE San Francisco weddings!
We started out at the Marriott on 3rd st with Cecylia and the rest of her bridesmaids in a beautiful suite overlooking downtown. I actually parked over at The Palace Hotel as we would be headed over their later but I had no idea that I would have to cross the Love Fest Parade! haha, you just never know what’s going to happen in that town, that’s what makes San Francisco such an awesome place! So after wading my way through thousands of people in various levels of undress, I headed up to Cecylia’s and got to shoot for a couple hours before heading back to The Palace Hotel to shoot the guys and then Dajin and Cecylia’s meeting.
They were so funny when they finally saw each other and their connection was so apparent that random people who were walking through the hotel were stopping and making well-wishes. I love it when we can have the bride and groom meet before the wedding because it gives a relaxed time for them to talk and admire each other. After we finished up at the hotel we headed over to Notre Dame Cathedral where Dajin and Cecylia were married. It is a beautiful Catholic Cathedral with so much great detail and they even let me set up a flash (very rare) to get some fabulous light!
When the ceremony was completed, we spent about an hour around the area shooting before heading over to one of my favorite restaurants, E&O Trading Co. The food was fabulous! The funny thing is that I have always wanted to shoot in the basement at E&O and I finally got my chance!
Dajin and Cecylia were such gracious hosts and super fun to be around. Thank you so much for having me! We got so many great images that I don’t even know what to do with all of them! lol