Jesika and Art was really a fun-loving, pleasant young couple. Last Saturday we did their engagement session at the Market. It was a warm and sunny day. We started off in the morning…getting some drinks from Seattle’s Best Coffee shop right across from the Market and getting the ‘Seattle’ juicy going. We found a little quietness in the Post Alley and took a lot of images there. We then walked down to the water front and had some fun time there.

Jesika and Art were referred to me by Stacy Gavino of Cherishing Moments, a full scale wedding and event planning services. I am very grateful to Stacy as Jesika and Art were very fun to work with. We just walked around and tried out a lot of ideas and having a good time. Jesika and Art will wed in October at the Bell Harbor Roof Top and Pravda Studio, another two beautiful locations. I am so looking forward to it!

Attached are a few images. To see the slideshow, please click the here. Eventually, all images will be posted and can be viewed by clicking here.

We definitely have seen some crazy weather this year. The day before, it was cold and snowing showering mixed with tiny hails. This morning I woke up to a new blanket of snow! Immediately I grabbed my camera and walked round the neighborhood taking some shots before it all melted:

Both Talitha and Joel like snow sport such as snowboarding, so we picked the Tubing Center at the Pass for their engagement session.  On the way there while driving through North Bend area, a big snow shower came down.  I thought “Oh-oh, this is going to be interesting!”  But when I got there, the sky was clear.  In fact, when the sun was out, I felt I was going to get a snow blind.  It turned out to be a nice day.  Tons of snow.  Still a lot of skiers in this Monday afternoon.  It was a fun outing!

Talitha and Joel will have their wedding reception next year, 1-11-09.  To see the slideshow, click here.

It felt like a mid summer day yesterday. I was out in the afternoon to pick up a birthday cake for my son and looked at the temperature: 84 degree! Crazy. But in the morning, it was quite nice in the Arboretum.

It was Sunday morning around 9:30AM. I was following Hellen and Peter to the engagement session location, Palos Verdes. I was on highway 101 (I think…) and just zoomed pass by downtown. I looked at the speedometer. 85mph.

Oh, yeah, I was in LA for sure!

Hellen was one of the bridesmaids of Charissa (see episode two) and she and Peter will get married in 9/20/08. So we were taking this opportunity to have their engagement session taken in the area. Palos Verdes, turned out to be stunningly beautiful (and wealthy) area.

We started off in a beautiful church courtyard by the ocean. The Sunday service was in session but the church folk kindly allowed the lovebirds and myself wandering around taking images. We then moved to a little cute shopping area. There was an interesting sculpture. I loved the red brick walls. After spending some time there. We drove off to another location. I just followed them. We drove along the shore and I saw fields of bright yellow flowers. I thought ‘Man! This is great!” so I tried to call Peter and tell him to pull over. Fortunately Peter and Hellen were having the same thought and we pulled into a little park by the cliff. The view was stunning.

Later on the way to the airport, I called my wife and she said Seattle just got one of the biggest snow storm the night before. Hmm…I can imagine even slower traffic back home.

Below are few images.  And here is the link to a slideshow with more.  The full collection can be viewed here later.

Got an e-mail yesterday from Charissa: “Hey Jack, Yes, we’re in Thailand, by the pool in tropical Krabi, enjoying the free wi-fi the hotel provides We’ll be looking forward to the photos! Charissa “.

Charissa and Mike married last Saturday in Pasadena and now they are Thailand honeymooning! How sweet!

I got to know Charissa two years ago when I was photographing Marissa and Andy’s wedding in northern California. Charissa was one of Marissa’s bridesmaids (Yes, during the high hours of Charissa’s wedding, I did call her ‘Marissa’ a couple of times :-). Last Saturday I was very fortunate and honored to photograph another beautiful wedding in California for Charissa and Mike.

I met up with my second shooter, Kelly Challender , a LA area wedding photographer, in the morning at 8AM for breakfast and photographed the whole event together until after 10PM. Given Charissa a lot of credits for planning her wedding so well. She left some extra times here and there so nobody felt rushed. As photographer, I was specially delighted that Charissa and Mike allocated a lot of time for both before and after the ceremony for bridal sessions and we were able to photograph this beautiful couple in several nice locations. The whole wedding went along in a relaxed and smooth pace. Great job, Charissa!

The ceremony was held at the chapel on the beautiful campus of Occidental College. The chapel was absolutely beautiful. The nice lady there, Beverly, didn’t restrict us much in terms of photographing but neither me nor Kelly used flash - it would have killed the mood. Afterward, we moved on to the reception site, Mission 261, a very fine restaurant. Charissa and Mike treated the guests with great foods. Oh, I wish I was one of the guests!

Here is a ‘Tiny’ highlight I’d like to share. Marissa and Andy and Marissa’s parents drove down for the wedding, with their new born baby, Ben. I was so happy to see them! Near the end of the reception, I saw Marissa managing among the tables, holding the baby, with a big bag on her shoulder and her mom following behind. All too familiar sight! I knew what happened! I went with them to the VIP room upstairs and volunteered to wipe little Ben’s tiny, softy butt clean Little Ben was pretty nice to me and didn’t ‘discharge’ much! Oh, he was so cute!

Anyway, I had a GREAT day photographing Charissa and Mike’s wedding. I posted several images below and a little bit more in the slideshow. Eventually, all images will be loaded to their web gallery hosted by Pictage.

Thanks again Charissa and Mike and enjoy the honeymoon!

Everything started off fine. I dropped off my son to the pre-school and drove directly to the airport. No traffic going away from downtowns Friday morning. I packed all my equipment (two 5Ds, a 15mm fish eye, 16-35, 24-105, 70-200, 100 macro, two speedlits, cards and batteries, etc.) plus items and change cloths to a small rolling case and a small shoulder bag. No need to check in and perfect for a weekend job. About an hour and a half before the scheduled take off time, I was comfortably sipping an Americano and reading the Rangefinders magazine. Then the voice came from PA…they overbooked the flight from Seattle to LA and needed volunteers.

How could they overbook? So we waited. Finally about 15 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time, we got onboard (they found somebody!)

I sat in my window seat and watched the two luggage handlers quickly tossing the bags onto the belt. Don’t blame them. It’s a boring job and there were always people secretly video taping them and sending the tape Dateline NBC. Then the voice came on again. It’s the captain this time: due to the cold weather, they had to de-ice the plane before we could take off. It’s almost April. Crazy weather. More wait.

Finally almost an hour after the scheduled time, we were in the air. One hour. I always schedule at least an extra hour while I am shooting weddings out of the state. You never know and you don’t ever want to be late in a strange place.

Two hours later we were approaching LAX. From above, the City of Angel looked like a giant board with millions of leggo pieces. Flat and almost colorless.

It’s Friday, March 28th and I was meeting Stacey and Jeremy at Long Beach for their engagement session. Both Jeremy and Stacey are dental health professionals. They are a very cute couple and are very nice people. We started at the Japanese Garden at the university and then headed off to the beach…they are ‘beachy’ people. We got some very nice shots there while they were playing and walking on the beach. We even saw a pair of dolphins near the shore. According to Stacey, she has never seen one before here! We then walked across the street to a marina and looked for Jeremy’s future sail boat When we finished, per Stacey’s suggestion, we went to a place called MiMi’s Cafe. Yeah, it’s one of the few places they haven’t opened stores in Seattle yet. We just relaxed and washed down the French breads with cold beers. A very, very nice afternoon!

After saying thank you and see you guys later to Jeremy and Stacey, I drove to Pasadena to prepare for Saturday’s wedding of Charissa and Mike. I also wanted to have a good rest. But I almost got lost in the maze of LA highways…

But here are some images from the session. I also put more in my site: http://www.jackzyoung.com/Webshow/Stacey_Jeremy_Engagement/index.html. The whole collection will be loaded to Pictage and can be viewed through: http://www.jackzyoung.com/client.htm.

Jeremy and Stacey’s wedding day is 8/9/08 at The Four Seasons

Feeding the fishes

At the beach

Aren’t they cute?!

At MiMi’s Cafe: