LA Weekend Episode One: Stacey And Jeremy. Long Beach.
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:
