In October I photographed Jordie’s Bar Mitzvah at the Renaissance Hotel in Agoura Hills, CA. A couple of years ago I also photographed his sister Tess’s Bat Mitzvah. It’s been great to see how their family has been changing over the years; it’s especially noticeable with some of his younger cousins. In addition to Jordie and Tess, I have also photographed their friend Jason’s Bar Mitzvah, who with his family, was also at this event. All three services were led by Rabbi Stuart Lasher and Cantor Rochelle Krause of the Center for Early Jewish Education. It’s like one big, happy family!

Well, I just finished a DVD Slideshow Album for Jordie’s family and I’m excited to share it with you all. I’ve embedded the video below, but if you’d prefer, click here to view Jordie’s Bar Mitzvah photography slideshow on YouTube.

Jordie’s DJ was Bruce Barrios who is just perfect for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs because he makes the party really fun for all the kids with non-stop games and activities.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of photographing Lisa and Jeff’s wedding in Palm Springs, CA. It was held at a gorgeous, modern, private residence with great design and cool art throughout the home. The weather was perfect, the house was great, the bride, groom, their family and friends were all very cool… it was just a fun time!

The amazing thing about this wedding is how I came to be Lisa and Jeff’s wedding photographer. After Lisa’s friend showed her some of my photographs of the fire fighters from just a couple of weeks back while at a party, she searched my name online, found Embrace Life and decided to ask me to photograph her wedding which was just two weeks away! Fortunately, I was available and the rest is history. That’s the power of “new media”!

Here are some nice shots from Lisa and Jeff’s wedding:

On the day of Lisa and Jeff’s wedding, the city of Palm Springs was celebrating Veteran’s Day with a parade and other festivities. During their wedding ceremony several planes and helicopters did fly-bys – multiple times. Everyone, including the bride and groom found it quite humorous and they will no doubt always remember that about their wedding day!

Lisa and Jeff chose a wonderful place to have their wedding and created a really relaxed atmosphere where friends and family could relax and enjoy all the special moments.

I want to thank Lisa and Jeff, as well as their family and friends for making me feel like part of the family. I had a blast and I could tell you did too.

Congratulations Lisa and Jeff!

I found a website that absolutely blows my mind and I just have to share it with you! Being a photographer, website developer and lover of technology, Rsizr.com is practically a dream come true. “Okay, so what exactly is it already?”, you ask? It’s hard to answer that question in less-than-nerdy terms, but here goes my best attempt.

Rsizr.com is based on a new image resizing technology developed by Dr Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science. To shrink an image down, instead of cropping out good data, or disproportionately squishing the content, it will find the less important data and remove only that specific content, thus leaving the important elements in tact, but effectively shrinking the image. A video demonstrating their technique amazed me earlier this year, but I never expected to be able to use it any time soon, let alone as a free web application!

I’ve prepared 4 example images to demonstrate the concept. For the demo, I chose a gorgeous bridal portrait from Nicole and Keith’s wedding at the Jack House in San Luis Obispo, CA on September 29th because I thought it would make a nice strong vertical.

Here’s the original image:

And after cropping in at the sides with Photoshop:

(Notice the flowers are missing on the left and some foliage on the right)

And simply changing the width of the image in Photoshop:

(This is a bad squished look! Some portrait subjects might appreciate this effect [or not], but Nicole certainly doesn’t need it!)

Now, the image that has been “seam carved” via Rsizr.com:

(This image looks very much like the original, but it’s now a stronger, narrower, vertical image – pretty cool!)

For a more thorough demonstration of the technology behind this concept, check out the YouTube video that brought this concept to light earlier this year:

More than anything, if you enjoy playing with photography and images, head over to Rsizr.com and try it out. It’s definitely a fun, and useful tool.

By the way, I found about Rsizr.com over at Photojojo which has all sorts of interesting, off-the-wall photography related ideas, tips, etc. Check it out.