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Embrace Life photography is currently featured in the November/December issue of Society Social Calendar, for the photography of Meghan and Charles’ wedding in Oceanside, CA. The wedding was gorgeous and so is the magazine feature.

What an absolutely gorgeous affair Meghan and Charles’ wedding was! Both the ceremony and reception took place at a private hilltop residence in Oceanside, California, overlooking the fields below.

Meghan looked stunning in her Vera Wang gown! Her wedding rings, beautiful bouquet of dark purple calla lilies, the white orchids – all of it, amazing. Here’s a brief sampling:

 
I’d like to say that Steven from In The Mix entertainment did a great job with not only the sound, but a truly unique live music experience and the professionalism to keep the wedding running smoothly and to ensure that everyone had an awesome evening.

Congratulations Meghan and Charles. I wish you both MANY years of happiness, love and success.

Monica and Brian got married at the beautiful Lost Canyons Golf Club in Simi Valley, CA. It was a gorgeous day and I’m honored to have been a part of it.

Here are just a few of the photographs that I love:

I just re-designed (if you can call such minimalism “design”) my personal photography website http://www.acgphotography.com.

On acgphotography.com I don’t show any wedding photography. It’s basically a portfolio showing some of my favorite shots throughout the years and will hopefully be kept up-to-date whenever I take a fun trip, or assign myself a creative portrait project.

Anyway, I hope you’ll check it out because it’s fun to see the range of work that I create.
 

My good friend Patrick Stanbro, my brother Ryan George and I took a 3-day trip to Death Valley to end 2007 with some nice outdoor time and of course great photo ops. We had a great time and I ended up with some photos that I am really pleased with. It’s not exactly wedding photography, but I just have to share it:

Patrick took the picture of me on my brother’s shoulders and lying face-down on the dried-up lake bed (Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa) – thanks, Pat!

During our trip we stayed in a tiny little town called Beatty, NV, just outside the park to the east. This trip involved about 1,000 miles of driving in just 3 days – 80 of which were on unpaved roads. Let’s just say, I’m glad it wasn’t my car out there! Thanks Ryan for taking one for the team.

If you’re not seeing the photos in this post, you can view the Death Valley photographs on my Flickr page.

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.

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.

On October 21st, one of the many Southern California wild fires (the Santa Rosa Valley / Nightsky fire) was burning just blocks from my house. My house is far enough from the hills and where the fires were burning that it really wasn’t in any danger. Anyway, I decided to go up the street to take some pictures of the fire. Well, I got closer than I ever expected I’d be allowed, and ended up with some really cool images as a result. Here are a few of them:

Now, here’s the best part… the Today Show clip featuring three of the images above!:

Additionally, the pictures were published online with MSNBC, KNBC, the L.A. Times and others. As a result of the wide reach of these photographs, some of the firefighters’ family and friends recognized them and contacted me about obtaining printed photographs. It’s amazing how fast communication has become because of the internet and how small the world is becoming as a result.

If you’ve seen any of my photographs in other interesting places please let me know as I’d love to share those as well.