After a long break I’m finally ready for an update! Last weekend I had a great time photographing Healy Jones and Michelle Shinn’s wedding. The ceremony and reception were held at the Philadelphia Zoo! Prior to that we left the adorable Alexander Inn located at 12th and Spruce on a double-decker bus with the entire wedding party for a tour of the city! We spent 4 hours driving around and stopping for pictures along the way. We went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, Rodin museum, Water Works, U of Penn Campus and Independence Hall to name a few. It was a gorgeous day and certainly lot of fun. Congrats guys!

The last few months have been so much fun! I spent a week in Las Vegas for the WPPI convention. (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International). I attended a lot of seminars from some amazing photographers including two of my favorite wedding photographers Joe Bussink and Dennis Reggie, Pulitzer prize winner Marcus Bell and of course my good friend and favorite local photographer Cliff Mautner as well as many others. I’m rejuvenated and ready for another season!

It was close to 70 degrees here this morning. Now it's about 41. We are expecting a snow storm this weekend. As my daughter would say "it's not fair!!" I was browsing old photos again tonight and found two of my favorite pictures from the shore. Theses were taken a couple of years ago in Cape May, NJ. They also happen to be two of my favorite subjects too. :)

i love this shot of hannah. she didn't want her picture taken that morning so i just shot her from behind.

here is another one where she is trying to hide.

this is cora our kitty. or sometimes we call her cocoa. she's a nice kitty.

this is mr. phillip with julia in the background. she can handle him pretty well, but he is the king of our pad! he's also a nice kitty, but he's the boss and he let's everyone know!

this was a nice silhouette of julia. every morning the sun does this to our wall. i also want to do a series of silhouettes and make a slideshow. i already have the song picked out! this one is going to be a lot of fun.

I know I know. I'm a wedding photographer so I should be posting my wedding stuff here, but lately I've just been having a lot of fun with the personal stuff. Plus it's been a little slow in the wedding dept. Not many people get married in Jan. and Feb. I did do a wedding yesterday with Cliff Mautner in Ocean City, NJ. That was totally fun because we ended up talking the bride into going out on the beach in her bare feet to get some amazing reflection shots. She was such a trooper because it was freezing! But I know she's going to be very happy that she did it. I can't post any of Cliff's work on my own blog of course, but take my word for it they are going to rock.

So a while back I tried to do a "day in the life" of my family. I started out with a lot of momentum, but by about 3 o'clock I got busy with the daily life stuff and never finished it. I am going to do it again someday, but I've decided to post a few of my favs from the failed attempt. By the way this is going to be something I'll be offering to my portrait clients. I'll come to your home before the kids wake up and pretty much shoot your family until bed time. Then we'll make an awesome album. I think this is something every family should have done at least once. More info will be posted when I get my portrait site up or if you'd like to discuss it now just drop me a line or give me a call.

yes, this is me!

Badly Drawn Boy is a band that I've been into for a long time now. (They did the soundtrack for the movie "About a Boy" which in my opinion was the best thing about the movie.) Damon Gough (lead singer/song writer) not only is an amazing musician, he also has got to be one of the nicest, most genuine people I've ever met. He's one of those people that I only get to see once every year or two, but as soon as we connect it's like no time has passed. I love the guy. You should definitly check out his music, and his show if he comes to a town nearby. He was just in Philly on Saturday, March 3rd at the TLA. I've been to more than a few of his concerts and I can honestly say that this one was my favorite. Damon and the band were right on. This show kicked off his US tour and it was awesome!! He's also been chosen to be a part of the Bruce Springsteen tribute concert that will be held at Carnegie Hall on Apr. 5. Proceeds will go to the New York Music for Youth organization which benefits music education for underprivileged children.

At some point I will have all of the images viewable on the "client" section of my website. If you're interested in seeing the entire collection send me an email and I'll let you know when they're available.

Portraits
Since moving to the Philadelphia area I have focused my business on weddings. I absolutely love doing weddings, but something that I have set aside until now is my love of photographing children. I have an equal amount of experience working with weddings and children so I wanted to take a minute here and post some of my favorite images of kids. I love how expressive they are and I guess we relate well to each other because I think I'm really just a big kid myself. Soon I'll have the portrait site up which will specialize in lifestyle portraiture. "Lifestyle" portraiture can be described as "kids in action". I love capturing the moments of them doing what they do best. Just being themselves. There are a lot of wonderful studio photographers who make amazing posed images of children, but I prefer to catch them in real life situations. Running, jumping, exploring, laughing, crying.... After all that's what being a kid is all about!

The answers to ALL of your wedding photography questions!

I belong to a wonderful online forum called the Digital Wedding Forum. They have done what I've wanted to do for ions but haven't had the time. They've compiled a gigantic list of questions and answers for couples to help inform them about wedding photography. If you are confused about how to choose a wedding photographer, or just about anything pertaining to wedding photography, you'll probably find the answer here. Way to go DWF! If you're a portrait or wedding photographer and shoot digitally or are considering making the switch I highly recommend joining. It has been one of the best investments I've made since I started my business.

Check out the new site here...

http://www.wedfog.com/

They even have sample contracts and pricelists to view and compare.

Hannah, the hero!

Julia with Mr. fuzzy

Cutest tummy ever!

One day not long ago while making our way through the McDonald's drive thru a small orange fur ball ran past the car. The next thing I knew my daughter was out like a flash and we were chasing a tiny and very sickly looking kitten. We took him home and with advice from our vet we managed to clean him up and nurse him back to health. Now he might be adopted by a nice family in NYC, but they would like to see some photos so I've decided to post them here. If you're looking for a great vet and live in the Abington, Willow Grove area I highly recommend Dr. Duke Descant at House Calls Mobile Vet Services at (215) 822-2364. He comes right to your home and has an amazing way with animals. He even did surgery on my cat (not this cat) right in my living room once! It was totally amazing.

Since I was 10 I knew I wanted to be a photographer.

Here is the National Geographic story for those of you who asked...

When I was 6 I lived in Johnstown, PA. Johnstown is located deep in a valley so it is very prone to flooding. In 1977 a series of storms hit over a very short period of time causing a major flood. This was not the first flood in Johnstown, (you can read more about it on the Johnstown Flood Museum website if you're interested). Over the next few days my mom and I explored different parts of the town and at one point we went to a memorial service for those who had passed away. A National Geographic photographer happened to photograph us leaving the church. I remember her telling me about him and how he followed us around for a while that day. (I think he thought my mom was hot!). We all pretty much forgot about it, but 4 years later my grandmother was flipping through her latest issue (she was a life long subscriber) and came across our photo which I am posting here. It is located in the August 1980 issue in an article about water. I realize it's not the most exciting photograph, but seeing myself in that magazine had a very powerful affect on me. (I'm the short one with the long braids. My mom is next to me and still has that dress, btw!) At that moment I knew what I wanted to do. I can't explain why, I just did. So that's my story and my 15 minutes of fame.

I've been published!! I often work as a second shooter with other photographers on the weekends that I'm not already booked with my own event. Last summer I had the privilege of working with Monika Bros at a great wedding at the Cherry Valley Country Club in Princeton, NJ that is now featured in New Jersey Bride magazine! Can you guess which image in the spread is mine?

I found these quotes today on photoquotes.com. I think they both describe me pretty well.



It's no good saying "hold it" to a moment in real life.-Lord Snowdon

(btw who the heck is Lord Snowdon???)

I dislike landscapes. I only like people, and plastic flowers. -Elliott Erwitt

Last November my friend and favorite videographer Tim Sudall from Video One Productions called me up at the last minute (as he always does, love ya Tim!) and said he needed a photographer to help him out in NYC with a shoot for brides.com (otherwise known as Modern Bride, brides, and elegant bride). Brides.com along with Rockefeller center is doing an “engagements on ice” promotion (btw guys, this is practically foolproof!) and Tim asked me to take stills of the process for his video association, WEVA. You can see the first engagement that Tim shot here. The footage is also available on philadelphiaweddings.com. It’s so cute! If you feel like it you can watch all of the engagements and vote for your favorite. I think the winner gets a honeymoon in St. Lucia or something fantastic like that. By the way, if you’re looking for a videographer Tim is second to none. His work is the most artistic and emotional that I have ever seen. Plus we’ve worked together about a million (ok not that many) times and he’s fantastic. He’s very unobtrusive and so nice! I’ve worked with a lot of videographers and I can honestly say Tim and his crew are the best. (End of shameless plug for Tim).

Theresa Dimasi, Editor in Chief of brides.com

Theresa making sure everything looks a-ok!

Theresa on the zamboni

Tim!

Theresa again

Tim hard at work!

Zamboni!

I was at the Cescaphe ballroom in Northern Liberties the other day and I had to go outside to look for something in the car when I realized we were right next door to the new bowling alley, North Bowl. I decided to go back on Sunday and check it out. I love this place! I haven’t been bowling in years so I was happily surprised at how far the scoring technology has come. The screen above tells you what direction you should roll your ball in (not that I have any control over it anyway!) and how fast it was going. I ended up bowling around a 150, but that was only because we had the bumpers up for the kids. (yeah right, for the kids) They have nice shoes too. They also have pretty good mini burgers and tater tots. Their tots rock. There were a lot of attractive people in that place. Definitely not your typical bowling alley crowd! Seriously, you should go.

Death Cab for Cutie. I know this band has been around for a while. Even so I still feel the need to mention them here, because I think they're brilliant and everyone needs to hear this stuff. Go here and you can listen to a song called "I will follow you into the dark". I love this song! If you click on "media" you can hear some other great songs too. I also am digging "title and registration".

Please feel free to leave a comment or send an email about who you think I really need to hear. I like Indie rock but I'm pretty much open to anything. PLEASE! I need some new music!

One of the things I love about waking up early is watching the sun rise. A few weeks ago I was greeted every morning for about a week by what you see above. I just stood there shooting constantly for about 10 minutes each day because the sky would change every time I blinked my eye! It grew more beautiful by the second. In case anyone is wondering, these images are not altered in Photoshop except for a tiny bump in contrast. I did not play with the saturation or enhance the colors in any way.