Have you ever ridden on a bicycle trying to follow a boat around? Well, George has. That is how Christa knew that he was a keeper.

Christa had been invited to go on a bit of a boat ride around Seal Beach harbor… a bit of a booze cruise, if you will. The plan was this; have some drinks and park the boat at a bar in the harbor, call George to come over (he could ride his beach cruiser to the first bar, it was pretty close) and have some more drinks. But plans rarely ever go 100% to plan during a booze cruise… Turns out that every single bar they went to turned into just a pit stop. So George was pretty much sent peddling in circles trying to follow their landing point around the harbor…

After a couple hours and a couple pit stops he finally caught up…

During all of these shenanigans Christa’s mom looked at her, rather impressed with her daughter’s boyfriends dedication and said “You just had this guy follow you around the harbor on a bike?? This one is a keeper”. 

Yeah, George is a keeper and Christa knows it. He just plain oozes admiration and love for his bride to be, and it is a good thing he does because Christa returns every once of it. I can’t remember the last time I spent the day with a couple that was so obviously smitten with each other.

Waking again at a uncharacteristically early hour, I jumped out of bed filled with excitement and eagerness to attack the day’s activities. After another evening filled with amazing food, great conversation and lots of smiles. I was feeling pretty energized.

First up was the Marcus Bell presentation. If you aren’t familiar with Marcus… well… you need to be. To say he is amazing would be of a understatement. As with a lot of wedding shooters, he is experimenting with mixing video and photographic mediums into one solid format. During his presentation he showed a piece that he had made for a older couples wedding video. To put it simply, it was breath-taking. While that type of work is not quite my forte… seeing such a moving piece like that sure inspires you to give it a go. You can check out Marcus HERE.

Second, I headed down to the Nikon booth to catch a presentation by Cliff Mautner. I was really cool to see Cliff in action. He is a great presenter and had a lot of great things to say about how he uses his gear to complement his style… he almost makes it sound effortless. He has some amazing imagry that he has amassed over the years that you can check out HERE. I would highly recommend checking out one of his workshops too. I am not much of a “workshop lover” myself, but I would actually give some heavy thought into taking his given the chance.

Then it was off to Kevin Kubota’s “No Holds Barred Branding and Identity Workshop”. I was really excited for this one. Seeing as how I have just gone through a bit of a re-brand myself, I was interested to see if I did it right. The class was great. Kevin and his wife do their best to get everyone involved on one level or another. I do have a couple words of wisdom though; Silence your cell phone. For if you choose to not do so… you will be made to dance on stage with Kevin in rather questioning manner to the latest Lady Ga Ga tune. On second thought… don’t silence your cell phone. It was hilarious to watch people have to do this! Even with dance party USA commencing at the drop of a ring, it was a extraordinarily informative class that really got you thinking about what you are doing to make your business stand out.

With a bit of time before the next event we all set off to lunch at Emeril’s. I had an awesome Burger and a beer from some european country that I am completely unfamiliar with… That is okay cause it was served in a wine glass and it made good target practice for the 24mm. After our super entertaining waiter dropped off our check and attempted to sell some signature “Emeril’s dining wear”, we headed back to the show. 

After walking the show room floor, talking with some new found friends, trying the out the latest gadgetry, harassing the album makers with silly questions (can you make and bind a 1000 page album if I want one?) and checking out a few more pieces of Nikon glass. I headed over to the John Solano/Brian Marcus Lighting and Posing class. This was a really neat one for me since I RARELY pose my subjects. I generally (if anything at all) just place them in a situation and try, throw in a little emotional motivation and just let them have at it. It was great to learn some different points of view on the practice. I took away a couple things I am looking forward to trying. I have already talked plenty about Cliff, so you already know he is a cool guy. Brian Marcus is easily just as talented. You can check him out HERE. Brian is actually a third generation photographer… check out his site and blog, what a amazing family.

And with that the “official” day’s activities were over so I headed back to my room for a little rest before dinner.

And what a dinner it was. I headed down stairs to meet the Nikon crew at Shibuya, for you foodies out there; a four diamond Japanese style steakhouse. Needless to say it was AMAZING. These guys put Benihana to shame. It needs to be on your bucket list.

After dinner we headed out to old Vegas… Fremont street to be specific. It was a Privilege to be accompanied by two of Nikon’s top tech gurus. We cruised around for a hour or two just shooting everything that came into focus. Steve (tech guru) even brought along the D300s and shot a bunch of fun video. This was when the true power of the D700 became evident to me. The thing can straight-up see in the dark! It truly is an amazing camera.

The cab ride back to the hotel un-ceremoniously marked the end of my WPPI adventure with Nikon. At 11 am the next morning I was to get on my flight back to the OC. It was a bitter sweet ending to such and amazing experience. I made some amazing friends and learned a ton, but it was time to head home to my beautiful wife and my wonderful two boys.

It is 11pm on Wednesday the 16th as I finish writing this entry. My wife is snuggled up in bed with our two year old, snoozing lightly in the background. Here sitting in front of the blinding glow of my two 24in monitors, I am reminiscing about all of the events of last week. What a week. What a life changing event. I just hope I get a call to do this again next year… who knows, maybe Nikon will let me speak on the importance of writing irritatingly long blog entries in a effort to monopolize all of your readership’s time.  What do you think? Think they will let me?

Here are a couple fun shots from the last day. Everything was shot with the superb D700 and the “Game Changing” AF-S Nikkor 24mm F/1.4G ED.

SO I have to give a big shout out to the wonderful ladies behind the wedding mega blog; The Wedding Chicks. Amy and Jocey, you rock my socks. Thank you sooo very much for supporting my work and choosing to feature my weddings. Your backing has been a key piece to my success.

Why all the love you ask? Well, remember that Nikon sponsorship? Yeah, Nikon found me on the weddingchicks.com. (If you haven’t heard about the sponsorship, just scroll down a bit. I am blabbing about it plenty in the posts below.)

Thanks again Girls!

If you haven’t heard of the Wedding Chicks… well pull your head out of the ground… j/k. But seriously, you can experience their wedding blog awesome-ness at www.weddingchicks.com

After spending an awesome evening at Cut steakhouse in the MGM grand hotel with the Nikon crew… I could hardly sleep. I mean it isn’t every night you get to eat and talk to the early hours with Nikon’s top brass and their most impassioned/talented/knowledgeable reps. It was a full table, I sat next to Cliff Mautner (brilliant photographer, one of the show presenters, official Nikon spokesperson, and now officially one of my personal heros), Susan Stripling joined us, even the top man from Inside Media Networks; Scott Sheppard, was there. I was equally excited when Chenin Boutwell showed up to hang out for a bit, and of course I was even more fired up when I saw her awesome husband Doug show up… you know, the master mind behind Totally Rad. It was an awesome evening with equally amazing conversation. I laid in bed just thinking about all of the amazing-ness that I had just been surrounded with.

I awoke at a uncharacteristically early 6am the next morning ready to rock. After a quick breakfast and a bit of coffee we headed over to the show. I was being given the privilege of early admittance to the actual trade show and a preview of the awesome Nikon booth by the inspiring Mike Corrado. Nikon did an amazing job with their booth. In a room filled with the typical “LOOK AT ME!!!!” displays, over the top colors, massive banners and super loud speakers pumping out audio from their overly noisy presenters… Nikon kept it classy, sleek and intimate. From the low profile stage to the 102 inch LCD with yellow leather sitting blocks around the presentation area, they really made you feel welcome, comfortable and engaged. If you walked around the presentation area past some of the posted works of their pros to the other side, you were met with a relatively large display counter with a heavy staffing of some of the most knowledgeable techs I have ever met. There is seriously no question about photography you can ask these guys that they can’t answer… trust me I tried. The whole set up was a pretty amazing statement of quality over quantity (at least compared to some of the other booths. It was even more engaging than the “largest” camera booth at the show). I could have sat there all day.

When Mike needed to move on to his other responsibilities we were sent over to sit down and have chat with Tony Corbel. If you ever have the chance to spend some time with Tony… do it. The man is a legend and ultra inspirational. The great thing about Tony is that he never backs down from anything. There has been a lot of buzz going around in the photography community about the use of video these days. With innovations like the video feature in the D3s and the D300s, more and more “fusion” type videos are popping up. You would expect a veteran of the industry to probably ignore it with some disdain and continue to preach the power of the still image. Well that is not Tony… he is more excited about video than anyone I have met. He admittedly says he is not exactly sure how he will be implementing it… but he is ready for the challenge and is experimenting with the medium in a meaningful way. Looks like I might need to start doing the same… when Tony was done answering our questions he proceeded to the stage to give his presentation to the nice size crowd that had already gathered around to listen in on our questions.

After hanging out with Tony and checking out the show a bit we headed over grab some grub and take a little down time.  It didn’t last too long as I had to make it back to the Nikon booth to check out John Solano‘s crazy cool presentation. I am going to be honest here… I had never heard of John before this show. He is a LA based wedding photographer and he is simply incredible. Make sure you check out his stuff.

Then finally… a couple minutes to take a rest…

Then we were off to watch a presentation by Susan Stripling at the Nikon booth. When I was done absorbing her awesome-ness I quickly made my way to the lens counter to play with some of the lenses that I didn’t already have in my full bag. First up was the PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f/2.8 ED, and man o man was that a fun lens. I played with the rest of the PC-E line from Nikon while I was standing there but i was continually drawn back to that 45mm. It really is a magic lens.

When I had completed my questioning and released the finally let the Nikon counter Rep return to his regular duties, I headed over to the Cliff Mautner workshop. Cliff is a very effective teacher and has the ability to express a broad range of topics and concepts in a very short period of time. So needless to say, I left with a full brain and some really cool new flash techniques. (I even used one of them to make the nifty looking picture of the 24mm in the post below this one).

After Cliff’s class was over so were the day’s “official” activities. So I slowly made my way back to my room. I say slowly because I forgot to mention one of the major constant road blocks to me going anywhere through out the day… the 24mm. That thing sure was an attention getter. I was proudly toting it around on my new D700 and people could spot it from a mile away. I would get stopped about every hundred yards by someone who saw it and would ask to see it, would want to know how I got it or was interested in how I liked it. It really is a cool lens so I had no problem singing its praises to anyone I met.

Sooner or later I was able to make it back to my room, do a little work, and get cleaned up for dinner. It was a long day so I needed just a bit of quite time before heading back out. I am sure a lot of you know how into my family I am. So leaving them at home for a whole 4 days was quite a big step. It was already day two and I was getting messages from my beautiful wife telling me that my 3 year old; Xander was asking where I was. So I had a nice chat with my wife and told here about all of the amazing things I was getting to be a part of. After stomach turning kissy noises (my doing) over the phone and a big “I love you and miss you already” I hung up and focused back on answering a couple emails and flossing my teeth.

I made my way down to Fiamma to be met by all of the Nikon folks and the amazing John Solano. Another night of delicious food and great conversation ensued. I was really starting to form a pretty solid opinion of these “Nikon” people… but more on that later. We sat and talked late into the evening. After which I was pretty exhausted and headed to the room to watch Inglorious Bastards on pay per view. I would love to tell you I headed out to set the town a fire and rocked all of the WPPI parties… but I was honestly spent and with two blogs to write and a wake up call at 6 am… there was no way it was happening.

Here are a couple pictures from the days activities… All captured on the D700 and my assortment of beautiful Nikkor glass.

Old School and New School

Mike Corrado being awesome.

Tony Corbell… one of the most inspiring people I have met.

Straight up delicious-ness from the PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f/2.8 ED (sorry random old dude)

That dude walking away from me in the plaid shirt is Andrew Bryant of Andrew Bryant Photography… Nikon lover and all around good dude.

The man, the myth, the legend, the amazingly talented Cliff Mautner teaching us some off camera lighting goodness.