Bottom line, we were nervous. Truth be told, Erin and I are always a little skittish before we lead a shootout group. We’ve done it three times now and there’s alway that little voice that says, “you’ve got nothing small fry! What are they going to learn from YOU?”

And each time we show up, it ends up being even better than before! And that by no means says anything about us, but rather about the amazing photographers who come to these events! We are leaders by title only, as everyone who attends the Photog Shootout events has something to share.  The community we have here in Southern California, especially when it comes to wedding photography, is bar-none a source of inspiration and encouragement for some many people, and it’s an honor to be among them! The event this time was hosted at the always elegant Ebell Club in Long Beach. You’d recognize it from Ashley and Brandon’s wedding that we shot on Good Friday of this year

In our group, we really focused on shying away from using Auto White Balance and challenged everyone to manually set their Kelvin temperatures to control the color in their images. Erin and I have been doing that from day one, and we still have a ways to go, but it was fun pushing one another in our group to really have our images stand out and deliver an incredible result to our clients even straight out of camera! A huge thanks goes out to our wonderful models Arthur and Melanie and then entire LA Photog Shootout Team! Here is a list of all the awesome vendor and leaders who made this possible.

LA Photog Shootout Team:

Garrett Davis – www.garrettdavisphotography.com

Hanssie Trainor – www.hanssietrainorphotography.com

The Vendors:

Coordinator: Kim Lefabre – kim@six2sixevents.com

Venue: The Ebell Club Long Beach – www.ebellclub.com

Florist: The Platinum Event – www.ThePlatinumEvent.com

Videographer:  Avery J Productions – www.AveryJWeddings.com

Catering: Jay’s Catering – www.jayscatering.com

Venue Concierge: Mary Lallande – www.venueconcierge.com

Cupcakes: Fancy That! by Collette – 909.524.1864

Hair/Makeup: Jessica – www.jessicahunterartistry.com

Make-up: Nicole Enjoli – http://nicolenjoliblog.com/

Hair: Ashley Gannon – Makeup.Hair.Ashley@gmail.com

The Rotation Leaders:

Gavin and Erin Wade – www.gavinwadephoto.com

Brian Khang – http://www.briankhang.com/

Hanssie Trainor – www.hanssietrainor.com

Michelle Cunningham – www.milaphotography.com

Kate Noelle – http://katenoelle.com/

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to join the Facebook group so you can attend the next one!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126740240671911&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=126740240671911&ref=ts

While we put our time mostly towards helping people in the group, we were able to grab a few of our couple and wanted to share some with you! See you next time!

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a wedding at the ebell club in long beach, CA, orange county wedding, beautiful wedding veil, bonnet headpiece

Wow, two blogs in two days! We’re on a roll! haha.

Actually, I really just wanted to share with you the wedding of Meredith and Godwin. We had the pleasure of joining our dear photog friend Laura Parker for this Northern California wedding and a beautiful winery. I don’t know what it is about Napa Valley and the surrounding areas, they just seem to always produce such gorgeous weddings! Erin and I love to shoot up there and would be there every weekend if our brides wanted!

Meredith and Godwin were married at the beautiful Palm Event Center in Pleasanton, CA. Along with Christina Masters from North Carolina, we had such a great time with this awesome couple!

Here are just a few from our time in Wine Country

Briana and Brandon have quite a story…and it began in a sandbox! They’ve known one another since the 3rd grade, grew up together, and for the better part of a decade it has been leading up to these upcoming weeks. They are getting married next month and vowing to be one another’s “person” for the rest of their lives! It’s like the fairy-tale we all dream of… and in a few short weeks it will have become the prologue to a love story with limitless possibilities.

Even putting all of that aside, Briana and Brandon are genuinely just amazing people who look at one another as if they’ve found their better half…or rather…better 95%, haha. After two minutes into their engagement session, we found that all that needed to be said for Briana to smile her biggest, was just for her to glance at her soon-to-be husband. And when she did, you’d have thought we all got transported back into the hallways of high school the way she stared into Brandon’s eyes…her biggest crush…her deepest love…her future husband.

Erin and I consider it to be such an honor to be there as they continue their lives together. Getting married at Rose Drive Church, where they grew up attending, we can’t wait to see these two again and know that their wedding day is going to be so amazing!

For their engagement session, it wasn’t even an option…they knew we were going into the fields of Orange County, a place and atmosphere they felt truly represented who they were together. And in looking back at what we captured between these two, I’d have to agree 100% with their decision…it was so them.

Here are a few of our favorites…

P.S. Briana is an amazing hairstylist! She cut Erin’s hair today and even though I might be a little biased…my wife looks HOT!