Neighborhood Church Gourley Family Session

Several weeks ago I met up with Justin & Melisa and their twin boys at Neighborhood Church in Rancho Palos Verdes to shoot their family session.  I don’t do many family sessions since I would rather specialize in weddings and other types of photography, but when I have a special request from former clients or friends I usually can find a few hours to fit in their session.  Justin & Melisa are some of my favorite past clients!  I still am in love with the photos from their engagement session!

Since shooting their engagement session Justin and I,  having a bunch in common, have become fast friends.  Justin being a talented photographer himself, has assisted me on several of my shoots.   It is always great to have him there to be an extra set of eyes or shooting at another angle.  I guess I can forgive him from making the switch from Canon to Nikon!

Here are a few of my favorites from their shoot!

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“Absentia” Updates

With the VOD release of “Absentia” tomorrow and the DVD release coming March 13th, I thought I would give you an update on our 2011 festival run and how you can watch it in your own home.  If you are new to this blog, “Absentia” is an independent psychological thriller feature film that I had a chance to work on as the Director of Photography.   You can check out my previous posts about “Absentia” here on my blog.

absentia festival poster

Festival Wrap Up
Above you can see our final festival poster.  We had a great festival run picking up several nominations and awards including a my first nomination for Best Cinematography!   Several festivals had to add extra screenings since our shows would sell out fast, even weeks before the festival started. It was also fun trying to translate tweets and other comments from people that saw “Absentia” in Europe, Indonesia, French Canada, and other countries.   Check out below for a list of awards.

BEST HORROR FEATURE – Shriekfest
BEST OF FESTIVAL (Feature Film) – Sacramento Horror Film Festival
BEST FEATURE FILM – Maelstrom Int’l Fantastic Film Festival
FIRST PLACE – Rhode Island Int’l Horror Film Festival
BEST HORROR FEATURE – Freak Show Horror Film Festival
BEST HORROR FEATURE – Phoenix Film Festival
BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE – Sonoma Int’l Film Festival
BEST HORROR FEATURE – Shockerfest
BEST HORROR FEATURE – Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival
BEST DIRECTOR – Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival
BEST SCREENPLAY – Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival
BEST SCREENPLAY – New Orleans Horror Film Festival
BEST THRILL AWARD – Thriller! Chiller!
DIRECTOR’S CHOICE AWARD – A Night of Horror, Sydney Australia
BEST FEATURE – Tabloid Witch Awards
BEST ACTRESS (Courtney Bell & Katie Parker) – Tabloid Witch Awards
BEST ACTOR (Dave Levine) – Tabloid Witch Awards
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Morgan Peter Brown) – Tabloid Witch Awards
BEST SOUND (Richard Ragon) – Tabloid Witch Awards
BEST SOUND – Blue Whiskey Int’l Film Festival
HONORABLE MENTION – Fargo Film Festival

absentia vod poster

Release Info
The Absentia image above is what you are going to want to look for, if you are in North America, when you are trying to find Absentia on VOD and DVD. Please check out the links below and spend a few dollars to catch “Absentia” in your home. Every sale helps!

VOD Release – February 7th
Amazon Instant Video
iTunes
VUDU
Constellation.tv
BLOCKBUSTER On Demand
Andriod Market
All cable carriers – check with your carrier
AT&T U-Verse
Verizon Fios

DVD Release – March 13th
Amazon
Best Buy
Target
Wal-Mart
NetFlix
BLOCKBUSTER
Barnes & Noble

March 27th
RedBox – should be in every RedBox across the country

Summer 2012
Showtime
NetFlix Streaming

International release info will be added as available.  So far “Absentia” will  definitely be available in the UK and Japan.

Also make sure to like “Absentia” on Facebook and if you see the film please review it on IMDB and/or Amazon.

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[…] UPDATE!!! Check out how you can watch ABSENTIA […]

My Latest Photography Project

I have been wanting to go to 2 screens for long time, so right before the end of 2011 I added another 24″ Dell LCD monitor to my desktop! It’s great having the extra screen space when editing images in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop and just about doing anything else on the computer. I don’t know why I waited so long! With one monitor my screen resolution was 1920 x 1200 but with two monitors now have I have 3840 x 1200 to work with.

The problem was that all my previous background images were made for a single 1920 x 1200 screen, so recently I went through some photos I have shot in recent years to re-crop them as panoramic images. Some of my backgrounds for one screen worked great changing the crop but others didn’t, so I have been trying to shoot some personal images recently for new backgrounds. I know there are plenty of places you can download some amazing images for 1, 2, and more screens but I am a photographer and want to be able to say “yes” when a prospective client in my studio asks if I shot the image they are seeing on my desktop background.

Here are 3 recent favorites and one old image re-cropped as a pano. To see bigger and sharper versions of these photos and others go here.

The first two were shot yesterday evening during sunset at Kenneth Hahn State Park. Both were multiple image captures stitched together in Photoshop.

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los angeles wedding photography, los angeles engagement photography

One from Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach.

los angeles wedding photography, los angeles engagement photography

This one was from several years ago on my Canon 5D while taking a drive up the coast.

los angeles wedding photography, los angeles engagement photography

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