Engagement: Samaya & James

A little while back I got to shoot an engagement session for some great people Samaya and James. When it came time to decide where to shoot their engagement session they were open to the suggestion of doing it at Union Station in L.A. This quickly became one of my favorite places to shoot for a couple of reasons. First, because the people who run Union Station are very nice and open to photographers doing their photography there. Union Station is one of the only authentic train stations left in the US. Almost all the building still has the same look from the 1930's and all that history is still intact. And second, because the place is so classy and the photos come out with such great character. The place has great lighting and very interesting backdrops to shoot with.

So we all had a great time. And the photos that came out I'm very proud of. I always show them off in my portfolio to my future brides. Here are few of those photos and if you haven't seen Union Station L.A. in person I would recommend that you do.

Enjoy,
SV

The Soul of a Songwriter

I have a friend named Cory. He is a great and talented 3D modeler and does some amazing work for architectural firms. Anyway, a few years back he comes to me and tells me that he was at a coffee shop one day and heard this great singer/songwriter. He says that we should take a couple hours and go see her the next time she performs. Cool.

So the next week we go. Her name was Allison Sattinger. I heard her and fell in love with her voice and music. Her ballads and lyrics were so mature and soothing. So we became friends and we set up a day that I could shoot some shots of her for her promotional materials. We took some photography in Westwood Village on top of one of the high rises there on Wilshire Blvd. Allison was great to work with. She was totally open to the ideas I had. These are some of my favorites.

You can find and hear some of Allison's music at: http://www.myspace.com/allisonsattinger.

Til next time,
SV

Becoming a Photograper

When I was about 6 years old my favorite super hero was Spider-Man. I collected all of his comics at the time. I thought that it was really cool that Peter Parker was a photographer by day and super hero in his spare time. I always wanted to be Spider-Man but never gave it a second thought that I actually wanted to be a photographer. I was more the musician type.

So fast forward a couple decades and after my rock star days seemed to be over I thought that I should start looking into starting on another profession since it didn't look like I was going to become the next George Michael. So for a few weeks I thought what could I do?? I came up with website design. It was up and coming. I loved art and thought design was cool. I knew how to draw well and it seemed that it was a good path. So I learned Dreamweaver and searched out for my first web design victim...I mean client. After that quick job I looked at my website (which is actually still up at www.adenaairportaccess.com) and thought "God, this sucks! I don't know how to design do I?". So I enrolled in a design school out in Monrovia, CA. I loved it. I studied under Carl Heinz who was a great teacher and one of the guys who come up with the Minolta Camera Corp ID in the late 80's. Through our assignments we sometimes needed pictures to make our designs that much more believable. And since buying stock photography became way too expensive for us students I thought about buying a camera. It was a painful decision because I had to first sell my digital 88 key piano first. Sniff, sniff... The camera was a 3.2 megapixel Canon. It cost me $800 at Best Buy at the time. So I began taking pictures and in about a year I realized that I loved taking pictures more than graphic design. So that's how I made my transition from super hero wanna be to happy digital photographer. Here's a few of my first pix.

Enjoy,
SV