On Saturday, I had the pleasure of shooting with Kevin and Renee Derek at the Hyatt Regency, Huntington Beach. The Dereks photographed our wedding back in 2003 and they are just a blast to be with. It was such a cool experience as I learned so much from both Kevin and Renee, who handle different aspects of their photography business. Can’t wait until the next one. Here are a sample of my shots from Saturday.

The green roses were very beautiful and different. I don’t see that color used very often.

The bride looked beautiful and relaxed.

A sweet kiss right after seeing each other for the first time.

Another beautiful Southern California day at Huntington Beach.

A nice moment on the dance floor.

We went to the Pumpkin Patch Party in our neighborhood. Got some free food and pumpkins. Lukie was scared of the Scarecrow, so I guess it was doing it’s job.

It’s always nice to be able to go out and take some pictures with the family. I can’t even remember the last time that we did this that was not Christmas. Even better that my brother, JB, was in town from the Philippines. We ended up going to Corona Del Mar, CA about an hour and a half before sunset and were able to get some quality shots in there. I ended up using my 70-200 f/4 on a tripod for all of these and they came out well. I wish I had my new 2.8 L IS or 85 f/1.8 but they’re in the mail and should be arriving in a few days. I hope to make this an annual event. At the least.

Here are a few of my favorites. To see the rest: http://www.flickr.com/photos/janearlgarcia/sets/72157594327272312/.

Posing in front of the house in his favorite polo shirt. Such a preppy dude.

You may notice the new look of this blog. It is now a traditional blog with no extra stuff. I didn’t even bring over the gallery that I know people used all the time. There is now just a Flickr link at the top. I would like to redesign it with an idea that I’ve had for about a week now, but I’m feeling a little lazy. I like my sketches and think that it would turn out pretty cool but it may take a while to do so. So for now I’m using a theme. I’ve chosen the Simplr Theme from plaintext.org. It’s a very simple layout that doesn’t have much graphical elements. Actually, there are no graphical elements, but for some reason I was drawn to the way it presented the content. I like the bottom part a lot. I made some changes to the stylesheet and added that brown border on the top. It still kinda looks ok. Well, hopefully I can get more stuff done now that this transition is out of the way.