I’ve been interviewed by WPPI Radio in anticipation of my seminar at the WPPI show in Vegas. I talk about my seminar “How to Book Weddings” and other Photographer’s Toolkit related stuff. My seminar is sold out but you can get a taste of it here. It’s on iTunes with a bunch of other interviews so scroll down to find mine: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=293620128

John

I’m trying to keep up with the blogging while on the road down here near Cancun, Mexico. The internet connections are hit and miss so it’s hard to post regularly. I’m skipping past the wedding stuff which I’ll blog later. (Jen’s got that on her computer.) Yesterday, we left the resort and headed inland into the Yucatan peninsula. Our first stop was the town of Valladolid, about two hours inland from Cancun. It’s an old Spanish colonial town with lots of color and a traditional town square across from the catholic church.

As I was sitting in the hotel room playing with the photos, I decided to play around with some of the textures I’d shot walking around and use them on the photos. These are genuine Mayan textures here folks!

Although there’s tourists in Valladolid, there’s not a lot. For the most part, it’s just the local Mayans. Jen took a shot of a couple of kids. Before we knew it, they were on us: “Sacaste nos photos. Tiene que compra algo!” which meant “You took our photos, now you have to buy something!” So we bought a couple of ten peso (one dollar) handkerchefs for my little neices back home.

We stopped and ate at this restaurant. It was pretty simple food - much like home cooking.

Later, we came back and ate here. The food was super-delicious. The drinks and salsas were perfect as was the ambiance in this old Spanish villa.

After lunch, we drove to a nearby “Cenote” - it’s basically a hole or cave filled with water. The area is littered with them and they make perfect rest stops. On a hot day, you pay your ten pesos and then jump in to cool off.

We tried to drive to some nearby Mayan ruins, but it started to rain. And rain. And then rain harder. Eventually, we just turned around. Not only was driving on the narrow road a little scary in the wet weather, we figured that trying to walk around in a pouring rain would be pointless. Once we decided to turn around, the rain let up. It was like someone was giving us a message.

We drove to our hotel, the Mayaland Resort. The name was kinda hokey, but the resort consisted of small, thatched roof villas spread over a large property surrounded by jungle. Just outside our room was one of three swimming pools. It was perfect for jumping in and cooling off after a hot day of playing tourist.

Next stop: Chichen-itza!

John

Some of you may remember my “In the Land of My Father” trip to New Mexico. I posted photos and wrote about it in this blog post. I printed many of the photos that I shot and my dad sent them off to the folks that we visited. This weekend, I received a letter from the man with the bow and arrows that I photographed. He’s a champion bow hunter and makes his own arrows from feathers and obsidian. I asked him a bunch of questions about the process as I took a close look at his arrows.

Apparently, he remembered my interest. He sent me a nice thank you note for the photos along with a handmade arrowhead on a leather cord. It came from a large chunk of obsidian that someone gave him. Anyhow, I thought it was pretty cool.

John

Just another gorgeous day shooting family photos in La Jolla.

John

I photographed the wedding of Eric and Samantha at Rancho Valencia earlier this year. Well, they wasted no time and now they’ve got a little addition to the family. He’s only three weeks, but he’s feisty and a hungry little boy. Here’s one of him and daddy.

John

It’s actually the morning of day three as i write this. I got up early - before sunrise - to get shots of the early morning light against the red standstone rock formations here. But the clouds rolled in and there was no sunlight. Bummer.

Yesterday was fun. I cruised around the ranch on a Suzuki quad. Nothing like bouncing over hill and dale through flowers and fields. Later I did some rock scrambling and bushwacking through oak-choked gullies. My legs were all cut and bloody last night. Doing that reminded me of my college days in Santa Barbara when we’d go out bushwacking in search of rocks to climb. Here it is 20 years later and I’m doing the same thing.

Here’s a few more shots:

Today, I’ll be shooting more ranch oriented stuff cowboy stuff.

John

For those of you who may have followed my old, intermittent blog, thanks for your patience and welcome to my new blog. My old blog was hosted by blogger and, unfortunately, was very slow when it came to posting photos. Since photography is what I do, that was a major problem and hinderance to me posting. Also, I hated the fact that my photos were all so small. Between the slowness and the smallness of the images, I really wasn’t motivated to post and it showed.

With my new, improved blog, I hope to be able to keep this current and show lots of cool stuff. So, please come on back to check out what I have going on!

John

This is my first blog post in my new blog. I’m so happy now that I can post big photos and not have to deal with blogger. You’ll be seeing a lot more in the days to come!

John