These guys were like please please please come outside!!

We tried to get the family cat in on some shots. After this brief appearance the cat disappeared!

This took an act of congress to get. Poodles have an uncanny amount of energy by the way! They were everywhere!



Up in the tree house. One of my favorites of the day.

I got up in the tree house too!

Finished up with a snack in the kitchen! Thanks for the cupcake guys!

Danny called me a few days before I arrived, hoping I could make this date for their one year anniversary. All I really knew was he was surprising Rachel with a stay at the Duke Mansion. It was actually where I took them for their engagement photos. Rachel was a bit shocked. She was only told hours before to pack a bag.

He pulls out a blue bag that has the infamous blue box in it. I think the photo on the lower right was my absolute favorite that day. So much emotion and excitement.

Here’s the ring from Tiffanys she got as a gift.

I also surprised them both with a bottle of Dom Perignon. My accountant told me about 5 minutes before I arrived I probably wouldn’t be able to write off the expense on my taxes. I figured as much. This is actually the second bottle I bought this year. The first bottle was when my friend Trey returned from Afghanistan. I also punked the news into believing that the governor was about to step off the plane with his mistress. That’s another story though.

I have to thank Lisa for the idea on the Dom P. She and Tillman were sipping on it at their wedding.

We sat around and talked a few. I actually took their engagement photos back in the day as well(seen here).

We circled the house and took a few photos. It was good to catch up with these guys.

This is one of my favorite places to shoot. They do charge you to shoot there though.

Rachel has been killing it in the gym. She has lost over 40 pounds. She looked great!

We then headed to uptown Charlotte. I lagged behind a second (trying not to get run over) to take this shot. I was actually following them to the restaurant they were gonna eat at.

A photograph of the part of the Charlotte skyline where we parked. Danny works for a company that builds a lot of the skyscrapers in Charlotte.

A kiss with a view of the Queen City in the background.

We arrived at BLT Steak. At this point I was gonna take a few photos and let them celebrate the rest of the night alone.

Danny had one last surprise. I was really worried because I had no idea what he was gonna do and the lighting in the restaurant was extremely dark. Dan lifted his glass and told Rachel ************************. I’ll fill this in later…

A shot from outside the restaurant. This was a pretty difficult photograph to get. Plus I had a police officer hounding me on what I was doing.

I told him I was capturing memories.

Thanks for stopping by guys.

I love taking photos even while traveling. Check out my San Fran trip here for a little verification! I went to Vieques recently and took A LOT of gear as you will notice in the photo below. It’s pretty easy with thinktank’s great gear. So I was then ready to take some awesome vacation photos.

There was one minor(MAJOR) problem. I had just recently purchased the new iPhone 4. The main reason I upgraded it was the camera. Yep, I’m a sucker for technology.

Now the funny thing was I never touched my Canon gear the entire time I was gone. I decided to make a commitment and just use my iPhone the entire time. Iphone VERSUS $20k worth of Canon equipment? Check out the photos below from Vieques.

Vieques is a very small island and it also has wild horses about anywhere you go.

Lots of the locals also have horses and can be seen/heard riding through the towns. I took both the shots at sunset in Esperanza. Life is a little slower here. I felt like I was Ernest Hemingway in Key West in the 1930’s.

I jumped off that cliff a few times myself but it was recorded on Angie’s Canon so it can’t make this Iphone blog post. Just imagine me gracefully diving off of it, lol.

We also went sailing, with my parents, as well. That’s Mike Almond and his wife in the front. We met them on the sailboat. They were from Canada and had been vacationing for two weeks. I’m about to email him this blog post when it goes live!

A couple more shots of the sailboat. We actually went snorkeling too but since the Iphone isn’t waterproof it didn’t make the trip. The last time I was in Puerto Rico I drowned Angie’s $500 point and shoot(camera) during a snorkeling trip but it’s a small price to pay when you’re trying to get that shot of a lifetime right?!?

Here’s the sailboat before we left and also a photograph of my stepfather Jerry.

Here’s a few candid shots of Angie.

It’s hard to explain but this island reminds me of the Fox series “LOST”. It probably has something to do with an old military base being there a decade ago and also restricted areas on the island. Sounds like a great place for a good conspiracy theory to me.

This was flying in and my footprints in the sand.

Not only did I take photos with the Iphone but I also recorded video as well. I decided to put this little movie together of the clips I recorded using it along with the new One Republic song “Good Life” that I heard the other day. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks for checking out the blog. I’ve never shot a wedding in Vieques but I would love to. I’ve been to the island so many times I feel I would “Babe Ruth” it and knock it out of the park. I plan on using my pro gear when that happens though!

For starters, Megan and Breck invited me on a plane ride over Charleston.

Breck told me I had to be Goose. He was Maverick. I was like, ‘dude you’re the one getting married!” Then Breck said, “I’m the one with the motorcycle!” And I was like, “give me my own plane and I’ll be Ice Man and show you what’s up!”

Press this link for full Top Gun reenactment feel

Those are Megan’s parents. Definitely the first people I ever met from an airplane!

Breck is a pilot in the Air Force. Just in case everybody is wondering where I came up with this theme music. I think we pretty much did a full movie reenactment except for the karaoke part in the movie.

This is Boone Hall Plantation. Probably one of the most well known plantations in the south. This is where these guys are getting married. We circled it and I captured photos of the corn maze. Since I’m already working on 30 photos for a blog post you’ll have to take my word for it.

Here they are making the engagement post official!
Press this link for full romantic reenactment


Here’s one of my favorites.

Megan asked for this shot. She said Breck kissed her on the forehead a lot and it turned out great!

We stopped in at one their favorite restaurants and ordered a few espresso martinis. Doesn’t this go perfectly with the music?


Breck said the only way you could drink espresso martinis is if you played hard.


Engagement session is officially over.
Press this link to return to full Top Gun reenactment.

We played pretty hard that day! I finished up eating dinner with Megan and Breck at this cool little Italian restaurant. It was really great getting to know them. I look forward to 2011!

Thanks for serving our country Breck!

We started the day off eating lunch and watching some football. I’m actually a huge football fan and come to find out, so is Oliver. He was pulling for the Cowboys…a lost cause with their losing record this season. I actually like the Broncos and they are an equally lost cause and probably will be for the next few seasons. Now that I scared off future potential brides with all the football talk I will move on.

This is one of my favorite new spots I found. I’ve been wanting to shoot here for a while. I love the retro feel!

These guys are getting married in Sumter.




I decided to do something a little different with this shoot and go a little more grungy. Since we were going to finish up in the park, I figured we could go all out.


Oliver is actually German! The only German food I’ve ever eaten was schnitzel at Julia’s here in Columbia.

We were lucky to get this shoot done right before the cold weather set in. I think this has been the coldest weather around here EVER and it’s not even winter yet!

A few weeks ago I posted a flyer for a FREE couples engagement shoot, and the response was awesome! Thanks to everyone who applied, we wished we could have worked with everyone, but Katie & Ryan were the winners, and they were amazing to work with! Many, many thanks to Katie and Ryan for being so much fun!

The idea behind the shoot was to go to the South Carolina State Fair and shoot video and a few still images. My buddy, Dan Klutz, came down from Charlotte to help film. We came up with the idea once we realized we both had the same weekend off from shooting any weddings and wanted to do something a little different. Neither one of us are videographers, but thought it would be cool to play with the video mode of the 5d Mark ii and push it to the limit!

Hope everyone enjoys the movie, it was a lot of fun to make, let us know if you like what we did with our day off!

Fun music thanks to The Dandy Warhols

These guys drove up from Alabama to meet me in Charleston for the shoot. I really enjoyed riding around in their convertible BMW. My girlfriend used to have a black BMW 330ci and it was a sweet feeling getting back into one.

I talked to Julie the other day and she said she had a surprise for me. She said it would take 6-8 weeks to make so I’m really curious on what it could be. I definitely like surprises!

We will also be posting the footage from the ‘Free Couples Shoot’ video very soon so stayed tuned!

We still had plenty of unexpected excitement happen on this shoot by almost being hit by some crazy donkeys(*see pic below). We shot in the Charleston area and were about run over by a set of mules used for tours not once but twice! I managed to catch it the second time with the camera.