So we’re trying to clean up a guest bedroom on a windy, cold Saturday when we hear Toots throwing a hysterical fit outside. He’s ADD to begin with, so when he gets fixated on something, well, beware. This time he couldn’t take his eyes off of a huge deer on the other side of our fence — and the deer appeared to be taunting him. I grabbed my little point and shoot and started recording a movie. I wish I was fluent in Dog and Deer.

Toots: Get out! My yard! My yaaarrrd!! My my my yard! Mine! Mine!
Deer: Dude, step off.
Toots: Get out get out get out get out get out get out. Get out! Get out get out get out!
Deer: I’m 20 times your size. Do you know who you’re talking to?
Toots: Get out get out get out get out get out get out!! Get out!!!! Mine mine mine!!

Or something. Anyway, this is how it ended. If there wasn’t a fence in the way, Toots could have been worked. Or he would have ran into the house with the deer chasing him, in which case we’d have had quite the scuffle in our living room. Click on the thumbnail below to watch the mayhem.

Just finished editing Lara and Mica’s totally awesome wedding outside of San Luis Obispo, CA at this amazing blue barn at the Swallow Creek Ranch. Lara and Mica totally rock. Their irreverent, hillarious senses of humor make them a great match. Congratulation you two! The Ranch was perhaps the most spectacular venue I’ve ever been to, a perfect blend of rustic, classy elegance. It’s up a small canyon with a nearby lookout onto the blue Pacific. Man was I missing California, if only for a bit. Oh yeah, if you’re looking for inspiration on how to decorate your wedding, look no further. The inside of the barn was ablaze in lanterns and lights — way cool. You can check out the slideshow here.

Check it:

Awesome! I’m shooting an absolutely killer wedding later today in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains at this place called Convict Lake, which is just down the road from Mammoth. I flew in a few days ago and have been hanging out with some Norwegians we met in New Zealand, who are wrapping up a year-long jaunt through Thailand, the South Pacific, Canada and America. For the last few days we’ve been waking up, sitting in hot springs, climbing, sitting in hot springs, and then going to sleep. Not a bad life! The other day TJ and I went up to climb one of the most photogenic boulder problems in Bishop, a proud line called Atari that’s shaped like the videogame symbol. I’m psyched with some of the images I captured of him up there. Check it:

Then TJ caught a few pictures of me on some of the other super-mega-classics at the Happies. Ahh. Lovin’ it. Lovin’ it.

Pictures from the wedding will come soon!

Just got the results from the second quarter WPJA contest, and hooray! Honored with a couple of winners! I’m psyched, especially after I looked at the competition.

One pic placed 5th in the action category, from Alex and Jasen’s wedding in Palo Alto earlier this summer. I didn’t realize it was that cool of an image at first, but after staring at it for a while it started to grow on me.

And then there was a 16th place in the kids category from Julia and Patrick’s Estes Park wedding in July. The flower girls didn’t quite know what to make of all the people in the chapel staring at them!

if you get a chance, check out the WPJA.com site and look at all the great images. There are some fantastic photos in there, lots of inspiration and great ideas.

I’m editing Sloan and Brian’s wedding right now and figured I’d post what has got to be the weirdest picture I’ve taken all summer. It’s a getting ready shot involving mirrors. The more I look at it, the less sense it makes! More from their big day later.

A while back I mentioned that we’d gotten a Basenji with a gas problem that we named Toots.

Here he is! Not the greatest pic, but enquiring minds want to know. We don’t know where his nipped ear came from. The furrowed brow is a typical Basenji thing. By the way, Basenji literally translates to ‘bush thing.’

Today Alicia was with him at the dog park while I was getting paint, and a crazy storm came in. I looked out the store window and hightailed it to the park to find Alicia soaked to the skin and Toots shivering like mad. So of course we had to go get him a parka. With a hood. I think he likes it. We’re such suckers.

Gina and Brad had a smaller wedding that I absolutely loved. I was talking to Alicia the other day about what really makes a wedding click for me, and I think it’s when the celebration is a great reflection of the couple’s personality — and Gina and Brad did just that. They are food buffs, so their wedding was a ceremony, a small cocktail hour, and then the best meal EVER. And that was it! So simple, so elegant, so awesome.

As Gina was getting ready, we started talking about what her and Brad do on vacations, and somehow the conversation turned into what they take pictures of on vacations: lots of signs. Pretty cool. So I decided that we needed to make some signs and take some goofy portraits with them. So her dad chopped up a beer box and made some classy Bride and Groom signs, which we whipped out during a short couples portrait session on the Arrowhead Golf Course in Beaver Creek. It was hilarious! We even managed to pull off a great American Gothic replica.

I love this champagne glass shot, but I have to admit I totally stole it from one of the best wedding photographers around, Ben Chrisman. His version is a lot better. And a lot more original. But what a great idea!

That crazy shot under the veil was Gina’s mom sewing it all together. I haven’t seen the world from behind a veil before. Crazy!

I just got Canon’s new G9, and it rocks! Hooray! I don’t have much to compare this to since I don’t have any other point and shoots — this is my first one since 2001, when I got a 2 megapixel digital Elph — and this is 12 megapixels. But what I am used to is my 1dII and my Canon 5d, of which the latter is a gold standard when it comes to low-noise shooting. My lens collection consists solely of L-series glass — primarily primes — so my standards are way high.

Since you’re reading this, you presumably already know everything about the G9. If not, in a nutshell it’s got:

An image stabilized lens, equivalent to a 35 to 210 (f/2.8 to f/4.8)
12 megapixel sensor
3 inch LCD display
Digic III sensor
RAW capture mode
The ability to work with remote flashes

The last two features are what interested me in this camera. I’ve been looking for a point and shoot that has RAW mode, and all this stuff about the G7 not ‘needing’ RAW is to me a big load of hooey. I shoot everything in RAW and I batch process them in the Adobe Camera RAW, which lets me tweak my images so they have the best color rendition, saturation and range. JPEGs don’t cut it, so I’ve been waiting for this thing. Since I’m a Canon guy with Canon flashes, I also wanted one that would work with my STE-II or 580EX flashes.

First, the camera’s ergonomics suck when you’ve got a 580EX attached to it. You pretty much have to walk around holding the camera by the flash. Observe:

It’s a lot less ridiculous with an STE-II or a PocketWizard attached to it.

Will I ever use the camera with an external flash? Absolutely. With an STE-II? Maybe. With a PW? Very infrequently, but at least I can if I need to. Each of those three options increasingly nullifies the point of having a point and shoot, but I digress.

Let’s just skip right to the important stuff. The RAW write speed is decent. Nothing to phone home about, but it’s definitely useable. It takes 1 to 3 seconds to write a RAW file, depending on the card speed and the ISO (or so it seems). Recognizing that this is not a DSLR, I’m fine with that.

And the other important question is: how do the images look? I’m just going to post some full-size images after RAW processing, and you can see for yourself. All images were taken with my new G9 and my old 5d with the trusty 70-200 f/2.8L IS zoom. All the images were exposed the same in manual, at 1/200th and f/6.3. I just changed the flash output (wireless 580ex from a Pocket Wizard) and shot at the following ISO settings: 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. The images were all processed in Canon’s (IMHO ridiculously useless) RAW converter and saved to highest quality JPEG. I applied no sharpening and no noise reduction, and then I made them 100% crops in Photoshop.

Here we go at ISO 100:

And at ISO 200:

And at ISO 400:

And at ISO 800:

And at ISO 1600:

Basically I think according to the above test, the G9 holds its own until ISO 1600, at which point it totally sucks and is completely unusable. But that little lens is surprisingly sharp, and the noise control is very good at ISO 800 and below in good light. That’s pretty dope for a point and shoot.

Now, for an UPDATE thanks to some feedback: note that the above test was performed in the best of circumstances. Great light and good exposure. Now a pretty harsh test with low ambient light and no flash. I’m not comparing the two cameras, I’m just using the 5d as a baseline. By the way, everything in the below test was shot at f/2.8. That means wide open for the G9 and stopped WAAAY down for the 5d (it’s a 35mm f/1.4).

At ISO 200, pretty good.

At ISO 400, the differences appear:

At 800 they are really apparent:

And at 1600… Well, yikes.

Clearly the G9 doesn’t work that well in poor conditions, but hey, I still think I can pull out some good pictures — especially with a good flash attached. Now I’m not a professional gear reviewer, so take my words with a grain of salt, but I’m pleasantly surprised and pretty happy with the G9. I might even use it professionally for weddings! I’ve thought about mounting it in the rafters and making time-lapse videos of the reception (yes, it has that feature too) and giving them to the bride and groom. That could be super fun! Or maybe I can mount it to a tripod and have guests take photos of themselves. Or maybe I could … Anyway, point is, the camera is way cool, and I’m psyched on it.
I got it at Amazon.com (go Amazon.com Visa Rewards!) via J&R Music World. Shipped in two days. Niiiice.