A Photographer Who Cares

Here’s a video I just completed of Yoti Telio from the Santa Clarita Photographic Studio. It’s so nice to find a creative professional who cares as much as I do about people and about doing great work. At one point during this video Yoti says, “There’s a little piece of me in every portrait I create.” You can really tell. Yoti takes the time to make sure everything he does is unique and special for each individual client. I hope you enjoy this video as much as I enjoyed making it!

Santa Clarita Photographic Studio

661.775.0898

scphotostudio.com

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Some Enchanted Evening

If you’re lucky once in your lifetime you’ll be privileged enough to attend a wedding the makes your jaw drop to the floor at every turn. Well I go to A LOT of weddings, so it’s very difficult to surprise me. The wedding of Yesenia Suarez and Duane Miller was awe inspiring from the invitation until the very last dance. It helps somewhat that the mother of the bride happens to be Myra Harbour of Celebrate, Planning for an Event to Remember! She is only one of the most artistic and imaginative wedding vendors I’ve ever met. Everything she does for her clients is unique and beyond their expectations so it is no wonder, David and Jody Ross from R&R Photography, Sandra and Jorge Lopez from J&M Entertainment, Adriana Farrell from Cruz’s Bridal and I were all elbowing each other all night long as we sipped drinks from the “Ice Bar,” dined on Ostrich sliders, mini coca-cola floats and the tallest and most incredible wedding cake I’ve ever filmed, constructed by the one and only Jill Phillips of Jill’s Cake Creations. This was a night to remember for every single guest but as you can see in this trailer, no two guests enjoyed it more than Yesenia and Duane as they celebrated their love in style.

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The Future is Now!

I’m a pretty proud daddy today. My seven year old son just completed writing, directing and editing his first film! I was so proud of him I am deciding to share this exclusive new release to the world, right here. He did this project for a National Elementary School art program called “Reflections.” Students from all over the country submit entries that speak to a common theme. This year’s theme was “Beauty is…” I asked him what he thought was beautiful and being an avid reader of books on the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, he of course responded, “Battlefields!” I asked him why and that little seven year old looked at me and told me, “They’re beautiful because that’s where we won our freedom.” He’s exactly right. He has one grandfather that was in the Army and another grandfather that was in the Navy (for only a week, but he gave it a shot!) and a Great Grandfather that fought in World War II, so this subject is very close to home for all of us. He wrote the script, recorded the voice over, found the pictures and edited the video by himself. I told him how to do things technically on Final Cut Pro, but he did it all, so naturally I had to have him go the extra step and teach him how to upload it to the web so we could share it with everyone. Here it is…and I couldn’t be more proud.

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Brian & Mary’s Trailer

Fall is on it’s way! We were cold for the first time at a wedding in about 9 months, but you wouldn’t have known it from the warmth that was shared between Brian, Mary and all of their family and friends. What a beautiful wedding at the Westlake Inn on Saturday October 10th. Along with the beautiful flowers, the beautiful dress and the beautiful scenery were some pretty beautiful people. Brian, a doctor, and Mary, a nurse, sure knew how to take care of everyone. The food was delicious and I know everyone appreciated the incredible red velvet cupcakes at the end of the evening. They sure worked it off on the dance floor though, everyone had a great time and I stayed up quite late after the event to put a few of their best moments up online for everyone to see the next morning…

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Ashlee & Tom’s First Dance

Once in a while you see a wedding where you just know the couple is going to be together forever. Ashlee Barnes and Tom Mullen are those two people. Fun doesn’t do their wedding justice. Every guest in attendance had to feel like they were one of the guests of honor at really great party. There was an air of relaxation, of true joy at this wedding that we don’t get to see often enough. It was a perfect day, beautiful weather and as far as I knew not a thing went wrong, but you just got the feeling that it could have been pouring rain and they could have forgot the dress and the cake and Tom and Ashlee would have still had the time of their lives. They really understood that this was one day, the first day of the rest of their lives together and they were celebrating that with everyone they loved. The fun oozed out from start to finish, but no more so than their incredibly original and entertaining first dance. I have posted the video below, enjoy it…I know they did!

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Autism Speaks at the August Wedding Happy Hour

 

Plan your wedding while sipping Martinis poolside

Here’s a great opportunity for brides and grooms to meet some incredible wedding vendors, sip a few martinis by the pool and help a great cause!  Please let me know if you can join us for the August Wedding Happy Hour to help Autism Speaks at the Four Points by Sheraton in Culver City.  Anyone who is my guest will get FREE admission and have the opportunity to give a tax deductible donation to Autism Speaks.  It should be a great night for a worthy cause.  For tickets please e-mail me at matt@matrimonypictures.com.  To find our more about Autism Speaks please go to www.autismspeaks.org/ and for more information on the Wedding Happy Hour please visit www.weddinghappyhour.blogspot.com/

Meghan & Matt’s Wedding Trailer on Vimeo

Meghan & Matt Paletz celebrate in style at TPC Valencia.  Please see the detailed post below, but of course I’m a glutton for punishment and I stayed up until 3:00am the night of the wedding to do this highlight for this special couple.  I hope it looks as nice to you all as it did to me through my bleary eyes.  Enjoy!

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Meghan & Matt Paletz celebrate in style at TPC Valencia

I got the privilege of celebrating my anniversary with a wonderful couple last Saturday at the TPC Valencia.  My wife and I were married on June 20, 1998, 11 years strong!  Just for the record, my wife and I celebrated on Thursday night going to the live taping of So You Think You Can Dance and out to a great dinner in Hollywood.  She is very understanding about me filming on our anniversary…come to think of it, she’s very understanding about everything I do which is one of the many reasons why I love her and we’re more in love now than we were 11 years ago.  But enough about us…

I got to shoot a spectacular wedding on June 20, 2009 at one of my favorite locations, TPC Valencia (www.tpcvalencia.com).  Gina Goodrich, coordinates all of the events over there and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who works harder, cares more, or treats the guests and vendors with as much class and kindness as she does.  She’s the best!  

Meghan happens to be very good friends with one of the best wedding coordinators anywhere, Kelly Meyer of Kelly Michelle Weddings (www.kellymichelleweddings.com/), and it showed.  The colors, the details, the flowers, the linens and the candy table were all top notch.  Don’t try this at home people, this was professionally done from top to bottom.  The rentals were brought in by Rusty at AV Party Rentals (www.avparty.com) and he always does a superb job.  The gorgeous flowers were done by Jackie Combs of Jackie Combs Floral Design (www.jackiecombsfloraldesign.com/).  This was the first time I had worked with Jackie, but I sure hope it’s not the last, Meghan couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved the flowers.  

The whole thing was captured by Tara Rochelle of Tara Rochelle Photography (www.tararochelle.com/).  I have worked with Tara and her husband Ryan many times and they’re always a blast to work with.  Tara gets as fired up as I do to find new creative shots and that goes a long way to making the pictures and the video something really special.  

A big thank you to Meghan & Matt and their whole family, this was really a special couple and a very memorable anniversary for me.  I hope their marriage is as blessed and fulling as mine has been.

Of course I’m a glutton for punishment and I stayed up until 3:00am editing a highlight montage for them the night of the wedding, so hopefully it looks as good to you all as it did to me through my bleary eyes.  Please take a look at the trailer above and feel free to leave comments, Enjoy!

Kristy & Joe’s Wedding: A Family Affair

What a great event last night for Kristy, Joe and their whole family.  The emotions were flying and everyone had an amazing time.  Here is the highlight video for everyone to enjoy.  Here’s the link on vimeo.com – http://vimeo.com/2284806

B’not Mitzvah gets the red carpet treatment

 

I worked from this version for the movie poster look at the bottom

I just finished editing an incredible movie themed B’not Mitzvah(Two girls having their Bat Mitzvah at the same time) honoring Hayley and Rachel Rappoport and I’m really thrilled at how the DVD cover turned out.  So thrilled in fact I had to blog about it!  

 

The Rappoports did a great job transforming Robinson Ranch Country Club for this Mitzvah, where all of the guests walked in on a red carpet lined with ropes and authentic Hollywood stars on the ground with family members names on them.  Each table was given a movie theme with the movie “Twilight” as the featured table.  I decided to make the cover of the DVD resemble the “Twilight” movie poster, as both girls we honored that night seemed to be quite fond of that romantic vampire saga.  After doing some research on “Twilight” movie posters I found that there were actually about ten different versions and luckily one of them had a group shot that I could really work off of in Photoshop.

This is the main movie poster I worked off of for my homage

 I had a nice group shot of Hayley, Rachel and many of their friends and I used that as the focal point of the cover.  The big challenge was to try and mimic the font used to make the name Rappoport look like the font used on the “Twilight” poster.  I found a basic font that I think passes for the main font but I then had to copy and paste many of the streaks coming from the “Twilight” words to get it to feel just right.  I then used a freeware “Movie Poster” font from dafonts.com to give me the perfect look at the bottom of the poster.  I used Hayley and Rachel’s names along with their family members and friends as the cast members names and then I threw in some of the vendors names like the photographer Photographic Memories as the Director of Photography and the DJ Mike Diaz of Diaz Entertainment in the “Music By” section.  All in all I’m really proud of how it turned out.  Here’s the finished product for you to see, I’d love to hear comments on what you think or if this was helpful for you.

 

Hayley & Rachel's B'not Mitzvah DVD Released today!