Sarah & Laurel :: Senior Portraits

Near the end of this past semester, I attempted to convince my girlfriend Sarah and her best friend Laurel to let me take their senior portraits, and my persuasive efforts were apparently a success :) The three of us ventured out to the foothills of Santa Barbara on a beautiful and particularly blustery day and had quite the afternoon balancing on fences, stomping through tall grass, and jumping off of rocks. I even snuck my way into a couple pictures ;) Here's a little preview of our shoot!

Jacobson & Fletcher Families :: Family Portraits

Meet the Jacobson and Fletcher families! Jeremy and Anna Fletcher have become dear friends of mine this year, and if you're still at Westmont next year, get to know them (especially if you live in VK)! I really enjoyed getting to know Anna's parents, brother, sister-in-law, and twin nieces; Vika, Anna's sister-in-law, speaks fluent Russian, while the rest of her family speaks fluent Spanish...it made for quite the international experience, which I'm all about, if ya know me :) Because it was a little difficult to keep the girls in one place for more than two seconds, it was really funny watching their antics as they explored the park and the beach. And speaking of little ones, now there's another Fletcher on the way (currently dubbed Wasabi :)! Congrats Anna and Jeremy!

Emily McCardle :: Senior Portraits

I had the pleasure of being on RA staff with Emily (or Emiry, as we like to call her) this past school year and shared many a funny moment with her (including, but not limited to, witnessing her reaction to a critter flying into a bowl of shrimp during a staff dinner: "I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT!"), so I was stoked when she asked me to shoot her senior portraits. Here are some of my favorites! And thank you Rachy for coming along and helping with the shoot :)

Rachel & Spencer :: Santa Barbara Engagement

Over the past year, Rachel and Spencer have become great friends of mine; Rachel is on the same RA staff as I am at Westmont, and Spencer is one of my friends and residents (fresidents?) in VK F-G-H. That being said, it was a pleasure shooting Rach and Spence's engagement photos, so I hope you enjoy looking through this preview of the shoot! Also, special thanks to Chloé, also on our RA staff, for helping out with the shoot and "ooh-ing" and "ah-ing" every couple minutes :)

Kendra & Jon :: La Jolla Wedding

Over winter break I had the pleasure of shooting Kendra and Jon's wedding in the beautiful city of La Jolla, California. Kendra and her family have been close friends with my family since before I could walk, and Jon and I instantly bond over our love for good music (read: jazz), so being their photographer was a blast. Here are some pictures from their big day!

It's been so long!

The goals for this blog post are three-fold. First off, I haven't put anything on here in almost two months, and that's just a shame. So I'm rectifying that preposterous error. Secondly, I'm giving you a bunch of excuses regarding why I haven't posted (just in case you were bored and wanted to hear me out). Lastly, I'm way behind on editing pictures, so I want to put up several pictures from our RA retreat just to keep certain members of our RA staff happy ;)

By virtue of the nature of the first goal, I've already accomplished it. Now for the reasons:

Actually, wait up. I was gonna give a whole list of reasons (and my computer science class would've topped that list for sure) [Jarrett: (listof reason)], but that seemed a little excessive. Rather, I'll just say that life is busy! But it's certainly good. I'll take the rest of your precious time by briefly elaborating on a certain aspect of that busyness: residence life. I'm a resident assistant this year in the lovely dorm of Van Kampen, and it's been a wonderful experience (except when my door decs plummet to the ground from their sheer weight, which happens more often than I'd like). I love the great group of guys men (sorry Stu!) I get to live life with, and am absolutely stoked that I get a whole other semester (have you ever noticed that we often say "whole nother" when we speak?) with them. The men in my section, VK F-G-H, are incredible friends, musicians, athletes, and scholars, among other things. There aren't too many dull moments this semester, as a typical stroll through the area can hold many surprises, from a random wrestling match to a near unicycle collision in the hallway :) Another great part of residence life is my staff, which you'll get to see in a few brief moments. The VK staff has been an incredible encouragement to me this semester, and every single person is a dear friend to me, even though I've known most of them only for these past several months.

Now, let me complete that last goal I mentioned at the beginning of this post! In October, our staff got to go on a weekend retreat up to Pismo Beach, and these following several pictures are from our Saturday afternoon on the beach.



Here we are! From left to right, we have random guy, random guy's dog, David (Dryvid Dave), Chloé (Chlo Chlo), Rachel (Rachy), Margo (Margot), Emily (Squirrel), and yours truly. If you're at Westmont and don't know someone in the aforementioned bunch, you should definitely get to know them (except maybe the kid on the right)! You won't regret it.



And these two beautiful people are Anna Fletcher, our resident director, and Jeremy Fletcher, her husband (and coordinator of student ministries and missions at Westmont). Anna and Jeremy are an incredible couple and it's been such a blessing getting to know them this semester. Ditto on the "get to know them" thing for you Westmont folk!



Here's one shot at 400mm. I've been obsessed with longer focal lengths lately. For one of my most recent photo projects, which I'll be blogging about soon most likely (the 2013 Westmont Brass Men calendar!), I think I shot every photo at over 100mm. Also, perfect moment for a shameless plug: calendars go on sale next week! They're only $10 and all the proceeds benefit the Westmont music department. You should buy two (at least)! Ok, shameless plug over.



Here are Chlo and Rachy enjoying the agua.



And here's Pismo Beach (and coincidentally me) saying good night.

And that's the end of this post! Hopefully this marks the beginning of better blogging habits...I guess we'll see soon enough. Good night!