I had a great time with my family down in southern California. My sister-in-law planned a fun trip for all of us in Palm Springs. It might seem a bit crazy to head out to the desert in July, but we just spent a lot of time in the pool and our air-conditioned rooms and had a great time. Of course, I took lots of pictures of my adorable niece and nephew. My nephew Aiden is going through an anti-photo stage: I was hoping the underwater camera would hold his interest. It did for a couple of minutes, until he jumped out of the pool and declared “I’m getting out until Uncle Scott stops taking pictures…” Luckily, niece Maya was a much more willing subject, posing for the camera, and making her pretend “shy” face, twirling in her “princess” dress and generally being much more agreeable. And of course, Aiden was more than happy to jump around on the bed like a wild-man while I snapped away…

I spent the day in Old Sacramento at a model photography workshop. There were 9 photographers and six models and we spent the day wandering around Old Sac pairing up in different combinations and exploring the highly photogenic environment. It turned out that it really wasn’t much of a “workshop” - there was very little instruction or direction involved - we mostly just paired up with the various models and found cool places to shoot. The models were great and worked really hard all day long, despite the 90+ degree temperatures. It was a great opportunity to meet some local models and get some nice shots for my portfolio. I enjoy doing this type of work because it’s great practice for wedding photography, and you can take a little more time to set things up, pose the models, get the lighting right, etc. when you’re not dealing with the pressure of a wedding day. There are more pictures here.

Went to a really fun Strobist get together at Mike Wong’s studio in Fremont. This was a nice counterpoint to the one that I organized in Davis, since this was in the studio, and in the Bay Area, so it was all new faces for me. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any models to pose for us, so we had to settle for taking pictures of each other, but it worked out OK once we found the guitar. These get-togethers are always a fun way to experiment with lighting, and I’ve been wanting to try the "blown out white background" look - Mike’s big cyclorama provided the perfect opportunity.

A few weeks ago I organized a Strobist meetup in Davis. Strobist is a fantastic blog that deals with off-camera lighting, and there’s a whole community built up around the blog. People organize local get togethers to meet with other photographers and play around with lighting. We’ve tried to get one going in Sacramento without too much success (only a few people showed up) so I figured I’d give it another try in Davis. We had about 9 people there, and I found Michelle on Model Mayhem - she was great. Some of the guys were fairly new to shooting models, and Michelle was very patient with them as they learned how much of a challenge it can be to talk and shoot at the same time. Everyone had a good time, and Michelle ended up with some new shots to add to her portfolio (and so did I!)

I’ve been having lots of fun with my new underwater housing for the Canon G9. I went over to Hickey Pool to take some pictures of my friend Bevin, and then took some fun family portraits of Aimee and her family. Aimee and her girls were great - they’re all swimmers (the girls are on the swim team in Dixon) and they had a great time goofing around in the water while I clicked away. I’m looking forward to getting lots of pictures of my niece and nephew in their backyard pool when I visit them at the end of July.