Casual Portraits in the Snow | Mark & Christyn, Denver, CO.

I LOVE the snow. Right during the snow, we shot these shots for a demo I was shooting for a Pictage PUG (Pictage User Group) Presentation.

I shot Mark & Christyn's wedding back on 7/23/2007 at the Montage in Laguna Beach. Check out the link to the post here What a beautiful wedding they had. Since we have become great friends and

Thanks you for helping, and thank you to God for making it snow in Denver!

Digital Photo Buzz Spotlight

A fun feature about the camera toss on Digital Photo Buzz - Check it out! Thanks Mark!

Latest Speaking Tour

Thanks to Pictage, who sponsored the 1st 11 days of 20+ in my "Character Marketing" speaking tour to the Pictage user groups, or PUG's. It was an open invite however to photographers in each city. Here is Nashville

The Nashville crew here with a wireless flash setup on each side. Simple.

Here is a shot from a friend who was shooting me speaking.

The week earlier I was in Portland, Oregon and met with a sweet group of photographers there.

Eric Farewell's wife, Nellie was there, they were such a help to me during my shoot in San Francisco and again here in Portland. Great people.

Eric shot these shots of me sharing about character marketing and growing ourselves as much as our art.

The Portland skyline, Here we used the YongNuo wireless transmitters, which powered my Canon 580ex II flashes at 1/128th power.

Same exact settings, just a couple, and you get sweet light.

I stopped in Seattle and this was the 1st day that I was able to speak after 5 days of being on 100% vocal rest. Thanks to everyone who was praying. It was a blessing to be able to share that night!

Again, a great group of photographers in Seattle as well.

Here is my view, for 2 hours sharing my heart and experiences. I was blessed to hear people share how they walked away with renewed vision.

Tech specs, 1/5 second, F 1.2, ISO 1000, shot on the ground so the middle ground was limited to the couple standing, the orange clouds are from the city lights.

Here is the view of the photogs surrounding and the flash setup. Simple 1/128th power on the flash heads. I did 11 demos, and 2 weddings on the same batteries before I had to switch them.

San Francisco. Thanks to Gene Higa for helping out shooting this shot!

On Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, this is the leftover crowd from the demo shoot we did for the Los Angeles PUG.

Detroit Michigan. All I can say is that it was 13 degrees out! But it was worth flying up and sharing with another great group of photographers here.

This was the 1st stop in the tour in San Diego, thanks to the Youngrens, and the La Vida Crew, they took great care of me.

Near the end of the 1st 3 weeks, about the 1/2 way part of the tour, we stopped at Kevin Swan's house for the presentation, where we did the camera toss. I should have had my fisheye on for this shot, as in the Camera toss which was a few posts earlier.

I wanted to give a special thanks to Pictage, for sponsoring this, also for Drobo, for giving away a gift certificate, Album Exposure for giving away a year subscription, and to Show-It sites, for giving away a special discounted rate on their AMAZING slideshows and websites for photographers.

Upcoming on the tour are the following cities: Philly, DC, NYC, uptown NYC, Baltimore, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pheonix, Orlando, Miami, Hartford, Chicago, Sacramento, East Bay Area, Vancouver, and maybe Kansas City. I hope to see those of you in those cities coming up. For more info, check out my workshops site.

Vineyard Engagement Shoot { Marcus & Liz }

Meet Marcus & Liz, Marcus is a rancher, and Liz a viticulture expert. What better location to shoot than in the Santa Inez/San Luis Obispo County wine country area. Fall colors out here are stunning and I wish I could have paused this light and shot forever! Thanks guys for an amazing shoot!

This is a secret vineyard that nobody knows about and there is a ominous looking chain guarding the road.

I love sitting on the job. Always a different perspective.

It was great to hear Liz teach Marcus what she did and what she was looking for as she inspects grape vines in her day to day work on the vineyard.

Meet Liz, a vine expert.

Meet Marcus, he is a hard working cattle rancher. Don't mess with him. But he's cool. We had fun shooting and I totally was digging his "what are you looking at", look.

They had fun, too much fun at times, and this was telling of their relationship, and how much fun they have together.

They love to fish, and we shared many fish stories, so it was fitting to see them with their poles and dreaming about the next fishing trip and the all famous fishing stories.

Piggy back rides are good for your health if your a married couple. Good for the relationship too.

Then there was their dog. He loved chasing balls and running around.

I loved this shoot and am looking forward to their wedding in a few months!

Amsterdam Workshop, Flash bouncing Demo

Todays workshop we had a cool dark sky in the background, This is cool because I wanted to overpower the ambient light at 3:30pm in the afternoon, in broad daylight(this is best when its cloudy), I was able to use my 580 exII and bounce into a 4x6 reflector, then I had another sunbounce mini (silver 3x4') bouncing the light from the 1st flash back to fill the shadows. I wanted to have my bride walking so the wind would be blowing through her hair and I was able to do that with my 2 assistants walking along with us as a unit, all at the same speed. Setting were pretty simple:

85mm, 50 iso, 1/200th, @ f /4.5

In this second shot I wanted dramatic lighting coming in from each side and I wanted even more light to make the sky darker, the only way to do that was to have more flash power, two flashes worked perfect, same sunbounces on each side as before, yet my settings were pretty much the same with exception to the f-stop:

85mm, 50 iso, 1/200th, @ f / 7.1.

Europe Workshop Tour Images!

The European "Wedding's California Style" Workshop Tour, is going so well, after day 3, we've hit up Budapest, Vienna, Munich and now we are off to Zurich. Here are some highlights. Everyone is signing up on facebook and making comments, check out the details, tesimonials and participant images at http://www.facebook.com/mikelarsoninc many workshops have filled up, but there are a few spots left in a few cities, so check out the link to sign up for those of you photographers in Europe!