Congratulations to Amanda and Dom on your engagement tonight! I’m so honored that I was able to capture your proposal in La Jolla with the help of the fabulous Grace of La Reine des Macarons! Grace did a superb job of finding the perfect spot for Dom, and of setting the scene with her delicious macarons! Amanda had apparently been talking about macaroons for weeks, and Dom thought it would be the perfect ending to a dinner at George’s at the Cove. Dom’s cousin, Bill, was in on the whole scheme and helped Grace along the way.

Congratulations again, Amanda and Dom!

Contact me at lauren@laurennygard.com if you are interested in participating in A Day of Boudoir at my studio in Oceanside, CA!

I am so happy for the two of them to meet their precious baby boy in the coming weeks!

Thank you, Jenifer and Nick, for inviting me to capture such a special time in your lives! I can’t wait to meet your son!

xoxo,

Lauren

Stylist Kammi Long created the session and invited model and makeup artist Michelle Michaels to come! Many thanks to Celeste at Dr. Watson’s Steampunk Odditorium in Oceanside, CA, for the amazing set! If you’re in Southern California and in need of any western or steampunk items or accessories, be sure to check out Dr. Watson’s, adjacent to About Face Tattoo!

I brought my strobe and beauty dish to the shoot, so we set it up for some shots so that we could capture both the models and the sunset properly exposed. Silhouettes are fun too! We were sharing the trigger for the strobe, so while others were using it, I shot using natural light.

And I took a minute to take a self-portrait! Can you see me? :)

A huge thank you goes out to Ian and Monica for joining us on this hot evening for some photo fun! And another thank you to the photographers who came to practice. :)

What is the San Diego Shooting Group? We’re a casual group with photographers of all sorts of levels of experience, who get together every other month to practice our craft. If you’re a San Diego-based photographer looking for a fun group to get out and shoot with, feel free to email me, facebook me, or tweet me so I can let you know about everything we have planned! We get together every other month, so I’ll be scheduling the next shoot for sometime in October.

I know it’s still July for a handful more days, but it’s time to start thinking about your holiday photos for 2012! Last year, I booked up during the latter months of the year and would love to get some of you in for your yearly family session before we all get busy with our holiday plans. As an incentive to book sooner rather than later, I’m offering a special!

If you book your session by August 5, you will receive a complimentary set of 25 holiday cards featuring your favorite photo from our session together! To take advantage of this offer, the session must be booked by August 5, 2012, AND take place by September 30, 2012. The holiday card choices are shown in the image below.

Additional sets of cards are available for $25 each. Please note that this special does not apply to homecoming sessions.

Contact me to schedule your session today! Email me at lauren@laurennygard.com or use the form here to submit a message.

We started the weekend with a little meet-n-greet, which was awesome since there were cousins and great aunts and uncles there that I hadn’t seen in a long while. Then we set up an area to take some fun photos, and held a contest for the goofiest photo! I’ll post the winning image here but you’ll have to guess which one it is. :)

At the end of the day one evening, I stole my gorgeous older sister out for a quick photo session. What do you think? Not too bad for only 5 minutes, right? Especially since we had both been swimming in the river just an hour or two before this.. ;)

I had a great trip and my only regret was that I came back to California too soon! I hope y’all are all having a wonderful summer so far!

Well, I was really happy to squeeze Jerome into my already-packed schedule. We met when I was a group leader for the National Teen Leadership Program and he was in my small group. (Yep, that means he was in high school at the time!) Fast forward a few years, and I’m proud to say that Jerome has joined the ranks as a staff member for NTLP–and I think any NTLP participant will tell you that he’s one of the best ones we have!

Jerome wanted to incorporate visual aspects of the city of San Diego into his session. I asked what he meant by that, and he said he’d love to get images while in front of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. To accomplish that goal, we met on the Coronado side at Tidelands Park to capture the bridge, then walked down the bike path to capture the San Diego skyline. Jerome brought momentos from his family and college career to use during the session, which was a great idea! Check out some of my favorite images below!

Thank you, Jerome, for letting me capture your senior portraits! I had a lot of fun with you at the beach! And a big congratulations on your graduation!

Tarza brought a traditional Kurdish outfit to use for a handful of shots. It was beautiful!

Thank you, Tarza, for allowing me to photograph you!

For our last get-together, we met up at Powerhouse Park in Del Mar. I spoke about using one speedlight to enhance portrait work while Shari demonstrated the use of one studio strobe. We split up for most of the shoot, then came together at the end. Since I was helping others take photographs, I typically don’t really use my camera at all. However, this evening, I took advantage of the modeling light on Shari’s B-800 while some of the group members were photographing Lena. These were taken after the sun went down, and it was DARK out there! I mean really dark! I couldn’t even see my own hands! (Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration! But just a little bit!) To combat the darkness, I bumped up my ISO and captured the following.

Pretty neat, huh? :)

Ok, time out! Skip ahead if you don’t want to nerd out about high ISO settings! All three of these shots were taken using my 50mm f/1.8 lens. The first two were taken at f/1.8 and 1/60sec. That last one was taken at 1/250sec and f/2.0! How, you ask? Well, for the first two, I was shooting at ISO 1600. For the last one, I bumped it up even higher. Anyone want to guess what ISO I had my camera set to? I’ll give you a couple of days to think about it, then reveal the answer here!

The San Diego Shooting Group is having its next event on Sunday, October 16 at a winery in Temecula! If you are interested in joining us, please find us on Facebook here! And, if you’d like a ticket to our next event, they will be going on sale this Thursday (10/6) promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time at http://sdsg07.eventbrite.com/. I hope to see you there!

p.s. Don’t forget to leave your ISO guess in the comments below! :)

*UPDATE – October 9, 2011*

Robby’s math wins this round! He’s correct: I shot the third shot at ISO 6400. This was my first opportunity to see how far I could bump the ISO, and I was interested to see how it would turn out. :) Great job, Robby!