Cup of Joe Photo

Vegas Party Pics

Yes! This is what I'm talking about. Jerome Braga sent me this shot of us hanging out with the very fashionable Carrillo in 2005. Please keep the photos coming in.

Vegas Photos Please

I'm putting together a little scrapbook of Vegas outfits I've worn at WPPI over the past 8 years. I don't have many pictures of me with friends and I need your help. If any of you have photos of me in my rock star clothes, would you email them to me joe@joephoto.com (4x6 at 300dpi) as soon as possible. I plan to post some of of my favs. If you have any from Becker's parties, I'm specifically looking for shots in the gold and black pants 4 years ago or wild Studio 54 shots! My buddy Alan Karlin just sent me the shot below. Thank you Alan!!

I look forward to seeing what the rest of you come up with!

I'll send a few of you my Show & Tell 2 DVD for the most fashionable images.

Details Details Grand Opening Party

Yesterday, the lovely ladies of Details Details threw an amazing Grand Opening Party for their brand new offices in Irvine Ca. They specialize in designing and coordinating extraordinary weddings and special events. Music for the evening was being spun by the very famous Peter (Pop)Papadopoulos of Vive Entertainment

One of the benefits of arriving toward the end of a party and staying late is being sent home with some of the incredible goodies that remained. Would you look at the huge box of pastries and candied apples the girls sent me home with. SWEET! My girls at home were totally stoked:) Thanks, Jeannie and congratulations on pursuing your dreams and making the dreams of others come true:)

U2 3D

OH MY! I'm skipping a book this week in favor of an absolutely insane creative project recommendation. U2 3D. We in So Cal are blessed to have an IMAX theater at The Irvine Spectrum, which is about 20 minutes from my home. On Friday night, I went to check out what all the buzz was about and my mind was blown. Technology has triumphed again! This movie is exactly the way I like to experience a concert. Up close and personal. You really can't get any more close than this, and the 3D experience is so perfect, it's literally like being in the crowd, and then in the air, and then over the drums, around the Edge and in Bono's face. Go see it this week. Run, don't walk!

Bare feet

My wife, Ingrid, comes home today from a spiritual retreat in New Mexico. While talking with her briefly yesterday, we discussed the idea of Holy Ground and our perception of what makes it Holy. Then, I found this piece online last night that introduced a beautiful new paradigm to my awareness.

Approaching

Our first response in approaching
another people,
another culture,
another religion,
is to take off our shoes
for the place we are approaching is holy.

Else we may find ourselves treading on another's dream.

More serious still,
we may forget...
that God was here
before our arrival.

We have, at our church, a lovely worship leader who never wears shoes while she sings. Months went by before I asked her why she chose to remain bare foot. After all, I really like shoes and I thought it weird that she never wore them. She explained that once, before a vocal performance in a Night Club, she was going to be singing Gospel songs. She began to feel "out of place" and then God spoke to her backstage and told her to remove her shoes, that she was on Holy Ground. She has rarely worn shoes since. I find it both wonderful and comforting that God claims a bar as a Holy place. I wonder where else we might find Holy ground. I imagine, it's all around.

Variety is Spicy

Speaking of Spicy, check out these two from my new Best of 2007 Gallery:)

Till death do us part

These words are common vows for brides and grooms. But could they also pertain to brides, grooms and their wedding photographer? Interesting question. How well did you like your wedding photographer? It seems as though I have the good fortune of becoming friends with a special couple or two each year. In 2006 I shot Mark and Lisa's wedding where I also meet their friends Derek and Heather, whom I shot in Napa in 2007. Mark's brother Chad, was also at both events. When Heather and Derek came to town last weekend, we got together for lunch, Monte Cristo sandwiches, and good times:) I suppose I'll be friends with these clients beyond old... still having good times:)

Shoot, Don't Look

Sometimes, when the mood strikes, I play a little game. Shoot without looking. Get a sense for the shot without the viewfinder. Use your intuition and create the opportunity to "capture by chance". The other day while I was walking around scouting locations, I saw the sun coming through a tree and I reached out and shot it. I dig taking a chance. Once in a while, you capture something cool. It really helps develop and sharpen your skills.

Tweaking 300

I've finally narrowed down my favorite 300 shots of 2007. You've seen many of them on the blog over the past year, but I picked a bunch you haven't seen yet too. I began tweaking some of them and I'll finish over the weekend. I thought I'd share one I really like. Cheers!

Stumbling on Happiness

This weeks highly recommended book comes one day behind it's usual Monday slot, but I just finished listening to it yesterday. It is well worth the read/listen and I wish I'd read/listened to it years ago. I'm really into how the brain works and why we do what we do with our lives. This is a book that is entertaining as well as informative about our thought processes and surprising research on our memories and choices. If you're fascinated by these topics, Stumbling on Happiness is the best book I've found.

Several years ago, on a flight from New York to California, I had the good fortune to sit next to a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. He had a shiny bald head, an irrepressible good humor, and we talked (or, more accurately, he talked) from at least the Hudson to the Rockies--and I was completely charmed. He had the wonderful quality many academics have--which is that he was interested in the kinds of questions that all of us care about but never have the time or opportunity to explore. He had also had a quality that is rare among academics. He had the ability to translate his work for people who were outside his world.
Now Gilbert has written a book about his psychological research. It is called Stumbling on Happiness, and reading it reminded me of that plane ride long ago. It is a delight to read. Gilbert is charming and funny and has a rare gift for making very complicated ideas come alive.

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

I suppose that I really should go on at this point, and talk in more detail about what Gilbert means by that--and how his argument unfolds. But I feel like that might ruin the experience of reading Stumbling on Happiness. This is a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me. --Malcolm Gladwell