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Last weekend I was fortunate enough to get out an take some portraits with Rachel & Brittany. We wanted to get alot of shooting in so we did two sessions one around noon and one later to capture the sunset. Because we were shooting in the middle of the day we had to be careful to stick to the shade.

I really like this alley. I was inspired by Bert Stephani during one of his confessions of a photographer videos to find a backdrop like this by thinking about what it would look like after a couple beers. LOL! Check out his site if you haven’t already: http://www.bertstephani.com/blog/.

This balcony was really cool because we could walk up the stairs to it without anyone caring and fortunately it was on the shady side of the building and there was a giant white building next to it that reflected the light nicely.

And finally a few more from some of the other interesting alleyways and such that we found:

And as always if that wasn’t enough for you, you can find more here.

With the help of my model Joni, ok my sister but look at her she might as well have been one I took off for the lake a couple weeks ago to get some test shots with my new lens, the Canon 50mm F1.2L. After reading all the hoopla on the internet I wasn’t convinced that this lens was really right for me. There was a lot of discussion about back focusing and not being sharp wide open. Well I am here to say you do need to be careful when focusing at F1.2 but I experienced no back-focusing issues. In addition this lens was sharper at F1.2 than my 1.8 was at 1.8. Given the extreme price difference one would expect this but after reading through all the forums I wanted to make sure to give this lens a good testing before I was outside the period where I could return it. I am happy to report it lived up to my hopes and surpassed my expectations. I shot the lens as wide open as my camera would allow which in the shade was at 1.2 and in the sun it was between 1.2 and 2.2. Here are the results:

The rest can be found here.

Congratulations to Sarah and Christian on their marriage!  The wedding was amazing and I was honored to be a part of it. It was good to get to reconnect with everyone and hopefully I won’t be such a stranger. Wish you guys the best and I hope your having fun in Maui. You can find more of the photos here.