did you see today today?

all around good guy, friend, and photographic genious john michael cooper was on the today show this morning talking about doing some awesomely non-tradional photos of brides in their wedding dress.
if you missed it you should definitely check out the video here.

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as an added bonus to go along with the story, the today show website posted images from a handful of talented photographers,
and two of ours :)

this type of portrait session was created by john michael cooper to be different from the mainstream. some of us saw what john was doing and were so inspired that we gave it a try, putting our own talents to the test. eventually it was dubbed "trash the dress." the media caught on and sent that buzzword flying around the globe. i think it was right about that time when john's original vision was muddied. (pun intended)
these sessions are not just about rebelling and going out to trash a wedding dress.
they are about being creative, having fun, and not worrying if your clothes get a little wet or dirty in the process.
whatever level of dirt you are comfortable with, have fun brides and grooms! you only live once.
in our experience, most of today's modern brides don't want to wear their mom's old wedding dress, as beautiful as it may be. they want to be unique and wear something that shows their own style. i'm not nostradamus, but i don't see this trend changing in the future. with this revelation in mind, we offer three suggestions for your wedding dress after you have said "i do" and placed it into wedding dress purgatory.
one, call us to do a super fun photo session. dirt and/or water are optional.
two, donate your dress to brides against breast cancer.
three, call us to do a super fun photo session, get your dress professionally cleaned, then donate it to brides against breast cancer :)

janell and rj's santa barbara wedding teaser

there are times in our lives when we all have to make the right choice.
will rj make the right one?
will he be punched in the gizzard for making a wrong decision?
will his head explode from seeing too many beautiful versions of janell?
tune in soon to see. same bat time. same bat channel :)

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and the winner is...

hannah and cadman! i knew your friends wouldn't let you down. special thanks to all the ucla fans that crossed over to help hannah and cadman. one love everybody :)

hannah and cadman"s engagement session in los angeles

being from san diego, of course we love all things southern california.
hannah and cadman also love so-cal, as in the university of southern california.
since we had never done a session there, we decided to cruise up to hannah's alma mater to do their engagement photos. i have to say usc has an amazing campus. hannah decided to attend usc the very first time she walked on campus. she said "it's what i always pictured college to look like." after seeing it for myself, i know what she's talking about. my shutter finger got itchy just looking at all the cool places on campus.
it was a good thing we brought our backpacks because hannah and cadman took us to school :)
hotness 101 is now in session.

have you ever been sitting in some class, bored out of your mind, daydreaming out the window, and see something like this? the class behind me knows what i'm talkin about. we had our hall passes and an utter disregard for higher learning. commencing the hilarity... now. check hannah's face as cadman goes by :)

cadman gettin aggro

i think the majority of us agree with cadman's shirt. it says "anyone but boston."
sorry shy :)

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apparently there's some sort of rivalry between usc and ucla. anyone out there know anything about that?
let us know who you think is best.
whichever school gets the most people to leave a comment by midnight on Sept 30th 2009 wins.
we'll tally up all the comments on Oct 1st and post the winning school's logo on a special blog post.
to make it interesting, if usc wins our little contest we'll give hannah and cadman a free enlargement from their engagement session.
if ucla wins we'll think of some way to get a picture of hannah and cadman with a bruin.
let the comments begin!
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hannah had us all laughing so hard we were crying with her impression of grover.

as we walked around campus a challenge was thrown out to leap-frog some posts. hannah said "heck ya" she could do it, followed by cadman. let's see how it turned out.
it's time to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the awkwardly feminine from the possibly canadian.
in 23 years of broadcasting i thought i'd seen it all, folks, but it looks like cadman has actually blindfolded himself.
he will not be able to see very well, cotton.

and cadman beats hannah in a shocking upset.
i feel shocked.

looks like it's gonna be a two-on-one, a menage a trois of pain.
usually you pay double for that kind of action, cotton. :)

oh! right in the testicles!
ouchtown, population you bro! :)

after cadman got his breath back we headed over to the los angeles memorial coliseum, home of the usc trojans, to see if we could get lucky.

i had to step back to capture hannah and cadman's excitement as we walked onto the freshly painted field.

having the whole coliseum to ourselves, hannah and cadman shared a little field of dreams moment.

as the marine layer headed in, we headed out.

i don't care where you're from, it was pretty sweet being in the empty coliseum. thinking about the olympics and all the other awesome moments that have happened there.
add to them this day, when hannah and cadman stood at mid-field and shared a few quiet minutes together, then walked through the tunnel toward a bright future together as husband and wife.
we can't wait for your wedding and your reception at the san diego museum of photographic arts (mopa)!