Family Portraits with Ryleigh & Family

Photographed little Ryleigh the other day with her parents, Grandma and my long-time friend Sean. Drove down to their house in Rancho Bernardo and I set up a makeshift studio in their garage (equipment used for the photo shoot will be listed below). We were just looking to capture some simple family portraits and we ended up having a good time and getting a lot of great images. The images you see below are a few of my favorites from the studio set up and the remainder of the photo shoot were candid photos of Ryleigh playing in and around the house. In my experience working with little ones you just have to go with the flow and let them do their thing. With a little bit of direction mixed with their own personalities equals great photos every time. Ryleigh was quite the trooper and I must say she did an awesome job.


















Equipment:
(2) Canon 5D, Canon 70-200mm, 17-40mm L, (3) Pocket Wizards, Lexar Memory Cards, (1) Sekonic Light Meter, (1) Manfrotto Tripod, (1) 2405cx Speedotron Power Pack, (2) 202vf Flash Heads, (2) Calumet Soft Boxes, (2) C-Stands, (1) Calumet Background Support, (1) White Seamless Background, and maybe just a few other items...

Kara + Matt - Engagement Photos

Photographed Kara & Matt the other day for their engagement photos. We spent a few hours up at Kara's parents beautiful home and got some pretty cool photos. I'm photographing their wedding later on this year in May which I am really looking forward to. The wedding is going to be held at The Golf Club of California in Fallbrook, California. We split the photo shoot up between using natural light and using some flashes. For the first few images I set up my Speedotron lights, two umbrellas camera left & right. Tucked the two lights right behind the pillars and cruised over to the other side of the pool and triggered the flashes via Pocket Wizards. Next we killed some time getting some natural light images before we set up a few shots for sundown. I especially liked the pool images we got with their reflection in the water, definitely a few of my favorite images.
Stayed tuned for their wedding images in May.

Don's 65th Birthday Party

Photographed my father-in-law's 65th Birthday over the weekend, which was held at Templar's Hall next to the Hamburger Factory in Poway. This was a surprise birthday, so everyone had to show up early to make sure Don didn't see anyone out front. He thought he was going to a fundraiser, but little did he know he had family & friends waiting to celebrate his birthday with him. (His actual birthday is this weekend) The party had a 50's theme to it and quite a few folks dressed the part which was classic. Must say the roller-skating girl who was hired by the event company took the prize for the night for best costume, she did an awesome job I must say.
The surprise went over very well and looks as though everyone had a great time. Below are a few of the images from the event.

Check out my New Website - www.JOEHAMILTONPHOTOGRAPHY.com

Proud to announce my new website Joe Hamilton Photography is officially live as of today. When you have some time please take a gander through my Portfolio's and check out some of my new work. I'm still in the process of making a few changes, but, I am extremely happy with the new website and wanted to share the link.

WWW.JOEHAMILTONPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

Extra special thanks to Laura & Bert at LiveBooks for all their help on getting me up and running. They both gave me customer service above and beyond my expectations which is rare in this day and age.

Enjoy!

Kristen + Mike - Sunset Portraits

Photographed Kristen & Mike the other day down on the beach during sunset with their two dogs Onyx & Tucker. Kristen & Mike were just looking for some casual portraits of the two of them just hanging out during sunset. Kristen actually went to the same high school as me and it was good to catch up with her and meet her fiance Mike. We ended up with a nice array of images and below are just a few I picked out to display.
Thanks again Kristen & Mike and best wishes to you both in your future to come.

Launching New Website - Coming Soon

I've been in the process of creating a new website for Joe Hamilton Photography which I am really excited about launching. After plenty of research on the net I decided to choose LiveBooks to create my new website. LiveBooks provides pre-designed and customized websites for creative professionals and makes every step from start to finish very easy. Currently I am using SmugMug which did the job, but..., a whole lot of frustration along the way. With SmugMug, it literally took me months to get the site to where I thought it looked reasonably presentable. I was honestly amazed to where I actually got with making the site.
Using LiveBooks I've been able to assemble a great looking website in under a week with absolutely no headaches at all. Just a few more tweaks to the site and I should be ready to launch sometime this week. Once I go live I will send out a link for your viewing pleasure. Feedback and comments are highly welcome.