Last Saturday (prior to leaving for the Philippines) I had a wonderful opportunity to shoot with my buddy Gabe as we shot a maternity shoot for MaryEllen and Duane. They are a wonderful couple and are expecting sometime in November/December time frame. Here are the pictures from that shoot.

Here's the beautiful couple:
















It was a great shoot that started out early in the morning.. After the shoot we went to The Counter in Corona to grab some lunch. Duane and MarryEllen was wonderful and fun to shoot..

You can view the rest of the pictures on my Flickr!

Thank you!!!
Michael

I am in the process of packing my clothes for a semi-last minute trip to the Philippines. Last weekend we found out that my grandfather died from natural causes. So my mother and I are preparing for our trip to the Philippines tomorrow.

I haven't seen my grandparents in a fairly long time but their influence and love still fill my heart to this day. After all, my grandparents and uncle took care of me during my infant years as my mom tried to make a living for herself and to be independently stable here in the States, or to achieve the American dream before she brought me over to live with her. I feel sad that I could not have done more for them and through circumstances beyond my control, I wasn't able to visit them as often as I would like. This will be my first time back to the Philippines since I was age 6. I was born in the Philippines and lived my life through the guidance of my grandparents until I was brought to the US. I honestly do not remember much of my experiences during that time and sadly most are lost or remain very distant glimpses of what was.

Several emotions have filled my heart as I am happy to go back to the islands and extremely excited to experience a strange world that I have not yet witnessed, however, yet sad since i know this will be an emotional journey for myself and my mother so by no means do i consider this a vacation. We will traveling for only a week but it will be a week filled with happiness, laughter, sadness and every other emotion in between. It's almost like playing Emotional Roulette.

okay, back to my packing and laundry..

I Finally finished.....

... processing the pictures from this past Thursday.. I had a wonderful opportunity to shoot a very unique eSession (or Engagement Session) for a close friend.

A month or so of planning and tossing around ideas and everything finally came to fruition. My friend Brian came to me to discuss an idea he and his future wife wanted to do with their eSession. He said "We would like to do a 50's style theme for our engagement, what do you think?". I instantly thought it was a great idea since this was an eSession that's very different from the normal one's i've done and that's why I didn't want to miss out.

Not really knowing what to expect from my friend and his fiance I met them at the San Onofre State Beach. I was totally impressed since they came dressed in the perfect outfits. Kate, looked incredible with her hair done up and Brian was even able to borrow a 55 Chevy from a family friend. It was a perfect 50's look, now the pressure was on me to deliver them the look in pictures.

Here's a small sample of the shoot. In this shot, i used the mirror to capture the lovers sharing a quick kiss during the shoot.


I setup this shot with Kate sitting in the back seat with a disgusted look while Brian checks his do in the driver side mirror. I loved Kate expression! I had some problems with this shot initially since Kate was in the car and my test shots basically left her in the dark. I had to put an extra flash in the backseat next to Kate to illuminate her face.


Kate looked amazing and totally fit the part. I love the hair and the whole outfit..


She was a little shy at first, but opened up perfectly so i could capture shots like this. Again, i love her expression...




This was a good shot of Brian and Kate and I really didnt have to plan shots like this cause Kate and Brian have a love that shows when they're near each other..


Another staged shot where i had Brian pose like he was lighting a cigarette while Kate watched in disgust.


Kate looking very beautiful on top of the car..


This was a classic pose that i've either seen in movies or magazine that matched this genre. I really wanted them to act like they were "The Cool" couple, and they pulled it off!


Kate's poses were perfect as she relaxed into the shoot.


Another one of my favorite shots from the shoot. I had Brian to have a cool or bad-ass look to him, while Kate had an admiring look to her as she gazed upon her man.


Are you seeing doubles?? This was something I totally wanted to try and i think it came out great!!


Once we arrived on location, I was a little nervous with how the shoot would turn out. (One) the sun was still beating down on us which caused Kate and Brian to squint in a lot of my test shots. (Two) the location was extremely busy with surfers and passer bye's. i had a lot of difficulty controlling the backgrounds as people would stop directly behind the car to sit and stare. (Three) since Brian brought a black car, i had issues with my lights reflecting off the car which left a rectangular white spot in all of my early test shots. This forced me to be a lot more creative with positioning my light.

Overall it worked out great and the shoot turned out to be a lot of fun!!

Here's the remainder of the set on Flickr...

Thanks for visiting!
Visual Exposure

This past Sunday, i took what i learned from the Glamour Lighting Session and took Melody and Lamiya to Laguna to shoot some modeling shots. I had my friend Gabe and fellow photographer shoot along side to test out some ideas. The session was fun, but it was terribly windy at the beach. Im surprised my lighting rig didnt blow away..

Here are some pictures of Melody:






Here's L modeling for me:






Here's the rest of the Flickr set..

Thanks for visiting!
Michael

This past weekend i had a great opportunity to attend a Glamour Lighting Seminar in North Hollywood. I really didn't know what to expect, but once i arrived i knew it was going to be a fun and informative session. The location was perfect and what we learned was very interesting..

Here's Ann one of two female models for the day. Ann is very photogenic and very fun to shoot.










Here's a funny situation with Ann, where we were telling her how to pose. Nobody really had any ideas so i yelled out "now, you're a tiger in the jungle..." she paused for a bit, started laughing and still ended up doing the Tiger Pose..


Here's Jay, the other female model:






Here's the rest of the set on my Flickr..

Thanks,
Michael

Two weeks ago (on Sept. 7th) i volunteered at the Classic Car Show in Corona Del Mar. Once my duties were completed i decided to bring out the camera and start taking pictures of these beautifully maintained classic cars. This is a annual event so i always enjoy taking pictures of these works of automobile art. I focused mainly on detail shots since there were too many attendees which made it difficult to get a full picture of a car without having someones body tainting the frame of the picture.

Here are some of my favorites throughout the day.






The Packard 12..


77 Chrysler..






You can see the rest of the set on Flickr!

Thank you for visiting!!
Michael

Our monthly photowalk with a good group of friends had us visiting Balboa Beach (in SoCal). It was a beautiful afternoon and we headed out after work. It was perfect since the tourist and local foot traffic was scarse which gave us alot of time to shoot.

I got a little lucky with this shot since I was able to catch a plane in flight heading directly over some palm trees.


Here's a couple of macro shots i took as we wandered around our photowalk.






and here's a gross spider....


Here's the rest of the set on Flickr!

Thanks,
Michael

I just wanted to share our recent outing i had during the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. The photowalk in our area was held at Laguna Beach on August 23rd, 2008 @ 5pm. Myself and two of my friends attended the Photowalk and not really having any high expectations of the Laguna area. We've shot in the Laguna Beach location before in our own Photowalk group and we were a bit disappointed with our results. We figured we would still attend to see the diverse amount of talent in our area and to take part in an historic event, The Worldwide Photowalk. The best part of whole experience was meeting lot of great photographers in our area who share the same enthusiasm and passion for photography as much as we do.

The photowalk group consisted of 50 people which were later spread into smaller groups of 10 for easier manageability and mobility. I had a great time meeting people and sharing stories and experiences.

Here’s the link to the Worldwide Photowalk:

Here’s the link each of our own sets for the photowalk:
Michael Boardman

Gabe Madrigal

Alex Tolkachev

We had a little contest within the Laguna Photowalking group and here are the top 3 results:

1st Place (link) By Paul Davey


2nd Place (link) By Mommilani


3rd Place (link) By Michael Boardman (that’s meee!)


I was totally surprised I placed 3rd for my picture specially since there were so many great submissions.

If interested, please visit the Laguna Beach Photowalk Pool to see everyone’s submissions.

The overall winner or Grand Prize winner for all 8,000 photographers is:

Grand Prize Winner – Singapore – By Suhaimi Abdullah


Please feel free to comment, provide feedback and even add our pictures to your Flickr favorites.. :)

Overall it was a great experience and allows us to interact and network with other photographers.

Thank you!!