I have been working my butt off trying to get some photo shoots under my belt since I have started this whole photography venture. All of my sessions since I have started have all been engagement sessions but one. Now I can change that and make it two. I made a friend over on a wonderful website called Model Mayhem, which is a website for model. photographer, make up artists and studios to connect and make business happen. I created one to meet some great people who were looking to build their portfolio. Within a week of joining I was contacted by a really cool girl named Stephanie. She mentioned to me that she has done some photo shoots in the past and is looking to do some more. We discussed ideas and finally settled on the Seal Beach Pier. It was a bit cold so she came prepared in some wintery clothes. It turned out very well and she was a blast to shoot with!

We decided to head under the pier at first, It was a bit chilly under there so we wanted to get them out of the way!

After we shot some under the pier we decided to head over to this cool rock jetty. Stephanie was a trooper when it came to climbing and rock jumping to get some good places to sit and shoot.

This next pic was taken on the pier next to the lifeguard station, I thought the graffiti added a nice touch in the photo, What do you think?

After the pier we headed on down to this little sitting area, These are some of my favorite photos because Stephanie's eyes really pop!

Overall it was a great shoot and we had a blast doing it. Thanks again to Stephanie for contacting me to do this fun shoot and I can't wait to shoot with you again! I would love to hear from you all who read my blog, please click on the post name and scroll down and leave a comment, let me know what you think!

Well friends... Until Next Time... 

The new year has been pretty good for us here at Kesslers Kreatures-LK Imagery. As many of you know Jasmin(My Girlfriend) and I have been unemployed for a while trying our hardest to find work. It has been a really tough time the past year trying to manage and build personal business and pay bills. That is all about to change for one of us at least, Jasmin has a job now. She is doing something that she wants to do when she graduates school. She works at a nursing home, caring for and watching over the elderly. She just started on Wednesday and is loving it so far. She is actually going to school to become a nurse, this just puts her one step closer! She really couldn't be happier about it, and I am pretty happy about it too. I have to admit, the first day of her working a 12 hour day drove me a bit crazy. I didn't have much to do but sit home and wait. Oh well though, It gives me a chance to tend to the animals more and work on photography stuff.

 Speaking of photography stuff, I registered for school and start this coming Monday. My first class will be an introduction to Black and White photography. I was a little weary about this at first because I am not a big fan of black and white photos. I know that just because I don't like them doesn't mean a client won't like them and want some shots in black and white. I learned this the hard way this past weekend when I did a shoot and the client wanted some black and whites. I was not particularly happy with the shots that I had taken in black and white but i turned them over to the client anyways. I hope this class will better help me appreciate the art of black and white photography and give me some better techniques to apply it to my own photography. We will see how it goes, maybe the blog will have a black and white picture mixed in from time to time.

This weekend is also a pretty big deal, it is the Reptile Super Show in Pasadena. We are going to be there as always! Some friends of ours are driving in from out of town to hang out and go to the show, They don't get to head out this way much so were pretty excited to see them. As always I will have my camera in tow and hopefully get some good photos for the blog. I know I say I'll post after the show and what not but I never do so this time I am not even going to say I will. It just gets too hard while trying to hang out and mingle! We shall be back on Monday or Tuesday with a full recap of the show!

P.S... I have promised the Rose Parade photos but haven't had a free moment to sort through them. They are coming... I promise! :)

 

Until Next Time...

Well, Happy New Year!!! I am a bit late but things have been movin and shakin around here. We went to the Rose Parade which I will be blogging about, Probably on Wednesday. Then the day after I did a Engagement shoot! (That is what this blog will be about). I have registered for school; I start next Monday and We are preparing for the Reptile Show coming up this weekend in Pomona. See We really are busy around here!

Anyways... On to the Engagement Shoot!

I had the chance to shoot my buddy Joel's father Sal and his fiance Elizabeth. They wanted to include their kids in this shoot as well and I was happy to oblige. We had a great time shooting!

Here is Sal and Elizabeth, They wanted to keep this shoot fun and not as traditional as others

Here are Sal's Kids, They LOVE the camera and had a blast taking photos!

Here are Elizabeth's kids, They were not as excited to take some photos but they managed to have some fun!

This photo was Sal's idea and what a great one it was! I am really happy with the way it came out!

This last photo was a blast to take, I have seen a bunch of them but have never had any luck getting a good one. This one changed all that, I LOVE this photo!

I had a blast on this shoot and I cannot wait until their wedding, I will be shooting there as well! Until Next Time...

I went over to my friend Heather's house and took some photos of her animals. I took my little mini makeshift light tent and am VERY please with the outcome. I have never been able to take great snake photos until now! Check out these awesome photos that I took.

 

Enjoy!

This is a Silver Bullet

These next couple photos are of a Pewter

This is an Enchi.

Super Pastel

Pastel Lesser

and last but not least a Bumblebee

Hope you enjoyed a little mini tour of some of Heather's animals! You can check out her website at www.heathersherps.com

Until Next Time...

I decided that enough was enough and I had to come up with something to make a decent snake photo. I ended up using an empty shelf and mounted the lights on it. It works pretty nicely for what I need to do. Until I can buy my own it will have to do! This is my Male Pastel Poss Het Clown that I purchased from Heather at Heather's Herps.

 

 

 

 

I also snapped a pic of my Mojave male locked up with one of my normal girls, Lets hope for lots of Mojaves!

 

 

 

Until Next Time...

This is my second upload to my 365 flickr project. It was taken in the halls at Long Beach City College. The semester is coming to a close and the halls are empty. This photos reminds me a bit of reflecting on the semester, Enjoy!

 

 

Until Next Time...

My photography has be lacking a bit lately, I just haven't been really motivated to go out and shoot random things. I am getting much more interested in shooting people and it is taking away my focus of loving photography. Not that I don't love taking photos, I just have been focusing on building my career as a photographer and not just taking photos for me. I heard about this 365 project, it is a really cool concept and I can't wait to get going with it and see what it becomes. The idea is that I take a photo every day for 365 days and put them up on flickr. The photos can be of anything I want, I just have to post them one a day. I am hoping that I stick with it and get some cool photos. It will be nice to see how my photos look at the end of the year. I will try to post some of them here if not all of them but if I fail to do so you can see them on my flickr at www.flickr.com/kesslerskreatures

 

This is my first photo, I decided to take a photo of the snakes and my business card because it shows my photography hobby and my snake hobby.

Until Next Time...

A lot has been happening around here since my last post. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Jasmin's family up in Phelan. We ate a ton of Turkey, Stuffing and all the fixins. We made a ton of tamales the entire time we were out there, that is pretty much ALL we did the days leading up to Thanksgiving day. It was really fun learning how to make them from start to finish, I can now appreciate all the hard work that goes into making them and understand why they are only made once a year! We ended up leaving around 10:00 at night and heading out to Heather's house for Black Friday festivities! We went to Wal-mart to partake in the craziness that is Black Friday and boy was it CRAZY! I have always heard stories about how incredibly insane things were but I did not fully understand until I had lived it myself. We arrived at Wal-mart around 11:30 PM and waiting it out until we were allowed to purchase items that were on sale. We were not allowed to even touch anything until they announced over the loud speaker at 5 in the morning that shopping was now allowed. There were hordes of people pushing and shoving trying to get to the items they wanted. Come 5 O' clock all hell broke loose! There was a ton of pushing and shoving going on and people snatching their wanted items left and right! It was really unlike any shopping experience I have ever had before. We did get all of the items that we went there for, I bought Jasmin a TomTom GPS, she has been wanting one! I also picked up a couple movies and a timer for the Chameleon lights! After we got home on Friday we slept for about 3 hours and woke up to spend a Post Thanksgiving day with my family. My aunt and my cousins came out and we had a complete feast! It was delicious! I have had a ton of turkey over the course of two days! Saturday was a 3rd Thanksgiving! We spent the afternoon/evening with Heather and Joel. We didn't have Turkey though, Heather and Joel each made their own pork tenderloin! It was like we were on Iron Chef! We were able to try both and enjoy both of their styles of cooking! It was a rather fun night! That is our Thanksgiving week/weekend!

Another reason this blog has been a little neglected is because school is almost over! The first semester is coming to a close, we only have 2 weeks left of school and our teachers are packing on the work! We have been so busy with homework! I do not know how we would be able to manage if we had full time jobs! I for one can not wait til the semester is over so I can focus on doing some more photography gigs and posting more here! I feel so bad for neglecting my readers! Speaking of... I want to thank you all who read my blog! I know it is not much but I have a blast posting up for everyone to read. My reader base has been growing too! Thank you all and keep reading! Tell  your friends too!

For one last note... Snake Sex has begun! It is now that time of year! I have begun pairing and have seen a couple locks! The males are actually on break right now but next time I pair I will take some photos!

 

Have a great week!

 Until Next Time...

 

 

I know its not technically the weekend, but what the hell, It's almost Friday, Well at least when I started writing this post it was almost Friday, It may as well be by time I post it up! I have a few things planned for the weekend that should make for interesting blog material come Monday. Friday we are going out to Jammin's Mom's house, We haven't been out there in a while and shes going to be making some amazing Mexican food. Can't beat that right? I am actually going to be taking some candid photos out there for a top secret special thing I suggested to Jammin and she is all for it. More to come on that later though once were all done with it!

Saturday should be a great day. Were going to do another photoshoot with Heather and Joel. I am really excited for this, I am going to take them to that place I mentioned a couple posts ago. We are going to get some cool shots, at least that is the plan. We may shoot some other places locally but that is the main focus of the day.  I hope I get some beautiful photos of the two of them, They make our photoshoots a great time. Heather and Joel have been amazingly supportive of my photography by letting me take photos of them. I really do appreciate it guys! Come back next week for a little recap of our shoot! After the shoot we are going to try to find a local place that will be showing UFC fight. We hope we can find somewhere, so if any of you know where we can catch it let me know in a comment!

Sunday I am not really sure what we are doing, I will find something to take photos of or do. It may end up just being a around the house and relax day. It will give me time to process the photos from the weekend and catch up on all my DVR'ed tv shows! I hope you all have a great weekend and I will try to update if possible. If not... talk to you Monday!!

It's been a couple days since I have blogged but I have a good reason for it. I promise! I have been working on my English essay that was due today. My essay was a rather interesting one, We had to chose an issue that not many people know about and write our opinion about it. I was actually very quick to come up with my topic, I chose to write about the ban on boas and pythons. HR2811 is a big deal to keepers of these types of snakes and it would affect me and I felt it should be brought to more peoples attention. I was really happy with the way my paper turned out. I feel like I was able to get my point across.

When we turned in our paper we had to give a 5 minute presentation to our fellow classmates and teacher. At first I was a little apprehensive about this because I wasn't sure how to drag out a 4 page paper into 5 minutes. I then had a brilliant idea, I took a few of my animals for a little show and tell type thing. I used my animals to show the morphs and the color variations that can occur. I made it a point to say that if importing was to cease then there would never be a new color morph that was imported. My class seemed rather interested in the whole presentation. I had a few questions about the animals, Over all I feel that the presentation went pretty good!

 

There is not much else going on this week, I have a little bit of a lull in photoshoots and snake business. So to keep my photography going I am going to go back and revisit some old photos, Maybe process them differently or just see what I could of done differently. I need to buckle down and stay focused!

 

Until Next Time...

This weekend I was able to take a couple photos of a friends Ball Pythons. The snake I photographed is a beautiful Ivory. The owner is Tim Johnson of Royal Morphz. I will have some more pics but here is a teaser for now. Let me know what you think of this photo. I will post a couple more later on!

 

Until Next Time