Here are a few images from our last wedding out at the Ranch Golf Club in San Jose. The ranch is such a great spot to have a wedding, the views of the city lights at night are amazing, the golf course is very scenic and the clubhouse has some really good architectural spots to shoot around. There is a lot of texture, columns and other really cool details to shoot at around there.

To view more of our wedding photos from the Ranch, check out this site: Wedding photos, the Ranch Golf Club

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope you all were able to share the day with your family and friends and have a nice warm meal. We finally were able to spend the first Christmas in our own home, no traveling to either one of our parents house. It was great to see faith wake up and be able to walk over to the tree and open her presents. She still is a little too young to understand what was going on but did like having a few new toys to play with. I spend most of the morning with my dad putting together a kitchen for her and after all that hard work her favorite toy was a kettle and tea cups that my grandparents gave her. She was walking around the house all day with a cup in her hand, she would sit down, grab the teapot and “pour” a cup of tea (the pot actually makes little water sounds when you pour it) and then “drink” out of the cup. It was so cute to watch her doing this all day long.

We cooked here and my first cooking went really well (my mom ended up in the kitchen helping out most of the time, without her it might have been a different story). We went straight up Italian with Ham, Risotto, Gnochi and a few other side dishes. And of course had to end the day with some pies, fudge, cookies and other sweets. With Skype we were able to talk to my sister and her husband who were visiting her in laws in Iowa. Very relaxing and just a great time.

I hope you all were able to have a day with your loved ones!

– Mark

Today just a few quick portraits of my favorite subject. As I am gearing up to cook my first Christmas dinner on Friday I didn’t have time for a few other posts I wanted to write so will have to save them for next week. But in the meantime here are a few images from last week of my little cutie!

As I sat down this week to write another piece on who I am, I ran across this video on Sports Illustrated and the magazine world. Even though I am not much of a sports fan this really fits into what I was thinking about writing on.

When I saw this clip I was excited to see that the magazine industry is starting to think about how they can evolve their products using technology.

For me I am always trying to grow as an artist and expand my work. Sometimes that is just in how I approach a wedding shoot or maybe how I interact with a bride and groom. Education is always important for me and I think no matter how long you have been doing photography there is always room to grow. Sometimes I also evolve along with technology. As technology changes it opens up new doors to my art and sometimes there can be groundbreaking changes that really can impact my art. With this I am excited for 2010 to bring some cool new offerings to the Stagi Imagery line of products. One new thing we are almost ready to roll out but want to have some cool samples to show you first, so I have to keep the announcement under wraps for just a few more weeks until the new year. I hate ending a blog post with a teaser but didn’t want to let everything out before we have some great samples for you to view. In the meantime I will keep thinking, dreaming and innovating. Creating only the best for our clients!

– Mark

I had a great time at Frank and Claire’s wedding the other week. They had a wonderful reception up at the Ranch Golf Club in San Jose, which is one of my favorite places to shoot weddings at. There is such a variety of spots around there to shoot, from the golf course to city lights and some beautiful architecture and attention to detail. They had a fun reception complete with a few games (thankfully the egg didn’t break) and a really good group of family and friends together. It was a smaller wedding with around 60 guests and just a perfect size. Sometimes I just love smaller sized weddings, they have such an intimate feel to them.

Enjoy the slideshow!