I posted a screenshot of our old blog and a little about the evolution of my blog last week and today wanted to give you a sneak peek at whats to come soon! I am excited to have a brand new look and feel that will more match the fun, creative and natural style that I am known for.

So today just a little peek at whats to come shortly, the clean and classic black is out, color and fun in ….

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I am stoked to have a 2nd iPad app live in the app store. I started writing a few mini books awhile back to help educate photographers wanting to start shooting weddings or portraits. There are so many questions I get from people that normally are the same questions people have when getting into photography. I also see so many people starting out that lack a certain creative element in their photography. Normally some of the more advanced things like Lighting are missed by most people starting out. So over the past year I have been working on putting down on paper some of the many things in my head that I think people can really learn from.

I wanted to create some guides that were really easy to learn, easy to understand and covered the technical parts of photography but in a not so technical way. As a photographer I am visual, after college I would still keep up with my photo education and read books, attended seminars and workshops and usually was pretty uninspired by the way the information was presented. Normally it was so technical that it lost my attention after a few minutes and I put the book on the shelf never to be picked up again. So I set out to create some tools for people to learn and be inspired and also wanted to create them at a very good price, really a no brainer. When the iPad was released I was excited, it really is a perfect medium to learn on . You have a nice large screen as well as something that feels great in your hand like a book but can be so interactive. So far I have created a Portrait 101 and a Wedding Photography 101 guide that right now are only $1.99!

Here is some more info about the latest app, you can view both apps in iTunes here. These are also available for the iPhone or iPod touch!

Wedding Photography 101 for iPad

Wedding Photography 101: A Guide to Taking Better Wedding Photos Our 2nd iPad app is now live in the app store! It’s another great photography guide to help you take more artistic wedding photos. Wedding Photography 101 will show you how to get creative wedding photos along with real world examples and stories. This really is an amazing price and is the best value you will see out there! Learn from a real professional with over 10 years of experience photographing hundreds of weddings. With Wedding Photography 101 for the iPad you will learn from fine art wedding photographer Mark Stagi how to get more creative with your wedding photos. Wedding Photography 101: A Guide to Taking Better Wedding Photos walks you through some key lessons to improve your wedding photos. Everything is explained in real life terms with beautiful large sample images. No drawn out techie terms just straight forward answers from award winning wedding and portrait photographer Mark Stagi. If you are thinking about getting into the wedding photography industry or looking for some creative photo ideas this is the perfect app for you. Read through some real life scenarios along with high resolution images to learn how to take your wedding photos to the next level. Camera settings and stories about each shoot are included. Get it in the iTunes store now: Wedding Photography 101 Portraits 101: Creating Better Portraits Portrait Photography 101 is also available for the iPhone! Portrait Photography 101: A Guide to Taking Better Portraits walks you through some key concepts to improve your photos. Everything is explained in real life terms with beautiful large sample images. No drawn out techie terms just straight forward answers from award winning wedding and portrait photographer Mark Stagi. If you love taking photos of your kids, are a amateur photographer or a professional looking for some portrait ideas this is the perfect app for you. For more information about Portrait Photography 101 visit the iTunes store here Portrait Photography 101 iPad app We thank you for your continued support! Remember to leave any great reviews you have for our apps in the app store! Portrait Photography 101 and Wedding Photography 101 were created by AppEzzy. To view more of our iPhone and iPad apps visit our website at www.appezzy.com Follow AppEzzy on twitter to keep up to date with thier latest iPhone and iPad app releases! http://www.twitter.com/appezzy

We had too many great weddings in 2009 I have to break my review of 09 into multiple posts. Here are a few more weddings from 2009, it was a great year thanks again to all of our great clients for letting us into your special day.

Lovers Point Wedding, Monterey

Healdsburg wedding shoot

Wine and Roses wedding

Alex and Sarah, san jose wedding

Orinda Country Club Wedding

We have been so busy shooting the past week that we haven’t had much time to blog, but we are putting the final touches on lots of portrait sessions and weddings and will be updating the blog over the next few days with lots of new stuff! We also got to check out our neighborhood 4th of July parade again this year and captured a few images of some of the cool floats. I’ll post a slideshow with some of the highlights tomorrow.

We also have a couple of days still available this month for our Lifestyle Family Portraits, check out our new website at: http://www.stagiportraitlife.com for some of our recent work and contact us to book a session.

– Mark

The other day I started looking at my calendar full of so many tasks and started to think about how much time I spend actually photographing. Right now during the busy summer wedding season we do 1 or 2 weddings a weekend, and 1 or 2 portrait sessions so about 2-3 days during the week I am photographing. The rest of the days my calendar is packed full with client meetings, marketing, accounting, getting orders prepped, photoshop and many other random things you find yourself doing as a small business owner. And while most of these are needed to run your business some can wait a bit.

I love the art of photography, it constantly inspires me to be creative and get out and shoot. This month I am going to commit to shooting something every day. I might even get out and shoot some things I haven’t done in a long time like some landscapes or work on my own art projects!!! I’ll post a shot from every shoot (not that day, but maybe in a week i’ll post a shot from yesterdays shoot and then try and keep up a shot every day on the blog)

Every day is a gift and I am thankful to have the opportunity to do something I have a passion for. So watch out for a ton of images coming soon

– Mark

Michael and Annmarie had such an amazing wedding on Saturday. It was hot out but they are just 2 lovebirds and the heat didn’t even phase them! We captured so many great photos of them and got to shoot at some of our favorite locations all in the same day. The ceremony started at at the lovely Villa Montalvo in Saratoga for a morning ceremony. After that we headed over Hakone gardens for some more photos of them and ended the day at the St. Claire hotel in San Jose.

We had the A list team all day also with Amazáe Special Events coordinating and David from Video Reflections filming. More details and photos to come soon!

Here is one more video with the iPhone and it captures action pretty well. YouTube compresses the video so you get some of the jagged pixels you see, but on the actual iPhone when you view it the video actually flows very smooth. I’ll do a full review after about a week and share my experiences with using the phone on a daily basis.

Happy fathers day to all of the Dad’s out there and espicially my awesome Dad! My dad is a big part of my life and always there when I need him. Thanks for everything you do Dad, I love you

I tried to find a photo of him and I but don’t really have any (there aren’t many photos of my with other people since I usually am taking the photo) But here is a shot of him from last year with Jim Brown. He is a huge sports fan so got a kick out of meeting Jim Brown at our Church one day.

After debating for awhile wether to upgrade or not I decided to go for the new iPhone 3GS, mainly for the video features and improved battery life. This year there aren’t a ton of improvements compared to the previous iPhone 3G, but some of these little improvements are very nice and worth the upgrade in my opinion. I’ll give you a brief run down of some new features in my first hour or so of testing. Once I get more real world testing out i’ll update you all

- Screen – There is a little bit of an improvement with the new screen and smudges, its not huge but you will get less fingerprints on the phone and they do wipe clear a little bit easier.
- Voice Controls – This was one part of the keynote that I didn’t think I would really use and glossed over it, but so far it is a very nice feature. I can see myself using the voice dialing a lot when in the car
and for listening to music its pretty nice to just say the artist name or song and have that start playing right away. It works pretty good but you do have to speak clearly, the first few times it got the wrong song so I had to slow down just a little bit and it understood me perfect.
- Camera – Autofocus works great and its so nice to be able to shift focus to another part of the image. Also the macro works really good, this is a huge improvement from the last iPhone camera that couldn’t take close up shots. Another great thing about being able to select your focus point is with exposure, it seems like the iphone uses the part you click on for focus as the exposure basis so if the exposure is off just click a point close by that has a neutral color (white or black will throw the exposure off so look for a neutral color). This helps the exposure a lot which used to be my main gripe on the old iPhone, I was always moving back and forth to try and get a decent exposure and now its a lot easier.
- Video – One of the big features for me I wanted to try out and so far it works just as they say. Video quality is great, not HD but very good for a cell phone. If you are out and need to grab a quick video snippet of something it works perfect and the trim feature comes in handy to trim out unneeded stuff. And being able to upload it right away to mobile me, you tube or email the video makes it very easy to share your videos with your family and friends.
- Speed – The last upgrade the 3GS has compared to the 3G is a faster processor and more RAM. Since I use my iPhone a lot during the day. I am always checking email and doing other tasks, the few seconds waiting for a program to launch or waiting for an email to delete used to add up to a lot of wasted time. The 3GS is much more responsive, scrolling through emails and deleting emails is seamless there are no lags like there used to be with my 3G. Launching most applications seems to be about 50% faster, I used to have to wait about 6-10 seconds for the camera to come up and now its about 2 seconds. If you use your iPhone a lot you will see a good bump in performance.

Here are some sample photos and videos, sorry there isn’t anything too exciting to video my normal model (baby Faith) was sleeping so captured some things around the house. Once I get more energy later i’ll find some cool stuff to film

and a few videos

I’ll post more later when I have used the phone for a week or so but so far I am happy with the upgrade.

– Mark

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