Custom Photography for Families » Blog

Grace is THREE today!

pesh — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 02:50:50 +0000

Hi guys, just a quick post to share some photos from today. Grace has been looking forward to “Octomber da eiffth” for a while now and we are all glad (almost as much as she is) to say that she is now three! We met with Aunt Barbara and Uncle Craig for some beach time, digging for sand crabs, sand castle building and a little BBQ! Everyone had fun, even Mikey had so much fun he conked out under the umbrella

Helping Kids – A Charity Book Project

pesh — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:13:30 +0000

Hey there!

I’ve been planning this for some time now and I can finally let the world know… I am putting together a Book Project to benefit the Orange County Ronald McDonald House.

I have been looking for a cause that I could get behind and I think that anyone that helps kids and their families in times of medical crisi is something that I can support Starting today, now… I have a special plan to make great photographs AND support this cause. For the details, take a look at my section on the site for The Ronald McDonald House Charity Book Project.

I love it if you’d consider taking part! Take a peek at the information and give me a call today @ 949-436-7374!

See you soon!

pesh

Gracie’s Shoesies – My first little photo project

pesh — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:21:48 +0000

Hi there,

I have been “threatening” to do a small project for a while now. My goal is to come up with a handful of achievable projects that I could complete in under a week. This first one is of my daughter Grace’s shoes. For a 2 1/2 year old, she had almost as many kicks as Imelda Marcos! Here is a sampling of them. they are so cute to look back on… Her feet are bigger now, her vocabulary is bigger now… As I write this post, she is playing with the shoes, bringing them to me saying “awwww, these are cute!!!” and “Daddy, you wear one!”.

For the photographers, I made these with the Nikon 105mm Macro, 1/125 @f5, ISO 400. I lit it with a Nikon SB-900 @ 1/32 power through a beauty dish. I snagged a couple pieces of wood from an unused shelving unit, polished them up and started shooting.

Warren Family – Relaxed Family Portraits

pesh — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:03:54 +0000

I wanted to share some photos from a recent family session. Kristin and I share the same Chiropractor and after meeting her and her adorable kids, I knew we were going to have a good time. We settled into a groove pretty quickly and started having a good time. Nick was a trooper, and opened up to me pretty quickly – it turns out that he likes to climb Haley is at that age where most people feel a little self-conscious but somehow, we connected and I was so happy to see her reaction at the photo below, she said she loved it! THAT’S a compliment! Thank you Kristin for opening up your home and family to me, I had a great time and would love to photograph you all again sometime!

Portraits of Jordan with the NEW Nikon 85mm

pesh — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 06:04:42 +0000

I finally invested in a couple new lenses. Since I am working more and more to improve myself in the world of portraiture, I HAD to get an 85mm lens. This is a classic look and I a SOOOOO glad I made this purchase. I have used it on a couple sessions already but for now, I wanted to share some photos I made of my son Jordan. I simply put him on a stool in the doorway and allowed the light to wash over him. These were all at f2.0 @ 1/1600. These are lightly touched up (some grain and a bump in mids), I did not take them through my entire portrait workflow… just Photo Mechanic to Lightroom to the blog.

Finishing a 365 Project

pesh — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 23:47:34 +0000

THIS is how I am going to preserve my photo projects FOREVER

A little background, a 365 project is a project that you do over the course of a year (365 days). This is like the marathon of projects. We all can run to the door for the pizza guy, or to the car in the rain but it would take some dedication and LOVE to train to run 26 plus miles.

Sure there are 5Ks you can take on but in the photo project world, the 365 project is the benchmark like a marathon is for runners.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program…

I will be taking a lot of photos this year with the Instagram app on my iPhone (LINK). I tend to share them on Twitter (becoming my main source of social media), Facebook, Tumblr (mikepesh.tumblr.com) and Flickr. FLICKR is the key to all of this.

If you are not familiar with Blurb yet, check them out (www.blurb.com). Simply put, you can make your own books through this site. Similar to the apple books but you have a bit more control PLUS one KILLER feature… wait for it…

YOU CAN PULL IN YOUR PHOTOSTREAM FROM FLICKR!

So, here is the workflow.

Take your photo each day
Upload it to Flickr
Build a blurb book (import from flickr, setup the pages, autoflow)

Now if you use instagram, just make sure that when you share the photo, share it to your flickr account too.

What’s that? You already have some images on Flickr that you’d like to do this with? Cool, here is how I would do it:

Check out your flickr photostream and get excited.
Get Blurb (DOWNLOAD) and install it.
Go through the Blurb “wizard” making sure to select “Photo Book”.
When it asks you where to get the photos, select Flickr.com.
Select how you wish Blurb to organize them – I pick “No thanks, I’ll drag and drop my…”
Choose your theme.
Now, look down at the bottom of the Blurb BookSmart software, click on the first page after the copyright page (page 3).
On the left you can see a LOOOOOONG list of picture layouts, I use one that is made up of 4 image spots (Image 1 Below)
You will need to delete all the other blank pages, go ahead, I’ll wait…
Now, with page 3 selected, go to the right where the images are, select them all and click AutoFlow.
Boom, you are done (Image 2 Below)

Image 1

Image 2

Feel free to mix it up if you wish but know that the images that are sent to flickr from instagr.am are not high res. I chose to keep them all square (that’s how instagram makes them) with a bit space around each image. You do what you like, I’m sure it’ll rock!

So, how are you preserving your projects? Please let me know in the comments section below.

Oh, P.S. – for a really cool 365 project, my friend Paul Gero just wrapped up his over at One Camera. One Lens. One Photo a Day I can’t wait to know how he plans to keep this project in the offline world!

Kids, Families and Xbox Live

pesh — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:10:14 +0000

This was the time of year that I love a lot. The leaves are falling, Christmas is near and I am able to nerd out with some other older-than-the-normal-gamers for some Call of Duty on Xbox Live. Don’t judge, but I do sit there with an iced stimulant and some snack (Hershey’s with almonds lately) and attempt to hold my own amongst the world’s offering of 12 year old super hand-eye coordinated video gamers. Needles to say, I ROCK! Seriously, if you are on xbox live, my gamer tag is mPesh and I can use all the help I can get

Anyway, this time of year also gets me photographing families. I have a lot of fun with the family portrait sessions that I do because they let me into the lives of my clients just a little more. Some of my clients have been in front of my camer from their engagement, through the wedding, for the birth of their children and off into the family portrait times. It’s fin to watch the kids grow up over time and it is especially fun for me to see the kids drive mom and dad crazy when it’s time to say “cheese”

The parents are cool and all but I have to say, the kids are where I have the most fun and find the most inspiration…. maybe it’s because I still like watching cartoon movies, or that I play video games, but whatever it is, they like me. If only for the time we are shooting, they are cool little balls of energy, but they tend to take some of my suggestions and play along with my antics. Just last night I was photographing a family and the eldest child, a boy, was trying HARD to keep a smile. I thought he looked like a robot so I said so, and the cutest genuine smile showed up alongside a cute laugh. Now, maybe he really did have a fun time, or he secretly is a robot in a kids body… either way we connected and he let his mom know how fun the pictures were (“cause mike was funny”).

I had a good time, and I loved the outcome so I thought I would share some recent family stuff:

My son is here!

pesh — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:14:32 +0000

After all this wait, I finally was able to meet my son. On October 27, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Michael Ryan Poeschl was born. He weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long. We had an eventful delivery, a lot of people were there, even Grandma Jody on Skype from South Carolina!

I’m writing this from the recovery room a couple days later, just ready to leave. I cannot wait to have him home with his brother and sister and pets.

Here are some images that I took during the day(s) – if you weren’t on facebook during the day, here is what you missed!

Rainy days and my 50mm

pesh — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:37:39 +0000

We are either in an el nino or an el nina, I’m not really sure… but it has been a WET past week. I have been bad about keeping up with the daily photo blog but I will be back at it, I promise. I have a lot to blog about here so here is first of a few posts.

How normal is YOUR family?

pesh — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:05:22 +0000

As I was editing these images, I was wondering what a “normal” family looks like these days. When I think about family, I think of a nice clean family tree complete with appropriate branches… you know, grandma and grandpa – married only once and FOREVER. Followed by their children, including my father… married to my mother, again only once and FOREVER. Followed by me and my brother and sister, where I am married only once and forever, and so on.

The truth about my immediate family is that my parents were married and since divorced and remarried. My dad had a daughter with my step-mom, my mom was done after my brother and me. I was married, had Jordan, divorced, married Heather, had Grace and have Michael on the way.

TYPICAL?

As a wedding photographer, I get the distinct honor of being let into a family for a day, a GREAT day. I get to learn how the families are made and how they grow and of the most recent weddings, many of them are blended families. I have seen step-mom’s dancing with their step-sons and big families getting bigger through marriage, kinda like the Brady Bunch

So back to these images and the story behind them. Heather, Jordan, Grace and I were headed to meet with Jordan’s mom Katie and his sister Alexis at a local park. I had my gear there and took the opportunity to grab some images. From the outside, seeing a blended family is a little weird… I mean how awkward is it? Do they get a long? In our case, we are not awkward and it is totally cool. Heather and Katie talk a lot. And since Grace is Jordan’s sister, Alexis considers Grace her sister too. Ask me back in the early days if I thought Katie and I would be able to get along like this and I would have liked the thought but would have also thought you were crazy. I sure am glad we are grown up enough to have worked out the situation we have now.

So, we are FAMILY – even if the tree is a little ornate