CaryEdmondson.com

Last week I was able to take a trip up to Seattle, Washington for a few days during a quick vacation with the family. It was my first time to the city and I had a great time with my parents and sister. It’s hard to find anything to complain about when you visit Seattle without having a drop of rain fall on you while experiencing 75 degree weather and clear skies. I purposely left the big cameras at home and took pictures with my iphone. Looking back on it… there were definitely a few times when I wish I would’ve brought one of the ‘big boys’ along (… especially when I was up at the top of the space needle at sunset) … but it was a nice change of pace to walk around a city without having any cameras hanging off my shoulders for a change. Had a great time… can’t wait to go back!

Speaking as a photographer, last night was one of those games where you really only need to take pictures for a few innings… total. In the first three innings, balls were being hit, players were making faces and action wasn’t hard to come by. Then… as baseball sometimes does… everything seemed to just slowly move along. I kept glancing up at the clock in the stadium… wondering what time I would actually would get out of the park… and also wondering if, and when, anyone was going to score a run again. I honestly could’ve taken a nap in the hallway and came back out to shoot the last inning and I wouldn’t have missed a thing. The score was tied 4-4 after three innings… and it stayed that way all the way until the 10th inning when the A’s finally won on base hit with two outs to defeat the Boston Red Sox. I got a few good jubilation shots from the play so I was happy to get out of the stadium with something good to show. But I definitely think the Red Sox will try to get their revenge when they come back to Oakland for another series in September.

Last weekend I had a blast when I photographed a wedding in Modesto for Heather and Adam. The ceremony and reception took place in a relaxed backyard setting amongst orchards and trees. Heather and Adam didn’t mind seeing each other before the wedding so we had some time to get some portraits taken before things started to get rolling. We walked a little ways over to a neighbors barn and used that as a backdrop for some of our photos, including my favorite image of the day when Heather and Adam did their own interpretation of the “American Gothic” painting and stood in front of the barn with a shovel and pitchfork! We did a few more photos there and then moved onto the orchards where I got a great shot of Adam picking Heather up. I can’t say I was too surprised by how easy it was to work with the couple because I could tell they were pretty care-free and loved to joke around which makes taking portraits easy. Once the ceremony ended and we got all of the family photos done the reception began and it was time to celebrate. The most memorable part of the reception came when it was time for Adam to take off the garter before the garter toss. When he reached in to take it off the next thing everyone saw was Adam holding a giant set of granny panties. The crowd loved the joke and I got a pretty “interesting” shot to say the least of Heather reaching down to pick them up after the prank was over. Overall I had a great time and a pretty good shoot. Looking forward to the next wedding shoot which is a couple weeks away.

There aren’t too many athletes in the world who capture our attention like Lebron James. For two months now the world has waited to see where LeBron would decide to play next. No one from LeBron’s camp made a sound about where his next journey would begin as many referred to his decision as the best kept secret in sports. In the end… a prime-time special was aired on ESPN Thursday night where LeBron finally made his announcement to the world. It’s estimated that nearly 10 million people turned on the television to watch LeBron say that he was taking his talents to South Beach to join the Miami Heat.

One sports writer best compared the recent saga surrounding LeBron’s decision as a real-life version of the movie “The Truman Show”. I couldn’t agree with him more. I’m amazed at how many people are obsessed with some athletes these days. But that being said… I have to admit I was one of the 10 million who had to turn on the television to see where he would go next! (… even New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez, sitting in the center of of the front row, seems intrigued by LeBron James as you can see in the bottom picture from the game I shot in Miami in 2006). I’m not going to get into whether or not it was the right decision on this blog… because anytime an athlete says he’s going somewhere with the goal to win championships… well, … I can’t really fault them for that. The only thing I would question is whether or not it was really necessary to broadcast the decision on an hour-long special on tv. It’s good entertainment… but man,… you can’t help but feel bad for the fans in Cleveland who had to watch the announcement (… ratings also showed that one in every four homes in Cleveland had their televisions on to watch “The Decision”.

As for when LeBron actually made his decision to play in Miami… who knows when that actually happened. I’ll leave the sports reporters to that investigation, …but it is pretty cool to say I was able to shoot LeBron when he played against his now “current” team four years ago in Miami (… sounds kinda weird just saying that since he still hasn’t played a game with the Heat yet).

But to this day I haven’t seen a player (… in person that is, …wish I could’ve seen Jordan play) who had as much “force” as LeBron did. When I saw him play for the first time I was amazed at the power he had. Dwayne Wade was on the floor that night too… but he was more smooth… or slippery I guess you could say. Shaq was there as well… but even for as big as he was, he didn’t seem to have the power that LeBron possessed as a 21 year old. I just remember thinking LeBron was like a freight train when he ran down the court… and that anyone who got in his way was just asking for trouble.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Miami does this next year. There is no doubt that they have a great nucleus to start with, but without a couple of big men it’s still going to be hard to win the championship in my opinion. Should be fun to watch though!

It’s funny how things almost never work out as you plan them in your head, …but when you’re working with good people they tend to still go by as smoothly as ever. My buddy Jas and I, along with help from his wife Mandy, had a bridal shoot scheduled with Tritia this past Sunday. I had done some scouting weeks earlier in the city and had a pretty good idea of what I was hoping to get. But the one thing I forgot to do was check the schedule of events for the day in San Francisco. If I would’ve have done this we may have been able to plan a route to avoid running straight into the gay pride parade which was taking place that day. We parked as close as we could to our destination… but a lot of walking was still involved. Since everyone was already dressed up in some very “unique” outfits… it seemed like there weren’t too many people noticing the fact that a bride was walking around in a wedding dress… (I think they just assumed that Tritia and Mandy were a couple and had just come to watch the show). But after getting a series of shots in two locations I had to make it over to AT&T Park to shoot the Giants. This was a much larger problem than any of us had anticipated! Long story short I ended up walking a little less than two miles to make it to the ballpark. Once the game was over it was round 2 of shooting and we finished our day in a park near Market St. Once night fell we had to bring out some equipment and halfway through the shoot some security guards told us we couldn’t shoot there with any extra equipment because it was against the rules. But they were nice enough to let us keep shooting for the rest of the night since we already had our stuff set up… so thank you to them for being easy on us. When it was all said and done I think we got some pretty good pics. I can’t say enough good things about Tritia who went out of her way to spend her whole day shooting with us. She walked through a parade, dealt with traffic and was willing to do whatever it took to get the shot. I put about ten shots up on the blog… but if you’re looking to check out more of the photos make sure to check out my fan page on facebook to see the rest.