This blog is dead! If you happen upon this old place, please be sure to visit my new website and blog at www.gregneilphoto.com
14
Jul
09
Death of an old blog
10
Sep
08
Kathy and Matt in Berkeley
A few weeks back I got to second shoot for Karen at Brown Mouse Photography again, this time on the campus at UC Berkeley. Kathy and Matt are a super fun couple and had one of the most relaxed and comfortable weddings I’ve ever been to. The day never got out of hand or over-planned, which made everything so easy from a photographer’s perspective… and I’m sure gave Kathy and Matt time to actually enjoy their wedding instead of feeling stressed out about it. Just splendid. Here’s a few favorites…
10
Sep
08
More from Kris and Brian
I promised way back when that I’d post more from Kris and Brian’s wedding and just never did. Shame on me. So here’s a more detailed sampling of my favorite images from Ojai.
02
Sep
08
Wyoming
I just got back from a brief backpacking adventure in the Wind Rivers mountain range in Wyoming. It was my first time backpacking in Wyoming, and I can’t wait to do it again. I went with my old college friend Justin, who was kind enough to put a human face on some of the pictures I took. I used my old digital rebel (D300) with a Tamron 18-200 lens. The first day was perfect. We hiked along Big Sandy River to our campsite near Clear Lake, then we hiked a loop up past Deep, Temple, Miller, and Rapid Lakes on our way back to camp. That night we got hit with thunderstorms, and a front moved in that we’d heard was going to dump lots of rain on Sunday and snow on Monday. So we hiked out a day early in the rain. I was a little disappointed to miss climbing over jackass pass to get a peek at the famous Cirque of the Towers, but they were obscured by clouds so we decided to skip the extra hiking. Next time…
Justin with some impressive granite in the background. I think that’s Haystack Mountain behind him.
Deep Lake. East Temple Peak on the left, Temple Peak on the right.
Temple Lake. This is where we hung out for a while… Justin caught a few fish, and I went swimming. For about 45 seconds. Ice water is cold. Sure felt refreshing, though!
Hiking past Temple Lake, I have no idea what that big rock is in front of us.
Justin pumping water.
On the hike out passing by Big Sandy Lake.
Wow, I’ve totally neglected the blog! I took a big roadtrip recently, and have a couple recent weddings to post that I’ll get around to shortly… I’m assisting at a couple more this weekend too! Good to be busy.
A couple of days ago The Pony asked me to do some quick promo shots for them. We set up in Dave’s garage. The black curtain behind them wasn’t too big, so I was limited in terms of shooting angles, but I think we got some good shots overall. I knew they were doing a throw-back 80’s thing, but I didn’t know they were really going all out with the make-up and costumes. All we needed was some coke and a few exotic dancers and it would have felt like the set to a Def Leppard video. Look what you’ve done to this rock n’ roll clown…
Anyway, on to the pics… We used a shoot-through umbrella on the right and a silver bounce umbrella on the left for most shots, except the second and third, where we didn’t use flash on the right. On the first shot I also used a bare flash set up on the left to get the flare effect. Took a few tries to get the flare angle we wanted, but we finally nailed it. I covered up half the shoot-through umbrella with a black plastic garbage bag so we wouldn’t get too much spill on the black curtain behind them, which we wanted to go to full black, or at least as black as possible.
Here comes The Pony, and nothing’s going to stop it.
08
Jul
08
kris and brian’s wedding
Here’s a quick teaser from Kris and Brian’s wedding. I’ll post more later, but for now here’s a few favorites. The wedding was at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, with a reception following in a fantastic big red barn nearby. Kudos to Michelle and her team at Mint Julip for running a super-smooth event; the wedding had class and a style that really reflected Kris and Brian’s creative personalities. Kris and Brian were surrounded by loving family and friends who helped celebrate on the dance floor with an eclectic mix of country line dancing and bouncy rock tunes. It was really an awesome wedding.
30
Jun
08
Kris & Brian engagement shoot
We did this engagement shoot for Kris and Brian a few weeks back. The wedding was Saturday and they had a few of their favorites on display. I have to admit, I enjoyed seeing my work being admired, and loved all the compliments from family and guests. It made me feel that I’m on the right path with this photography business. The wedding pics are still being worked on, but I’ll post some of my favorites this week. Anyway, for the engagement pics we just trotted around downtown Culver City for a couple hours and snapped away. We had a lot of fun, and Culver City was a great backdrop for these shots since Kris and Brian really love the town and have spent so much time there while dating. Anyway, congratulations to Kris and Brian, and thanks for letting me be your photographer!
I’ve had a few minor hosting issues lately – so if you’ve tried to send an email to greg@gregneilphoto.com over the last few weeks, it has probably not worked! I’ve got it working again now, but you’ll notice the blog web address is now with wordpress. I’ll try to get it sorted out soon. For now, you can follow the link on the gregneilphoto.com page, or bookmark this wordpress address.
A couple weeks ago I went to Lake Tahoe with my dad, brother, brother-in-law, and his kids. It was a bit of a guy’s adventure before my dad leaves for Albania for 3 years this week. We had a blast. Here’s a few photos from the trip.
One of the highlights for the kids was fishing. I’m not into fishing myself, but my brother brought his gear and taught the nephews a thing or two. They didn’t catch anything, but really loved it anyway.
We decided to take a hot air balloon ride over the lake – got up at 4AM and drove to the dock where we took off in this giant boat that launches the balloon from the middle of the lake. It’s the only spot in the word you can launch in a hot air balloon from a boat. The boat then motors around following the balloon and catching it when it comes down. They sent up these yellow balloons to test the wind before getting the big balloon ready. Apparently there’s 5 micro-climates up there to deal with. And apparently the weather was not cooperating – too windy. So the trip was scratched. Big bummer. Imagine the pictures I’d have come back with from up there! Anyway, it was still a fun little ride out on the lake.
03
Jun
08
beautiful carmel wedding
I was fortunate to spend a day assisting Karen Rusten again for a gorgeous wedding in Carmel, California. After the ceremony, we headed over to the reception at The Hotel Del Monte in Monterey.
Here’s a few of my favorites:
One of my favorite cats, named Wednesday, lives in San Francisco. Here’s a few cat portraits from our visit last week.
Totally unrelated to Wednesday, but I’m going to throw them in the same post, are these landscape photos I took in the hills above Palo Alto from the Arastradero Preserve. I don’t do much landscape photography, but I wanted to walk around outside and that’s where I ended up. I’ve always loved the way the rolling hills above 280 look, yellow grass with spots of green trees and shrubs.
Greg Neil Photography 
