Morro Bay Engagement: Jonathan & Stacey
Today I was feeling a little homesick. After all, I haven’t visited Russia since I came here and once in a while you get a strong urge to go back to the place where you grew up. Just to entertain you a bit, here is a few interesting differences between Russia and US, according to my past :
1st: you can go to college in Russia after completing 9th grade. However, if you finish 11yrs in school, then you will only need 2 yrs in college to get your BA.
2nd: some students in schools are very creative in ways to cheat in classrooms, I would even consider it to be art
3rd: typical speeding ticket was nearly 90 rubles, which is 3 dollars
And these photos are from a very scenic engagement photo-shoot of Jonathan and Stacey. This place is somewhere near Morro Bay, Ca – and of course we had to drive a bit to get there, but it was totally worth it. In fact this was the very place where this couple got engaged – so, this session must have been very special to them. And to be honest with you, being there and seeing all the beauty around it, I wanted to propose to my wife again – it “sorta” moves you 
Igor & Tanya
Recently, Yana and I took a trip up North to visit Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle. It was a great opportunity for us to take a break from everything (even from our kids:) and enjoy the time together, the freedom of doing whatever you want! Many times in the past we would take I5 all the way up to Seattle and back, never stopping by anywhere else. And this time we had a great chance to check out the great city of Portland. We really enjoyed it. We left it being amazed and with a lot of sweet memories to draw us back there again – we were simply stunned and impressed! Of course, without great guides (adorable couple that we met in Vancouver – Igor and Tanya), we probably would never see the places we enjoyed so much, so thanks to them.
And second best part of our trip was meeting this fantastic couple – Igor and Tanya! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such authenticity in a relationship as the one they have. They’re not afraid to express their feelings and its beautiful to watch. It was our great pleasure to work with them – everything they did was so effortless and felt so natural, as if love belonged to them…
Aaron & Brianna: Engaged
Hey everyone! How is your summer going so far? Well today is a very special day. It is my mom’s birth day. Both of my parents live in Sacramento, so we don’t see them very often. But its a great blessing for us to have my mom always supporting us and helping with the kids. She is a perfect grandma for Nathan and Justin. Its hilarious how much emotions get to pour out in the moments when we get on her doorsteps. Mom becomes a machine for hugs and kisses and spoils the kids like crazy. We always appreciate her help when she’s around, so happy birthday mom!!! – we love you!
Below is an engagement session of Aaron and Brianna. One lovely couple! They are very nice, friendly and simple and it is very easy to get connected to their personalities. They choose a country look to be the theme for their shoot, so we ended up going in the never-ending fields and orchards of Fresno suburbs:) take a look….
Tyler & Daley: Engaged
Well, happy late 4th of July everyone. I hope you enjoyed your longer weekend, tons of great food, and beautiful fireworks show. We were happy to be in San Mateo with our friends and family of that day. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a relaxed and enjoyable weekend yet. It was beautiful: the weather (so cool after Fresno’s 107), fun conversations, fantastic food and fireworks in Foster City. All of that made an unforgettable weekend for us. There is something about spending time with friends that cannot be compared to anything else. When you get to hang out for some time with people that actually care how you’re doing – life gets easier. You sort of recharge and realize that life isn’t so hard as it seems when you’re alone. Conclusion: having friends is healthy!
Below are photos from Tyler and Daley’s engagement session. Overall, it was a very fun photo shoot. Both of their personalities are very fun and interesting. I don’t know if we ever laughed as much as we did during this session. We spent some awesome time with very awesome couple! Check it out ….
Rob & Steph: Engaged
A photo session with Steph and Rob was exceptional. As photographers, we’re used to working with different people and personalities. That’s part of the fun. We’re sort of studying people through cameras. And a lot of times as you work with people, it takes a lot of energy from you – i guess that’s the nature of it. Nevertheless, with Rob and Steph we felt completely different. Their personalities are so dynamic and full of energy. It felt like by hanging out with them you end up gaining something. Its if they actually invest in you something very special, life loving and energetic.
The photo session took place in Capitola, CA. Very beautiful, and colorful place. Thank you Rob and Steph for providing such a great opportunity for us to learn your personalities!
Nata and Paul:married
Nathan and I have been watching a few of the World Cup games in the mornings. For some of your watching soccer is like watching golf but for us its a lot of fun! So, Nathan always picks a team that he wants to win based on the color of their jerseys. I mean, he may not like Brazil based on if he likes yellow this morning or not – not caring much about their performance. It’s kind of funny – it made me laugh! Like, if he had a bad night he wants purple to win. Strangely enough, after all I thought he was right. I so want to be like Nathan now ! That would be so awesome if I could look at things and love them not based on their performance. Can we love people just cause they’re people? Fat, skinny, short, tall, nice, rude, happy, sad, grumpy, funny, joyful etc. ? Just wake up in the morning and say ‘I love you’ just because… No reason’ – that would be beautiful!
And below is a beautiful wedding of Paul and Natasha. The whole thing took place at Golden Palace. With a very limited light they have there it created this great romantic feeling to the ceremony and reception and complemented sincere atmosphere. Congrats to Paul and Nata once again!!!
Tsytsyn Family
Yesterday, late evening, as we were driving back from Pismo Beach, I stumbled upon a thought that made me think about it up until now. I love driving with my family at night – its the time of peace and quiet. The kids are usually at sleep and Yana and I enjoy 2-3 hour conversations. Well, this time Yana had, from what I could tell, a terrible migraine, and talking was making her feel worse, so I was left alone with my head full of thoughts. I don’t know how its got there, but little by little I started thinking about the past, trying to compare how we are and how we were. And again, this whole thing made me realize how lucky of a man I am to be married to Yana. The thing is that by nature I’m a dreamer, but was raised in a very pragmatic family. Things that were beyond realistic for a given moment, often times weren’t considered at all – which isn’t necessarily bad for certain things. Unfortunately, pragmatism and art cannot exist together. Back in the days, I was astonished by the ability of my wife to have big dreams. I loved photography and respected photographers very much, but could never even think I could become one. So, I cannot thank Yana enough by questioning my standards and pushing me to start dreaming again. Dreams and hope kind of go together, don’t you think? If you don’t dream big, you have less hope – that’s how it works for us…
And below is a beautiful family of Denis and Nadya Tsytsyn. We had a privilege to photograph their maternity session. So now, meet little Mandea. They are a truly gorgeous family and it was a lot of fun taking their pictures.
Nico and Alina: Married
Alright, we were waiting for this wedding since January 1 of this year. Nico and Alina are a very unique couple who have won our wedding contest in December of last year. From the very time we met them, we knew their wedding was going to be beautiful, different, and unique. It took place in the back yard of their ranch home in Sanger. Everything about it was amazing. Besides the beauty of the whole thing being under two huge oak trees, every little detail was thought through and most likely hand made. One of the things that we liked the most were postcards. Alina got some old vintage postcards for guests too look at and pick their favorites. Next, they would write warm wishes on the cards for the couple to enjoy in the years to come. So, in overall it was hard to focus on something specific because each table was decorated differently, yet in the same style, creating this unrepeatable, custom feel to it. Needless to say, Nico and Alina looked stunning. They completely knew what they want and need, which made our job more efficient and enjoyable. It was unforgettable experience for us and we would like to share some images from their wedding below:
we were happy to have an assistant, Jayne, with us, helping capturing the fullness of this day. Some of the images below were taken by her. Thank you Jayne!
and here is some detail shots from their beautiful wedding
Eugene & Lilya: Married
Inspiration. Where does it come from? Well, apparently it came from God. He is the only true creator. Often times we only recreate or repeat what he has already done, or placed in our minds. That was generally speaking. However, personally for us, in order to create good images, we need to get inspired to do so. To explain what I mean, lately, after not playing and not wanting to play soccer for more than a year, just by thinking about the World Cup in South Africa, and watching a few of the games, I started craving to go on the field and mess around with the ball.( if you hate soccer – don’t leave a comment:) So, there are certain things that we do that trigger in us this creative mood for taking good photos. For Yana that would be magazines, Anthropologie (not the science:), some of the great photographers’ work, and just holding a camera in her hands moves her to be creative. And as for me, often times I would listen to Mozart’s Requiem right before a photo shoot(what??? a death mass???) – but its an extremely powerful piece of music, great movies, calm, but powerful songs, simple piano melodies, and great acting are the things that move me, and make me want to create. I’m sure there are probably more things that I forgot to mention and things that we haven’t discovered yet.
And below is a wedding of Eugene and Lilya that took place a couple of weeks ago. Very bright and sunny day complemented this couple’s open and pleasant personalities. And we hope that these images will remind them of this day for the rest of their lives.
Dimitrashchuk Family
This time we wanted to get you a little info on how we process our images. We get that question often, and wanted to explain how we do it and what we use to achieve final result. To process our images we use photoshop actions called Totally Rad Actions. We truly love them and believe that they underline our work greatly and are a great part of the look. Typically, we first upload images into the computer, pick the best ones, transfer the files from camera raw to TIFF format, and then begin the process of editing images. Maybe sometime later we will show you before and after samples, but for now look through the set of family images from Misha and Larisa’s photoshoot – great, and very kind people, and an awesome family, we cant wait until we hang out again guys!
Korchevoy Family
June for us is the beginning of a great, but very busy season in the year. Many things are coming up, deadlines and expectations that have to be met and we hope for a whole lot of fun in the process! So, having that in mind we needed some time off. About a week ago, we were able to visit our friends and relatives up in Sacramento. There were times in the past when we would come there as often as two or three times a month. And lately, with a tough schedule that we’ve got, its been very challenging to plan family trips. So it was great to visit Roman and Inna and our adorable nephews: Joseph and David. There is nothing more refreshing and fun that a couple of great evenings at Korchevoy’s dinner table – tons of laughter and great conversations.
After all, we were able to go out and snap a few shots here and there, which, by the way, wasn’t very easy with four little kids on us constantly requiring attention.
So, here are some of them:
Nico and Alina: Engaged
Well, hi everyone. I bet you missed us! Well, we’re doing just fine! I’m finally done with my big test (its seems like i passed with an A, but still need final word from the teacher) , kids are still growing, and we’re still shooting This past weekend we got to shoot our wedding contest winners Nico and Alina. Absolutely fabulous couple ! We can’t wait for their wedding, because its promising to be very fun, creative and with tons of awesome details. We originally planned to go to Shaver Lake area to look for luck in the forest settings. Got there a little earlier and – darn it!!! Its 1st of May and there was still some snow everywhere around!!! As our emergency plan, we went down to foothills and randomly found a decent place for a shoot. If you ask me for directions how to get there, I won’t be able to tell you – it was very random. It would sound something like this: “take a sharp right as you’re driving down the road…”
So, here are some of our favs….
Catherina & Daniel: Engaged part II
Ok here is the promised part II E Session with Daniel & Catherina
Seriously, cant wait for their wedding!!!
Daniel & Catherina E-session part I
Not too long ago I have posted on the fan page (facebook) a sentence saying that we absolutely love our clients. It truly is a blessing to do work for people who are so cool and fun. And last Monday was yet another proof for that. Daniel and Catherina are simply fantastic. Besides being a great looking couple, they came to our shoot well prepared with multiple outfits and a whole bunch of props. At some point it felt like they brought their living room set out in the open field. We were thrilled to photograph all that and spend a lot of time enjoying both the setting and shooting! We ended up have tons of great images and decided to break them apart in two posts. So stay tuned for D and C engagements session part II that is coming up next…
and for now check these out….
Nick & Theresa: married
I’ve said many times before that we’ve been blessed with great clients! To this day we haven’t had a single person that would be difficult to work with. It definitely set positive feelings to it and every time sessions are coming up we’re eagerly anticipating them. In case with Nick and Theresa we were more than just excited for several reasons. One of them is that the wedding ceremony and reception were held at one of the nicest venues in town - the Grand . This place was recently fixed and restored to its 1920’s look and has this elegant,vintage feel to it. Another reason for our excitement was that we knew ahead of time Nick and Theresa put in a lot of attention into details and decorations. It was really cool to see all the effort and creativity in all little things. In overall, the whole day felt like it was well prepared and thought through and we definitely enjoyed being part of it. And probably the most important reasons of all was having this wonderful connection with bride and groom. Despite the fact that we knew them only for a couple of months we had a great level of understanding and felt like we were a part of their group of family and friends! Congratulations to you guys! You totally rock!!!!
Venue: the Grand 1401
Catering: Grand Occasions
Introducing to you – Salon Innovations. Really cool place. Very professional, clean, stylish and vintage looking place. I was impressed!
Sneak-peak: Nick and Theresa’s Wedding
Hi everyone! This is one of the photos that we took yesterday at the wedding of Nick and Theresa. We’ll be making a post hopefully sometime soon. But for now I’m heading down to L. Vegas for WPPI convention. It is promised to be an amazing experience where I hope I can learn a lot and of course meet a whole bunch of people in the industry.
Take care!
Nata&Paul Engaged
For most part of my life I’ve been very lazy to pick up on reading. Even though I enjoy a fun written book, most of them are not aimed at being fun, and a big part of them is like torture. Sometimes I wonder if the smart guys that write them put in those long and complicated words just to prove how smart they are. I would argue that, even though there is about 160 000 new titles of books published every year!!!!, there aren’t very many talented writers. Some of the books are so dry and complicated, often times I can’t even finish one chapter. I think that books are exactly like photographs!!! Believe it or not, it is. Besides all the sugar coating and examples to flavor up your work, there is a subject and a certain “framework” of the book within every book – you can’t just write about anything and everything, right? and the simpler it is the more attention there is to the subject. Bingo! Same principles work, for the most part, with a great photograph. You need to have a captivating subject, or a story, some sugar coating to make it pretty – and all of that you have to fit in a frame of a DSLR.
So, currently I’m reading a book by Mark Hughes “Buzzmarketing”. I think he’s an interesting writer with a good sense of humor. Not the funnest subject, but a fun read! One of the fascinating things that I learned so far from it is that in today’s world we, as consumers, are absolutely bombarded with more that 1000 advertisement messages per day. That makes most traditional and accepted tools of marketing less effective and a lot of money wasted!
Nevertheless, below are photos from a very fun engagement session of Nata and Paul that we had last weekend. It was almost spoiled by the bad weather, but in the last minute everything turned out to be great: the day, the couple and the shoot…
Lilya & Zhenya
Sorry for a late post again. Its kind of hard to run a family and a business at the same time. So here is another late post. Zhenya and Lilya engagements session. Don’t you love the spring time?
Yana & Tim ~ Anytime
We finally got our Monterrey trip folder edited and done. So these are some images that we took of Tim and Yana. This Yana is a totally different Yana. She is Tim’s Yana. Well, my Yana and Tim’s Yana are friends. And…… what else… they both have the same first names Anyways, Tim and Yana are such a great and outgoing couple. We felt very relaxed and easy being around them. No wonder the whole session took on a very romantic side. And it was a great pleasure to record all of that in these images below. To recap the whole day, we definitely will try to come back to Carmel again, and definitely will try meet these guys more often!!!
Nick+Theresa Engaged
Each time we would listen to last week’s weather forecast it would make us feel disappointed and sad. It was supposed to rain for ten days straight, starting from Monday of last week. Honestly, I enjoy rain. It brings back sweet memories from my childhood. Growing up in Moscow where it would rain on regular basis, I clearly remember all of us being at home, not going outside and me pulling out my full “arsenal” of toys, playing in front of a couch where my dad would seat and read while it rains. For some reason, those memories always bring that sweet, comfortable feeling, and each time it rains I want to get a hot cup of coffee to sit down and enjoy how Nathan plays. Even through, as I said, I like rain, we weren’t too happy with it last week. We had an engagement session with Nick and Theresa scheduled for last Saturday and really didn’t want it to be spoiled. The thing is that both of them are really fun people. When we met them for the first time a few weeks ago, we thought that they would be a perfect couple for us, and we would be honored to be photographers for their wedding. And rain definitely would not fit their fun, open, and “always smiling” personalities. Luckily on Saturday we had a bright, sunny day with a few puffy clouds. In other words – it was perfect! The whole shoot went amazingly well. Most of the credit, of course, goes to Nick and Theresa for picking great outfits and bringing absolutely cool props. All I had to do was pressing the shutter button as much as I could
So, here are some images from that day… hope you will enjoy them…
Both of their last names begins with a letter “B”, and i thought it would be awesome idea to use it as a prop
Favorites of 2009
Today, after all the excitement and mess with the Holidays had passed, when all of that is way back in the rear view miror, we wanted to take some time and look back at the year of 2009. It is true that after some point in people’s lives, the years stop being so long. At some moment of our lives we stop telling everyone that you’re “fifteen-and-a-half” and with so little patience trying to look older, act older, and do what older people do. Rather, we wish that the time would stop flying by so quickly, hoping it would stop for a year or two, just to enjoy all the blessings that we have at the moment.
The year of 2009 was very different from the rest. If I would think of one word to describe it, that would be “GROWTH”. We grew in many ways. The most important, of course was the birth of our second son Justin. Our family is not small anymore. We could notice totally different dynamics in our relationships, which are both new and exciting.
Through this year, our trust in God’s provision elevated on completely different level. Of course it was painful. But it feels so good when you are totally sure that God will provide for you not matter what – not because you think so, but rather because you’ve experienced it many times, and further worry would only look foolish…
We also grew in our photography. It was a challenging year for us. We really tasted what it is to try running a business with having two little kids constantly wanting all of your attention. We got to admit that as photographers, we feel very vulnerable about our work. A lot of times we need an objective and honest opinion in certain things. And we were very glad to have friends like Vitaliy and Candace Prokopets, who, in times when we struggled, were very honest and supported us with their opinions and advice.
Besides that, we wanted to thank everyone who, in anyway, expressed any support or sympathy towards what we do – we really appreciate it. Thank you!!!
So, below are some of our favorite shots from 2009 that never made to the blog Enjoy:
Bassem+Misa Married
Our first wedding of 2010 happened to be on the 1st of January. We enjoyed shooting a wedding again – lots of stress, but very rewarding. We get a kick out of capturing different face expressions and emotions during ceremony and reception. There was a good mix of people with different backgrounds – a couple of families flew here all the way from Japan!!! Bassem and Misa are definitely a great couple and it was very nice to be a witness of their celebration, so here are some shots from that day:
The Prokopets Studio
You guys might have noticed that we are a little bit behind with all our posts. It took a lot of time from us to get this new blog running. So, now we’re slowly getting all our work up online for you to see…
So, these are the photos of our new-best-friends for ever, or BFF’s , that were taken during our visit to the Bay area on Thanksgiving. We have met Vitaliy and Candace (our dear friends-photographers) before, but never really got to spend time with them. And once we actually did, found them both very addicting…:) A lot of times its hard to stop the conversations, that literally would end at 2am. So, we are very thankful to have them as our friends and hope that this new year will elevate our relationship on a different level.
