Ireland!

I am so stoked to be here, when we arrived we literally "ran into" our new friends, Martina & Andrew, who are getting married in Italy this summer. She met us and took us back to their town where we later went to dinner @ Trim Castle, which you may remember from Braveheart.

The next morning we drove out to the coast, here is a shot of the west coast!

We have seen a lot of this kind of terrain, lush areas on the barren hillside. The old Irish people would take sand, silt & seaweed and haul it up on the hill so they could grow crops and graze animals. I'm thankful I was't an irish lad in those days, for the labor must have taken forever!

The signage is kinda crazy, so we got a little lost, but we saw some amazing back roads and cool country. No matter what way you drive, you cant go more than a couple hours before hitting the coast in any direction, so left or right, you will travel somewhere beautiful.

This is the Tara hill castle, feels like i'm walking around in the 1600s here.

We are now heading south towards County Kern & Iveragh peninsula to the Ring of Kerry.

Airline Loyalty Perks

Feeling like you're home, before you've arrived.

Being loyal does have its perks, here at the Star Alliance Lounge in London Heathrow, food, internet, and spacious couches are free for the taking. I am stoked to fly United and will always be loyal. The small savings I could get by flying the cheapest airlines at the time, is nothing compared to the comforts of using the "Star Alliance" . This is the Diamond Lounge in London Heathrow Airport, where food, drink and internet are free. Its so relaxing, the couches, and peace. I must say this makes layovers quite more enjoyable. And I look forward to travel just that much more.

Meals with Friends...

I feel fortunate enough to travel, and lately, we have been traveling SO much, it seems almost 1000 miles a week, and that doesn’t count where we fly to. But its “all good” when you get to sit down with friends or family and eat and catch up.

My cousin Caitlyn who just turned 20 and is at UCLA came up to Morro bay to eat at windows on the water, which has been made famous thanks to Rachael Ray.

Next is our second hometown, in Newport Beach with my little brother Matt.


A few weeks ago we were at the CCWP dinner meeting and we were hanging out with these guys, from left to right, Kenny Morgan and his new fiancé!, Then in the center Cameron Ingalls and his wife Anna. They are so sweet to chill with! And finally me and my beautiful bride.


The last shot here is of Shaun Austin and his wife Jaime holding their daughter, my wife and I on the right. Shaun owns an amazing new album company Kiss wedding books. Thanks guys for making my travel more personal and fun as we travel around the country!



Now i just got to remember to take my iphone out and snap some shots of everyone we catch up with, i am so bad at taking photos of everyone when i dont have my big camera!

Yosemite E-session.

One of our favorite couples, Mason & Adriana, took monday off last week and we all drove up to Yosemite National Park to photograph them having fun for a couple of hours. We had a blast shooting around the Valley. Its bursting with green and color. One of the things that we do with our couples that makes these sessions especially fun is that we just hang out for a little bit before we even start shooting. Then, we always start off with some kind of mellow far off shots & angles that lets them relax. Then we do action shots, not to many posed settings, I will give them a direction, setting the scene, and let them go for an alloted amount of time. So here are my top 11 shost from the couple of thousand that we took!!! Thanks to Shawn Reeder for his help relfecting and assisting us.

2007 Pictage Parter Conference : Chicago

Thanks to Pictage, I was honored to be chosen to speak in Chicago for the 3nd Annual Pictage Partner Conference. This was a great time of break out seminars and haning out with friends and collegues, as well as making new friends from around the country. We flew straight from Italy into the conference. The Fabulous list of Speakers are as follows:

Mike Colon , Denis Reggie , David Jay , Carlos Baez , Jefferson Todd , Pepper Nix & Mitchel Burt , Nathan & Amber Holritz , Liana Lehman , Me Ra Koh , Robert T Williams , Bob Davis, Robert Evans , Michael & Anna Costa , Sara France , Brody Dezember, Davide Greene , Millie Holloman , Millie Holloman , Millie Holloman , David Salomone , David Salomone , Jared Bauman


Thanks to David Jay for taking the photo of Rachel and me.


Here are the Fabulous Lacour team with Rachel & I, at the end of the session, they have an awesome program called Shoot-Q. which is in the beta phase, but, already i Highly reccomend it for photographers to help organize their workflow systems. In the end, its all about saving time.

Venice, Italy

Venice is my new Favorite International Town, Once the richest town in the world in the 1500-1600's (if my history is right) they spend a fortune to transform a little sand bar into a skyscraper(high in thse days) town. There is SO much amazing history there and the architecture, textures, colors, and style is all of its own. We only were able to see 1/6 of it in the one & 1/2 days we were there, and I wish we had more time, but, here are some of the top favorite photos, to give you an idea of what it was like. So it will be the 1st place we spend time in next time we are in Italy. I do have many more images to put up from Italy, so come back soon...

These first 5 shots are from a Gondola Ride, This is one of those things you dont miss when you visit Venice.






Here is the View from the Rialto bridge, one of the most famous bridges in Venice over the main water ways.


Birds Eye view from Sam Marco Square looking North over the Island.

We happened upon a wedding In San Marcos Square, they were walking to the courtyard where the orchestra plays. There you can sit and eat, many people have a glass of wine and listen to the orchestra play Italian Classic Music. It's worth the cover charge!

Passing by view of a typical cafe in Italy.



A typical side street in Venice, these are great because there are ususally no people on them, and you can check out the architecture, windows, old school doors, and here vines growing over the walkway.


Riding a Gondola down the canals on an evening is such a peaceful and romantic experience. You can get lost in the maze of waterways.

Italy!

We are currently in Italy and spending a few days seeing the beautiful country before our wedding on the 3rd in Siena. We are absolutly stoked about being here! Stay tuned for more photos. My baggage is still in SFO, so i dont have my power adapter, and i am conserving power on my laptop, today is a holiday and all stores are closed. I will be posting some of our amazing photos from this incredible country soon.

Big Sur

My wife and I were able to get away thursday and friday to big sur, (on our way up to San Francisco for a wedding this weekend) the most beautiful stretch of coast in the world. Here are some of the photos from Sand Dollar beach, and then from our breakfast @ Big Sur River Inn, which has a restaurant right on the river, you can actually sit and have food/drink with your feet soaking. If you want to go during the summer months, it books up 2-3 months in advance. Saturday we had our wedding and i will post some highlights from that later today or tomorrow!

Sunset in Oahu Time release

This is from a few weeks ago, but I thought that you should see how beautiful the North Shore of Hawaii is, scroll down to previous posts from hawaii from october 06 and jan 07 to see more images, or go to the link on the right side of the blog and click on "Mike Larson Photography Fine Art". let me know what you think!.

Friends @ wppi

I just got these images off my wife's camera, and i wanted to share, the top image is the SLO boys from [b]eckers party at THEHotel, Jeff Newsom, and Eric Dungan from Big Folio.

Below pictured here is the big group of friends, celebrating Jen Manuele's birthday. Happy 25th Jen!



below, the Pool Sharks who dominated the competition @ the BLUdomain party, Thanks to my wife for documenting the funny photos you dont see here.


And the last image is the great Chris & Lynn Jaska , they are up in BC, an amazing couple, check out their stories if you have a time to catch up with them, they traveled all over BC backpacking doing stories on the nature there and trying to not get eaten by big bears. I know that sounds funny, but the stories are really great and their images are amazing!

back home!

Home is California for me, and i am ususally found NEVER in one spot, grew up in Danville, and family still has a house there, San Luis Obispo, where my house is, and Newport Beach, where the other 1/2 of my family is, I also spend way to much time in San Diego and San Clemente surfing, and other such activitues. My wife has family in Molokai, and the next island over we spend a lot of time with all of our friends on Oahu, Someday i want to retire there maybe(see images from hawaii blog posts below) We have a new office in NYC! so more traveling across the country. Way to much travel, hopefully in the next year, we will have a new office/division in Italy. Thats the Goal at least! but when you see locations like this one, how can you not want to spend time living in the Central Coast of California! See Morro Rock in the distance, so if you come into town, hit me up and if we are here, we will show you the best the area has to offer!

WPPI 2007

One of the most beautiful things is being able to fly out of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, or Monterey to SF, LA, Vegas, or Sac in less than an hour. but canceled flights are a bummer, that means if you take the last flight of the day and it gets canceled and you have to be there in the morning, you have to drive at night. US Airways canceled on us and our annual trip to Vegas for WPPI , a conference for photographers. Thanks to my amazing bride, she drove most of the way and I was able to get some shut-eye so i could be ready for the day when i woke up when we arrived. Its always great to come out here to meet with friends from all over the country that sometimes we only see once a year.

So to recap the week, It was great to visit friends and hang out at WPPI this year at Ballys in Las Vegas. (Vegas on the strip is overload and once you get out of the town, its just like any other city) Well, The rooftop shoot we did on Wednesday at the Platinum Hotel with BLR Life Photography was a blast, there was about 100 photographers there at one time or another during the 2 hour shoot & talk. We had some brand new Vera Wang Vera Wang Dresses, and the sun came out and the wind died down and we got some amazing shots, I will put them online tomorrow (friday). Thanks for all those who helped put everything on, California Sunbounce and our Models Tala and Kasia, and the whole staff of BLR, and last but certainly not least is my wife Rachel.
Visit Tomorrow for a bunch of images from the shoots...

A city with many sides...

Today we spent the day with an amazing couple, and we roamed all over Upper Manhattan and Tribeca. Finishing up at The Odeon Restaurant. Even though it was 30 degrees with a wind chill that felt like 18, they had a great time, and the photos here show the results. Thanks to my friends Ali, Gregg, and Jennifer Davis, an up and coming photographer here in the city. We photographed them with Glenn's Digital Hasselblad H3d . What an amazing camera.

When your with friends, your at home...

New York can be a cold place, it can be a place where you can be all alone, it can also be a place where you are with friends and having a great time. Its such a blessing to meet friends when you travel. While traveling it's always fun to get out of the hotel room and meet new people, rather than stay in the hotel and only come out when you got your work to do. My friends in NYC - Glenn & Ali, are a great couple and so generous to let me stay at their place. here is a view from their balcony. We had a great day.