San Diego Skyline

 

I spent the afternoon of Day 2 in San Diego at  a beach, sitting, sleeping, and writing things in the sand.  Oh, how I would love to be on the beach right now!  Jealous seemed like the correct word to write :)  I first tried writing them with my toe, but the water kept beating me to it and washing the words away.  So I walked and walked and walked looking for a big stick.  And I couldn't find one anywhere!  Then Justin suggested a lightstand - turns out camera equipment has multiple purposes!

  

It was perfect :)

 

And the working part of the day - corporate photos.  Jeremy's business partner, Nate, flew in that morning so he could join us for photoshoot #2.  Nate has spent the last year or so traveling around the country - a couple weeks here, a couple weeks there (California, Colorado, Utah, Florida and a few other places) and has finally settled back in San Diego with a permanent address.  Most of the work they do is online anyway, or traveling to meet with clients in other states, so being able to move around without interrupting the business is pretty cool.  I love the perspective both of these guys have on life and people, though.  They make a huge effort to understand people and it shows in the relationships they have, even while not staying in one place for very long.  You can still connect with people and make a difference.  Everyone travels for different reasons, and I've loved the experiences I've been able to have traveling recently - new people, new places, new experiences.  I've gone out of the state at least once every month since November, and this will continue for almost a whole year.  I'm excited to see the connections I can make as this continues!

Nate and Jeremy run two businesses together, SpireWave and Mind Breakthrough.  (The SpireWave website is about to be relaunched, but until then, you can read a little bit about it on Jeremy's website here)

 

 

I loved the view of this skyline with the water.  For you photographers interested in the specs on this one below, I had one speedlight on my camera, two behind them for backlight, and one from the front right with a soft box. I used pocketwizards to trigger, and shot it at 1/15 sec, f/3.2, ISO 640.  Most importantly, though, I called ahead to make sure they'd turn all the lights on for the office buildings in the background ;)

And I hopped in one at the end - thanks Justin for taking the picture!

San Diego

  ...more from the California trip!  Justin and I arrived in San Diego and had a couple hours to kill before the photo shoot was scheduled, so we went to  Point Loma, some kind of cool historical overlook.  I found a lighthouse, which for some reason is always exciting to me.  I'm never quite sure what I'll do with photos like this, but at least it's pretttty :)

On our way back down, we were trying to find access to a beach somewhere and figured we'd turn left at the next spot since the water was... somewhere over in that direction.  (I discovered I've been really spoiled with Utah's directions... you can always see the mountains and know that that's East.  From there I can figure it out, but in California I was getting really turned around!)  Back to the story though, apparently the next left turn was into some Naval base!  I was "greeted" by a suspicious and heavily armed Navy guard wanting to know exactly why we were turning in there and what we wanted.  I tried to assure him that we were just tourists looking for the beach!  But it took a little while before he was convinced.  Maybe it was all the camera gear that made him nervous, I'm not sure, but I sure was intimidated!  After that, we gave up on trying to find a beach and found a very small park to sit and wait instead.

 

And then Jeremy showed up, the man that made this trip happen.  I met Jeremy back in December on the cruise with Jasmine.  Just for kicks, here he is wiping out on the simulated surfing back then:

  

Jeremy had 2 reasons for the photos in California.  The first was head shots of him: personal, approachable, and authentic.  Sure, he wanted a new Facebook profile (who doesn't?) but primarily, he wanted these for his efforts in the cause for childhood cancer.  Jeremy spends a lot of his time working with kids with cancer and I've loved the opportunity to see that perspective of learning about and giving time to a community and a cause.  I get so caught up in my own life, sometimes I forget how many people out there could use some help - or even just a smile.  Thanks Jeremy for that example!  You can read about what this means to him and look through the rest of his website here: http://www.jeremybliler.com/childhood-cancer/  The second reason for the photos was business, and you can see those photos (with the San Diego skyline) tomorrow!  But for now, here's Jeremy.

Jeremy grew up in Denver, but has lived in San Diego for several years.  He chose all the locations for the photos on this trip, and I was impressed!  Today was at Sunset Cliffs.

 

 

The photo to the right here is what we call the "Jasmine" pose (named for my older sister).  Because she was there when I met Jeremy, we wanted to give a tribute to her.  She's always been more confident posing for the camera and she just has fun with it!  I would much prefer to be taking the pictures than to be in them, and Jeremy was also learning the art of being himself during the photoshoot.  It's always a challenge!  We often teach kids to smile and say "cheeeeeese" which turns into photos with cheesy smiles and shows very little of their personality, I prefer to see people laugh or find a genuine smile.  I'm glad we could take a que from Jasmine and have some fun with it.

(This is a flashback from 2010 to give you an idea of just how much fun she has...)

 

And back to Sunset Cliffs-

Jeremy always wears his "sTAY strong" bracelet, and he wrote a blog post about the story behind it here: http://www.jeremybliler.com/2012/02/09/stay-strong/