San Diego Wedding Photographer

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Whenever I’m featured somewhere it’s always surprising for me — and as often as it surprises me, it really feels great too :) Well I Heart Faces is awesome and I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email from them recently asking if I would be a guest judge. In typical Bobby Earle fashion, I took way too long getting back to them, getting images to them, getting their interview questions answered, and so on… but Amy and Angie were such dolls throughout the whole process.

I’m lucky enough to engage in some legitimate photojournalism from time to time, but I don’t bring in any real income with pure photojournalism. If I could pay the bills the way I do now — and not be gone 24/7 like most working PJ pros — I’d strongly consider it. But it doesn’t (pay enough) and I would (be gone too often without my family) so I’m not (a working photojournalist). Even still, I Heart Faces apparently thinks there is enough PJ in my imagery to qualify me for this week’s guest judge — with the topic being “photojournalism” — and that makes me so happy. I’ve always believed that PJ is a real and serious part of my imagery — not just a buzzword. It’s nice when other people think so too :)

Click here to read the entire interview, enter the contest, and see my judging skills — or lack of judging skills ;)

Update: I’m TRYING my best to answer everyone’s questions for me in the comment section of the interview. If your question doesn’t require a conversation, I’ll probably be able to answer it!

Bobby

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So this weeks baby countdown was EXTRA exciting! Lindsay’s parents gave me an awesome birthday present — a super long ultrasound appointment! We’ve only had very short ones in the past — so 20 minutes in front of a huge screen looking at our sometimes cute and other times creepy little boy??? It was my favorite present this year :)

We went to A Baby Visit in Miramar (San Diego) — and they were awesome!!! Happy, the man who runs it, is as sweet and kind as his name would suggest. I called at 1pm and asked if they had anything today — and they squeezed me in between two other appointments at 3pm! They have stadium seating with a GIANT projection screen — so you can bring as many people as you like. And then you just sit for about 20 minutes (longer times are available) and watch your baby. It was awesome.

Lindsay has been a total worry wart this whole pregnancy :) so she counted all of the boy’s hands, feet, fingers, and toes — and happily came out with the right number!

From left to right: April (my sister), Dane, Garrett, Cindy, my mom, and my dad. I’m sure we’d have filled out the seats but we didn’t know we were even going until a couple hours before! So happy my family, Dane, Garrett, and Cindy were able to make it last minute!

It looks like her eyes are closed, but she’s looking at the big screen :)

Kinda creepy, I know… but it’s still really awesome to see! At times you’d say “awe… how cute!” and at other times the boy would look like something out of a horror movie! It’s extra fun if you’ve got a bit of a sense of humor :)

So I think the potential for a surprise girl is getting smaller and smaller :)

I guess they were able to estimate that the boy weighs about five and a half pounds right now! Should be seven to eight pounds if he goes a full 40 weeks :)

And for those that want to see the video of the ultrasound, feel free to do so here.

Bobby

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So most people are getting hit by the economy right now — and I know photographers often spend WAY too much on gear. And if you’re anything like me, you lose camera accessories. A lot. Like all the time. I lose batteries and CF cards like crazy (never CF cards with info on them — I’m an immediate backer upper :). And hard drives??? With 22mp images and full HD video, I go through terabytes (a thousand GB’s) of space on a monthly basis at times. Here are a couple ways to save money without sacrificing quality gear…

1. Batteries.

5D Mark II batteries (same as 7D batteries). I’ve heard of people paying $100+ for these batteries. It’s crazy. As usual, Amazon has the cheapest price at about $75 after tax and shipping for the Canon LP-E6 Battery. But if you want to save even more money, get a third party 5D Mark II/7D battery
for a fraction of the cost (about $12!). I’ve got a couple of these and they work just fine. The battery charge doesn’t show up on your camera — but they regularly go past 1500 clicks for me (and that’s with me swapping the batteries out BEFORE they die!) So who knows how much juice is still in them). If you want a 3rd party battery that shows how much battery their is in your camera’s LCD, the Opteka 5D Mark II/7D battery is a good deal at $25 after tax and shipping. Again, if you’re spending a hundred bucks on 5D Mark II or 7D batteries, you’re getting ripped off.

2. CF cards.

I know people are terrified by huge cards, but I’m a lot more terrified of keeping track of thirty 4gb CF cards than I am of card failure. I use 32gb cards without an ounce of concern. For me, it’s the lesser of two evils. An awesome card? The Kingston Pro 32gb card for about $75 (after tax and shipping). I’ve got like 4 of these? I shoot a TON and have never had a single issue. I’ve noticed that they aren’t always fast enough to shoot an image WHILE you’re recording full HD on the 5D — but I never do that anyways so it doesn’t bother me. But again, 75 bucks for a totally capable 32gb card? When I first started I paid over a hundred bucks for a 1gb card…

3. Hard drives.

Something I’ve always done is double back up on site at weddings. It takes no time. It’s cheap. And it’s huge peace of mind for me. How I do this is by using my Western Digital 1TB Portable Drives. They don’t require a power source (just the USB plug in for your laptop) and they’re tiny. Back when my stuff got stolen after my trip to China, I was saved because of these. I had one drive in my shootsac, which was stolen, one on Lindsay, and one drive in my camera bag. I was annoyed that I’d have to go through the insurance hurdles to get my stuff back (which wasn’t so bad), but I had total peace of mind knowing I had over 500gb’s of images and video backed up safely in multiple places. I’ve found that the easier backing up is, the sooner you’ll do it. I had images I took at midnight the night before that I had backed up on the plane ride home — just before my bag got stolen at LAX — since I didn’t have to go through the hassle of an extra power source. I love mini-drives.

2TB drives are so insanely cheap now too! The Western Digital 2TB Drives that I use are like $120 now (sometimes they get to $100 even!). I think my first external drive was a 250gb drive for like $200. Crazy.

Anyways, those are some quality options on the cheap :)

Our nephew, Mo, helping “Auntie” with the dishes yesterday. Mo is going through an “Auntie” phase and shadows her whenever they’re together :)

Bobby

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I second shot a wedding last week at the Admiral Kidd — my first Filipino wedding. I loved it as they kept a lot of traditions :) but that’s neither here nor there for this post. What I loved was when the bride jumped on the dance floor and tore it up.

Brides, don’t be afraid to have fun on your wedding day. The pictures are always awesome when you do — and I’m sure my fellow photographers agree ;)

Bobby

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Some of you may remember the problems we were having with Trouble this summer. When we returned from China earlier this year, Trouble started having these attacks. He would just start screaming. Not yelping. I mean screaming. It sounded exactly what I imagined it would sound like if he got his foot chopped off solid. No joke. And to add insult to injury, it would last 30 long, agonizing seconds. It was absolutely heartbreaking to watch.

We took him to the vet and they thought it was his spine. A couple weeks later, Lindsay stayed home and I left for Africa — and he was having these 30 grueling seconds attacks almost every day.

Long story short, Trouble needed surgery — and it was a near $10,000 bill. Lindsay was all alone on the other side of the world waiting for me to wake up so she could tell me the bill of the surgery — as I wasn’t there for that vet visit — and double check that we would be able to do it. She spent that half of the day in tears as she didn’t have certainty about what we would do until she could talk to me. She ended up calling me in Africa around 4:30am balling. She told me the story, how the vet explained to her that two young people with a kid on the way are still great pet owners even if they have to do the unthinkable (put their pet down), and, without putting pressure on me, waited to hear what I had to say about going forward. I almost feel silly admitting I didn’t even have to ask myself if we would do it. I’m not one who believes that animals are of the same value as humans — but that said, we just love our dogs so much. And even if I didn’t, I’d be worried what the stress of losing Trouble would do to Lindsay and our pregnancy. It was a no-brainer that so long as Trouble wouldn’t be put through too much (to where his quality of life was badly effected by the surgery), we would do it.

Well, the day we went in to the specialist, he told us great news… and bad news. The great news? His spine was NOT the problem. The bad news? He really didn’t know what the problem was. He had a feeling it was something in Trouble’s wrist — so we left while they put him under to do stress x-rays and joint taps. We came back a few hours later — still nothing. He told us to monitor him 24/7 and bring him back if it continued — and then they’d go from there. We left bewildered…

We watched him 24/7. And I mean 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If we left, I set up cameras to record inside and outside — and I’d review EVERY second just to be sure he didn’t have another attack. The vet told us that if we continued to look after him properly, and that if he didn’t have an episode for a couple months, then it’d be safe to say that whatever it was would just be gone.

Here we are a couple months later without a single attack. The way he’d run to me while having an attack, then collapse at my feet while I was completely incapable of helping him? I’m so thankful I haven’t had to go through that (or him go through that). In the end we spent several grand on Trouble for “nothing”. We never found out what was wrong with him. We weren’t given any medicine to fix him. He just got better. It’d be so easy to look at that as wasted money or think “woe is me” — but compared to the unknown of much worse happening to Trouble (not to mention a lot more money), I think I’ll be grateful for losing that money without ever knowing what was wrong while Trouble is where he is today — happy, dumb as a rug, and sweet as can be :)

Let’s be honest… how can you turn down a dog that looks this cute/happy/satisfied with an empty 7-up box :)

Bobby

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