August 24-26, 2009NEWPORT COAST AND HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA
My son, Nate, is also a photographer (be sure and visit his website at http://www.perkesphotography.com/) and in August we had an opportunity of studying with world renowned photographer, Michael Colon. Mike is an amazing photographer -- one of the best in the business. He shoots high end weddings and has an enormous amount of knowledge that he so willingly shares with other photograpers -- for just the price of admission. So when I happened onto his website (http://www.mikecolon.com/) to purchase one of his workshop DVDs I was stunned to find out that he was teaching a workshop that he was limiting to 7 participants to be held in his home!! I signed up immediately and called Nate (albeit 5:00 am his time) and insisted that he join me. Thus began our photography adventure of a lifetime.
Nate flew down from Boise, I from Boston and we met at noontime the day before. Nathan has always wanted to photograph Huntington Beach so we headed up the coast. We kicked around for a bit at the famous pier (if you look real close, that is Nate surfing on the left...but I'm getting ahead of myself). We had a great time photographing pelicans, surfers, fishermen and general tourists. 
I shot this surfer from the top of the pier with my 70-200 mm lens. He was in a tight pipeline, and as you can tell, was pretty amazing.
After photographing surfers for an hour or so, Nate got the bug and decided he wanted to be one of those surfers! How many times do you get to surf Huntington Beach next to the pier?? So with rental board in hand I grabbed a few "Wipeout Magazine" photos before he paddled out in the water.
Everyone along the coast carries their boards down the sidewalk as they head back to their cars after a "surf's up dude" day. Here is Nate heading back to the surf shop to return his board. I've decided everyone looks cool when carrying a surfboard!After our adventures, we did some final night photography of the streets as well as the pier and then headed back to our hotel.
The next morning we were in pure heaven as we gathered at Mike's home overlooking the ocean of Newport Beach. The day was magical as we learned, laughed, and shared stories together. Mike and Nate are actually quite a bit alike and before long they were bantering back and forth like brothers.
In the afternoon, two professional models came to the home along with hair and makeup artists and designer wedding gowns in tow. We jumped into Mike's SUV and headed for a location shoot so we could practice all of the new found skills Mike had been teaching us throughout the day.
Here is Nate shooting with Mike's $5,000 lens as they kid each other during the shoot. They had a hilarious time talking "trash" back and forth over Nathan using his lens and Mike being saddled with Nate's much inferior lens. Following are my shots of the models. What a great opportunity to learn from the best of the best!
