Weekly Wednesday Archives – Page 3 of 4

Weekly Wednesday-Christmas card style!

Ok.. yeah.. I know. It’s Thursday, not Wednesday. We both got a little busy this week, and I just didn’t get around to writing it on Wednesday like I usually do.

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So, how was everyone’s Thanksgiving? Ours was pretty good. Spent the day with my family, tossing rolls, eating turkey, and watching the three worst football games I think I’ve ever seen. Not a competitive one in the bunch. I’m not a huge football fan, but I at least like the games to be good!

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It’s hard to believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away. I think Dana and I are nearly done with our Christmas shopping. This year has pretty much flown by, as the years seem to do!

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So did you get our new Holiday card yet? We only had a limited number this year to send out this year, and hope to make a special card each year to send out. This year’s card was designed by Dana’s friend Melly, and we are super stoked with the way it came out! Check it out and let us know what ya think…

The front of the card

The inside left.

The inside right.

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Keep in eye out for new Family Christmas Sessions we’ve done the past couple weeks. We’ve been pretty busy working with great families, and hope to start showing them soon! 🙂

J+D

Weekly Wednesday-Christmas card style!sipperphoto2008-12-04T10:29:03-08:00

Weekly Wednesday-Giving Thanks Edition!

Hey Everyone!

Well, tomorrow, here in the US, it’s Thanksgiving Day. A day for getting together with family, eating waaaay more than we probably should, and generally giving thanks for all the things in our life. Looking back over this year, we’ve got a ton to be thankful for. We’ve met some wonderful people, got to take some great pictures, and really started to get our business up and running!

One of the wonderful people we had the chance to work with this year are the good people at Broughton Hospitality. I had added Suzanne Broughton to my list of people to follow over on Twitter, and after checking out some of our blog entries, she shot us an email saying how she liked our work, and if we’d be interested in heading out to Palm Springs to take a few pics for their hotels’ magazine. Heck ya! Anytime, we can get out of town, and hit the road, you know we are down!

The magazine with our pictures came out a few weeks ago, and we got our copy when we stayed at the Wine Valley Inn up in Solvang, another one of their beautiful hotels! Wow! The pics look great! The magazine looks great! And we got our name, and a little bio on the contributor page! Sweeeeet!

The guy in the picture above is Tim Esser, who runs the Tour de Palm Springs Bike Ride. He was a cool guy, and since I ride bikes as well, we talked some about different local rides and bike stuff. He even offered me an invite to ride in next years ride. Now just to get myself back in shape enough to roll 100 miles again! Here is the the picture of him, not on the page! 🙂

A few weeks after we shot in Palm Springs we got another call from BQ to shoot one of their employees for the spotlight page in the back of the magazine. We met up with Ever and his wife, who drove down from Santa Monica to the Orange Circle, and we wandered around shooting a few different places. We loved his natural, relaxed look here. He was fun to work with!

Here is his pic, not on the page!

If you want to check out the entire magazine online, visit Broughton Hospitality. If you wanna check out a great, fun to read blog about life in Orange County, check out Suzanne’s Blog. It’s chock full of good stuff!

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Well, that’s all I have for this week. Have a great Thanksgiving day, and watch our for flying rolls at the dinner table! Oh wait, that’s just at my house. I’ll post more about that another time!

J+D

Weekly Wednesday-Giving Thanks Edition!sipperphoto2008-12-15T11:15:31-08:00

Weekly Wednesday-Fire in the Sky!

Howdy Kids!

Looks like the fires we had last weekend are starting to get contained, and hopefully things will get back to normal for the people affected by them. If any of you are in the SoCal area and wanna help out, either by donations, or volunteering, check out this link. I’m sure there are a ton more, and if anyone else has any to offer up, please do so… i’ll add them in!

We lucked out, and the fires, once again, didn’t get too close to us. Even better, was that the smoke, and ash stayed to the North of us. I hate the smell of things burning… it gets in everything! Here is a pic of what it looked like from our ‘hood. This was as close to the smoke as we got.

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As I write this, our first ever Sipper Photography Holiday card is at the printer going thru it’s first round of proofs. Dana’s friend Melly designed it up for us, and it’s pretty freakin’ sweet! If you are lucky enough to be on our mailing list, you’ll probably be seeing it sometime in the next month or so… if you would like to be on our mailing list, and don’t think you already are, feel free to email us from the link up top, and drop us your address!

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Speaking of holidays, it’s not too late to book a family, or couple session! We still have a few dates open for November, and the first couple weeks of December. Pictures make a great gift, and we are running a special just in time for the holidays. Tell your friends and family! Email us for more details!

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We are also offering gift certificates for portrait sessions. Tired of looking at that picture of your mom and dad taken in 1983? Get them a Gift certificate for a session! They’ll have a great time, and you won’t have to hide that picture when friends come over anymore! 🙂

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There is a good possibility that we may be up in the Bay Area in the next couple months, if you would like to schedule something with us, let us know, and we’ll let you know when we’ll be up there! We love to go to new places and meet new people!

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Well, that’s all I have for this week. See ya next time!

J+D

Weekly Wednesday-Fire in the Sky!sipperphoto2008-11-19T15:21:58-08:00

J+D in Wine Country

Well Jeff & I have been very busy blogging all of our wonderful portrait sessions lately, but we promised to share with you our travels as well. You know, something to get to know the real us, how we interact with each other and what we like to do. Well, here are two of our favorite things in this blog, travel & wine.

We decided to take last weekend off and just go spend some time with each other. We took a road trip up the 101 north to Solvang and the surrounding wine country. We spent the weekend wine tasting, talking to people, and taking pictures. If you are ever up in the Solvang area, check out The Wine Valley Inn and Cottages, that is where we stayed, our cottage was huge with a fire place included ( I miss having a fireplace at home). This is just one of the boutique hotels owned by Broughton Hospitality which are great places to stay!

Hope you enjoy the photos of our wine country adventure, there are even a few of us!

We started on the trail for Wine Friday afternoon…where do we start???

Jeff means business…

We checked in…

Just outside our cottage, it was so pretty!

A funny sign I saw while wine tasting at Lucas & Lewellen in Downtown Solvang after dinner on Friday night!

Jeff & I ready to go tasting on Saturday morning!

The view at Sunstone Winery, our first stop of the day!

In front of Sunstone Winery

Bottle shot in the cellar of Sunstone Winery where we did a Library tasting of a few of their wines!

Coquelicot Winery in Los Olivos…great wine, and Heather the tasting room manager was awesome!

Jeff & I on the streets of Los Olivos trying to figure out where to eat lunch!

Los Olivos Post Office shot that Jeff took!

Waiting for lunch at Panino in downtown Los Olivos…I had a yummy Italian sandwich.

Jeff & I in the vineyard at Roblar winery…off for some more tasting!

A shot of the vines I took

We stopped at Firestone Winery on our way home on Sunday…we ended up becoming Wine Club members there!

Me in the vines again…drinking wine…you just can’t keep me away!

J+D in Wine CountryDana Sipper2008-11-11T23:22:15-08:00

Weekly Wednesday Blog-Post Election Edition…

So, I just finished watching Barack Obama win the election, and judging by the reaction from most of my friends online, everyone seems to be pretty excited about it. It is pretty amazing to be how far this country has come in even the last 50 years. 50 years ago, a person like Obama, most likely would not have been allowed to sit next to me in a restaurant in parts of this country. And now, he’s going to be our next President. Just amazing!

I, for one, hope that with all his smooth talking, (and you can’t argue that this guy isn’t smooth) he can truly bring change, and get the US back to being the country that most of us want it to be. There is still a lot of division here, and if he can, somehow, get everyone on the same page, and work together, I feel that great things can happen.

On the flip side there are those that think he could, possibly, be the worst thing to ever happen to this country. Time will tell. Anybody has got to be better than Dubya has been. Anybody!

Congrats Barack!

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Is it just me, or whenever I see Obama and Biden on stage together, I REALLY want them to break into a karaoake version of “Ebony and Ivory” ?!

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Ok… Now that the election is done, we can all get back to having fun 🙂

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So, what have we been up to? Oh you know. Busy as ever… we are actually taking this weekend off to head up to Solvang, and the wine country up there. It will be nice to just take some time to ourselves, and relax a bit. The weather should be nice, and maybe I will actually get some Appleskivvers from a restaurant in Solvang. I’ve never had them, and they always seem to be closed when I’m up there!

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Do you need Christmas pictures? We have just a few weekend dates left open, so be sure to book right away! It takes 1-2 weeks to get your photos back, so plan ahead! 🙂

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That’s about all I have for now. Be sure to check back in a couple days, where we’ll have yet another exciting family session to post up in the blog! Remember, you can always subscribe to our blog by clicking on the Subscribe button up near the top of the page! Easiest way to get all the latest from us dropped off,, right in your email! 🙂

Take care!

J+D

Weekly Wednesday Blog-Post Election Edition…sipperphoto2008-11-05T07:58:54-08:00

Weekly Wednesday-Hot and Dry

What’s up, yo?

I’m still not sure what is going on with the weather. It was 93 on my way home this afternoon. 93. You gotta be kidding me. It is supposed to start cooling down tomorrow, but I’m not betting any money on it. I mean, really, it’s snowing in parts of the country now!

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Dana and I spent the weekend in Arizona, where we shot 4 sittings in a marathon like flurry of camera cards, sunshine, and dry desert air! It was about 90 out there, but when you are working in the sun all day, it can really wear you out. We had some great family shoots, and one couple shoot. Be on the lookout for those in the next week or so!

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Not much else happening. We have a rare Saturday off this weekend, and a bike ride might happen. Sunday we are off to photograph my cousin, his wife, and her family down in San Diego at Balboa park. That should be fun… we’ve never shot there before!

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Anyone else watch the season finale of Mad Men? It was just ok. Not nearly as good as last season’s ending that really got me thinking about images, their importance and why I do what I do. I have another blog rattling around in my head that I’ll get to writing up some day.

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I think that is all I have for ya this week. I’ll check in with ya’ll soon. Until then, check out a few pics that we shot around sunset at a Rest Stop just over the border in AZ. You know what they say about Rest Stops… We got outta there before dark, before we could find out first hand! 🙂

enjoy the pics!

J+D

Dana and Max

Dana chillin’ at the rest stop!

Jeff, just hanging out

Weekly Wednesday-Hot and Drysipperphoto2008-10-29T06:18:53-07:00

Weekly Wednesday Blog-Brought to you by the letter ‘R’

Hola Amigos!

Had a semi-relaxing past weekend. Dana was up at my sister’s place for her baby shower, I got to stay home, and go to a hockey game with my Dad and Brother in Law.

Saturday, I went to the Dentist, (No Cavities!) took Dana’s car to the shop for some tires and such, then came home to work on some pictures, and clear out some leftover stuff that has been sitting on the DVR for awhile. Just about caught up on everything from True Blood to Mad Men.

And then it happened. I was sitting at the computer working on some pictures, when all of a sudden my back started to tighten up, and got to the point where I couldn’t twist my neck at all. Bah!

There went my bike ride on Sunday. I was, more or less, immobilized on the couch. We did have a photo shoot in the afternoon when Dana flew back in. I somehow managed to get thru that with out too much pain, so it was all good! Dana shot some amazing pictures of the Samonte Family that we will be posting up in a few days. We’ll give you a sneak preview at the end of this post!

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Is anyone out there on Blip.fm? I was just introduced to it by Suzanne Broughton who I follow on Twitter, and her blog. It’s a cool setup, you just pick songs, and create your own playlist. People can listen to the songs you pick, and give you props on the song if they dig it. I’ve been checking out other people’s playlists, and have been hearing a lot of cool new music, plus a lot of older stuff I’d totally forgotten about! Check it out!

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This weekend we venture east to the great state of Arizona. I guess we are out of my blackout months (yes, I do have blackout months, just ask Dana, or her sisters!) so we are taking off on Friday, going to shoot some sittings on Saturday and Sunday, and come back on Monday. If we have any followers in AZ, particularly around the Chandler area, hit me up, and tell me some cool places to check out for a frosty beverage!

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Well, that’s about all I have this week. Check out this picture, and be on the lookout fot the full post in a few days! 🙂

J+D

Weekly Wednesday Blog-Brought to you by the letter ‘R’sipperphoto2008-10-21T22:31:50-07:00

Weekly Wednesday Blog-insert catchy title here

Hey kids!

Looks like another Wednesday is here, and once again we have been crazy busy! Things have totally blown up the past couple months, and it looks like we are already booking portrait sessions all the way thru Thanksgiving! Just gotta keep rolling with it, and 2009 will turn into a great year!

So, normally, if we have your email address, we’ve been sending out an email to swing by the blog, and check out our latest posts. This was great, when we were only posting once a week, or every couple weeks, but since things have gotten more crazy, we’ve decided that 2-3 emails a week were probably waaaay too much. So here’s the deal…

We have what’s called an RSS feed. This allows you to set up a Blog reader to automatically update, and inform you when we post new stuff. If you are using the latest version of FireFox, at the top, in the address bar, you will see a little Orange Box. If you click on that, it will take you to a new page where you can tell it where you want to be updated. It’s super easy. I use Google’s homepage, and anytime any of the blogs I subscribe to, update, BAM! I’m there.

If you are NOT using Firefox, scroll down to the bottom of the Blog, and click on Title that says “RSS Feeds-All Posts”. It will do the exact same thing as the button at the top! Now go do it! 🙂

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Ok, now that I got the business stuff outta the way, on to the more exciting stuff!

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Ok, it’s October, it’s hot, windy, and SoCal seems to be on fire once again. I’ve lived in Cali my whole life, and I never remember it being like this up until the past few years. I mean, we’ve had winds, and fires and stuff, but, the past few years it seems like it’s gotten worse!

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Baseball playoffs are going on. I really can’t get into them, though. After the Red Sox knocked my Angels out, I don’t have too much of an interest. Maybe once the World Series starts, I can get into it again. Other than that, it’s about 120 days until Spring Training gets started!

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This weekend coming up should be pretty mellow. Dana is heading up the the Bay Area for my sister’s baby shower. Might get a bike ride in. Friday night, I’m heading to the Duck’s/Sharks game with my Dad and Brother in Law. Should be a good time! Other than that, just try and relax some. Dana gets back in about 1:30, and we have a photo shoot scheduled around 3:30! Busy, I tell ya! But it’s the kind of busy you feel good about!

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Almost done here, just wanted to drop in a little sneak peek from last weekend’s engagement shoot we did with Meg and Jeff. They were a blast to hang out with, and I’m sure once you see all the pictures, you will see how much fun, and how in love they are! The rest of the pics should be up this weekend sometime!

J+D

Weekly Wednesday Blog-*insert catchy title here*sipperphoto2008-10-15T06:24:41-07:00

Weekly Wednesday Blog-New and Improved website, now with real lightning!

Hey everyone!

Have you seen it yet?

No, I’m not talking about this week’s episode of Mad Men (although you should see it, it was pretty good). I’m talking about the new Sipper Photography website.

We’ve totally revamped it, hopefully making it easier to get around, look at the pictures, and made it oh, so easy to get ahold of us! We liked our last site, but this one… this one just looks a bit cooler.

Here’s the rundown of new stuff:

-Bigger, Better galleries… Bigger is better, right?

-A new main page that takes you directly to the site, or to the blog.

-An exciting new pricing sheet, that tells you all about the services we offer

-The J+D Section. Here, we tell you what we are all about, and why we love photography, each other, and meeting wonderful people like you!

-Oh, and did I mention, bigger pictures? No more tiny, postcard sized pics… Big, wonderful, moments for all to see!

If you can’t tell by now, we are both pretty excited to have a good looking site that will hopefully share a bit of what we do with you!

So, there ya go. Now go check it out!

Well, go check it out after you check out the outtakes from our photo shoot we did last Sunday. The thing is, Dana and I NEVER have pictures taken together. Ever. Well, unless you count the point and shoot pic where Dana holds the camera up in the air, and points it back at us. So, we decided to go to our semi-secret location in downtown Orange (not really so secret, it’s a photographer’s dream spot!) dress up, and take pictures to use in the J+D section of the site. Nothing better than a tripod, and the self-timer, ya know! Hahah well, maybe not. I think I walked 2 miles in 20 ft. increments getting just the right picture to use… So, go take a look at the outtakes down below, and then go check out the keepers up on the site!

On our way to Downtown Orange!

Ahhh, the lucrative world of male modeling!

Is that Blue Steel? Dana, trying to look FIERCE!

Ahhh yeah.. it’s business time!

Here I’m auditioning for Criss Angel’s stunt double! This took about 20 shots to get this! Hard to time the self-timer, and the jump!

After 200+ photos, the craziness sneaks out!

Business hours are over, baby!

Weekly Wednesday Blog-New and Improved website, now with real lightning!sipperphoto2008-10-01T06:29:20-07:00

Weekly Wednesday Blog-Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Hey kids!

Looks like we’ve been a little lax in the Weekly Wednesday blog department lately. We’ve either been out of town, or just too busy to sneak one of these in! But that’s ok… we’re back this week, and besides… we’ve thrown a few new portrait blogs up lately, and I know how much ya’ll love the pictures!

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Like I said before, we’ve been busy this past month or so. Looking forward to October, every single weekend appears to be booked solid, with either portrait sittings, both in town and out, my sister’s baby shower that Dana is flying up for (I get to stay home, and go to the Ducks vs. Sharks Hockey game with my Brother in law), and, of course, the Cerritos Ukulele Festival next weekend!

Next thing you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas wil be here! Of course, it’s already Christmastime at Costco. We were in there a few weeks ago and they already had all their Holiday stuff up. It seems to get earlier and earlier every year! Jeeeeeeez!

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It is officially Fall now. The weather is starting to change. It was actually 60 degrees when I got into my car this morning. Still wearing shorts though! I figure I have another couple weeks, before I have to bust out the pants.

Time to start thinking of our Christmas card this year. Dana and I usually do some kind of Photo card every year. We get all these great ideas to do something fun, and then, at the last minute, we can’t decide, and just dig out a picture from earlier in the year, or set up the tripod, and throw something together. This year? Hmmmm, not sure. Anybody have any good ideas?

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Now time for the part of the blog most of you come on by for. The pictures! Last week Dana and I drove out to Las Vegas for the 4th time this year. I swear this is the most we’ve been to Vegas in one year… Anyways… We weren’t even going to go, but we managed to book a small sitting, Dana’s family was heading out that way, plus my Dad was having his “bachelor party”. (He never had one when he married my mom, so my brother in law decided to have one 37 years later). I didn’t tell him I was heading out, so it was a bit of a surprise to him, which is always fun! And to top it off, our neighbors booked a room at the last minute, and let us crash in their room… It totally worked out!!

We had a great time, took a few pictures, gambled a bit, and had a few margaritas. The only person who won any real cash was Dana’s mom, who hit a progressive slot machine for $1788! Not bad at all! I think she was pretty much in shock!

Enjoy the pics, and we’ll see ya soon. Keep checking back in the next week as we have a couple more blog entries spooling up for ya!

J+D