Wayne Toshikazu | Photographer

Hey Everybody - I just had a last minute date open up on Saturday, September 13th,  due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, so instead of letting my little black toys collect dust I’m offering a free session to a really cool couple who wants to spend a couple hours in front of the camera with yours truly. Anyone wanna come out and play? And it doesn’t have to be an engagement session; “just because” is always welcome too.

Oh, there is just one catch though. But you knew that, right?

I really want to know what your dream job would be if money were of no concern to you and in what ways that job would allow you to be remarkable. If you already have your dream job, then tell me why this job allows you to be remarkable.  Dream hard and dream big; I want to hear about it!

That’s it! The couple who inspires me the most gets the session. :-)

Sorry for the late notice but such is life. Entries must be submitted by 11:59PM on Wednesday, September 10, 2008. You can submit right here by leaving a comment or you can send me an email - either way is fine!

Good luck!

I’m still alive, in case anyone was wondering (which is probably really only one person: *cough* Mom *cough*). And thankfully so, because now I get to introduce you to Todd and Mariana. :-)

Todd and Mariana were actually already married by the time I met them. They had an incredible destination wedding down in Brazil, which is where Mariana is from, and having seen some of the pictures from it I am not lying when I say that it was AMAZING. Sadly, though, I was not the one who got to take those pictures. LOL.

Because not everyone was able to attend the wedding (as often happens with destination weddings), Todd and Mariana decided to have a reception for the wedding here at the beautiful Ocean Institute in Dana Point.  Despite the educational aspect of the facility, it’s actually a really nice place to hold an event. And the views are incredible! Dana Point Harbor is definitely hard to beat location-wise. Luckily I got to be the person to capture it all!

I felt really good about Todd and Mariana the first time we met. We met at my usual ‘hang out’ (um, not Starbucks; the other hang out) and had a great time chatting about their wedding, what their plans were for the stateside reception, and, well, what seemed like just about everything else. And as with every couple I’ve ever met with so far, they were curious to know what it was that propelled me towards making the switch from full-time male modeling (okay, you know that’s a lie) to pursuing a career as a wedding photographer. As I’ve mentioned before, I love questions like these. It was a great connecting point for us because we all agreed that it’s better to do what you love, and in doing so to be you, rather than spending a lifetime trying to be someone you’re not.

Here are just a few of my favorite images from the evening. Even though we did without all the usual wedding stuff, the dancing moooooore than made up for that. And these people know how to dance!

Thanks, Todd and Mariana! You guys are awesome, and it was so great to be there with you, your families and friends, all of whom so very obviously form a great circle of love and companionship around you. It’s difficult to express the appreciation I have for the trust that you placed in me to capture such a special occasion!

P.S. Thanks to my friend Mali for introducing us!

To view A LOT more pictures from this wonderful celebration, CLICK HERE for a slideshow (and don’t forget to turn up the volume!).

Technorati Tags: dana point, dana point harbor, ocean institute

Enjoy the view.

Technorati Tags: dana point, dana point harbor

All packages will now include your very own 17″ Macbook Pro - free of charge - for viewing and display of images. Please contact the studio for more information.

‘K thanks. Carry on now.

*** NOTE: This is not serious, people. :-) Let’s just say that I posted this in the midst of the euphoric daze created by using my new Macbook Pro for the first time - the images look amazing!

This Tuesday, August 12, 2008, the most epic and long awaited event of this century is about to happen. Never before have the tides of anticpatory glee been so intense, so ready to unravel at the sight of what many have termed the best thing to happen since Kung Pao Chicken. Or Spandex. Or, apparently as the Wife and I discovered the other night for the first time, Pinkberry.

That’s right, friends. This Tuesday, after a four and a half year hiatus and a world tour visiting everywhere but here,  the Computer Fairy once again visits and pays its respects at Casa de Toshikazu.

I present to you, my dear readers, the 17″ Macbook Pro:

Currently I’m using a Powerbook G4 that I purchased, oh, January 2004. It’s a great computer and has served me well, but unfortunately it just can’t keep up with the high volume editing necessary for shooting weddings. And not only that, mine fell within the production range of those that experienced  malfunctioning lower RAM slots, which of course only failed after my 3-year warranty expired. It didn’t make sense though to invest the $300-400 to replace the board only to upgrade the entire computer later, so I’ve been tredging through on 1GB of RAM until I decided that it was time to upgrade. So far I’ve managed to suffer through all the mounds of editing I’ve had to do so far, but enough is enough!

Now here’s a little secret. If you’re unwilling to spend close to $3,000 on Apple’s top of the line laptop, you have two options to get something very close to it at a much better value. Once you do the math behind the two options though, you’ll see that in the end there’s really only one option.

So, here goes.

Option 1: You can purchase last year’s model, refurbished, from Apple for $1899. The product goes through Apple’s refurbishment process with multiple QA checks before it leaves the floor, so in theory you should be getting a product as good as new. Not bad for the price.

Or, you can do this.

Option 2: You can purchase last year’s model, brand spanking new, from B&H for $1839 - which, if my math skills do not disappoint, is $60 less than Apple’s refurbished price. And not only that, but you get a free Lexmark Z1420 Inkjet Printer and some OS X Leopard training DVDs for free. I really don’t care about the latter, but the printer is a nice bonus and will be great for general office-related printing (and it’s a wireless printer to boot; no more wires!). Anything that goes to a client though will still be printed using high quality laser printing. Why? Cuz that’s just mah style, yo (I can hear my wife rolling her eyes as I make a very poor attempt at a little ghetto-fied chit chat).

—–

P.S. I just visited the Pinkberry site out of curiosity. What the heck is up with that music?!

On Sunday I had a super fun engagement session at USC with Nick and Jenny. It was a blast! Not only is USC their alma mater but that’s where those fiery flames of love first sparked during their sophomore year while working together in the main library. Of course, when I heard that that’s how they met I immediately assumed and joked that while they were supposed to be working and earning those hard earned dollars Nick was scoping out and putting the moves on poor little Jenny. But it turned out that she was putting the moves on him! Way to go, Nick! :-)

(Side note: that’s kind of how it happened with me and my wife. Just picture me - studious and very serious - trying to make the most of my education while some girl was puttin’ her moves on me and trying to sway me with her devious ways. LOL.)***

Thanks so much, Nick and Jenny. I had so much fun laughing and exploring the beautiful USC campus with you two and can’t wait to see you again! Check back in a day or two to see a slideshow with more images.

*** Okay, so this is a vicious, vicious lie. I actually put the moves on her. But you know what? She totally tricked me by making me think that maybe there was something going on between us while what she was really doing was just using me to help her study. LOL. But I still got her anyway! :-)

Finally! :-)

Caroline and Stephen had their beeeeaaaauuuutiful Mexican fiesta-themed wedding at the San Clemente Historic Cottage this past Saturday. It’s a great location for a summer wedding, sitting just above the coastline with a nice view of the ocean below and easy beach access for some great photographic backdrops. And it helps to have to an awesome couple to shoot too!

Thanks so much for bringing me in to help capture your special day, Caroline and Stephen; I can’t tell you how much of a good time I had!

And thanks to Amanda Auer at In the Now Weddings as well for introducing us and for making sure that the day’s events were executed without flaw. You’re awesome!

—–

P.S. I was the second photographer hired by Caroline and Stephen, so you’ll want to check out the talented Kim Le for some more images from their awesome wedding. You won’t want to miss ‘em!

P.P.S. I’m trying out a new way to present the images on my blog (new for me anyway), so let me know what you think. I was getting tired of long, cumbersome posts from displaying so many images, and I really wanted to be able to display them in somewhat of a more elegant fashion that really lets each image stand out on its own.

To view the images just click on any one of them below to start navigating through the set. Navigational arrows will appear when you hover over the opened image and….

Well, whatever! Just try it out and you’ll figure out how it works in probably 2 seconds flat, I’m sure. :-)

P.P.P.S. Apparently the image viewer doesn’t come through an RSS feed reader like Google Reader, so you’ll actually need to get on my site to see the images the way they’re intended to be viewed.

—–

To view more images from this amazing wedding (as well as the rehearsal dinner), check out the SLIDESHOW by clicking HERE!

WOW! We just experienced a 5.8 magnitude earthquake about 5 miles north of the OC. Everything is fine here so far, thank God, but I won’t be home until later so hopefully everything is okay there too. We haven’t felt a jolt that big since the Northridge quake in ‘94, and we really felt that one.

I guess I should be thankful that it happened today and not on Saturday’s wedding!

More images and a slideshow to come in the next day or so. Thank you for your patience. :-)

Now answer me this: Are these guys cute or what?

Busy.

Bizzy.

Bizzeeeeeeee.

That very much describes just about everything going on in KazuBlogdom right now. (KazuBlogdom? What?!) But even in the midst of all the wonderful, beautiful chaos that is my life right now, I still managed to make it out to the OC PUG (Pictage User Group) meeting Tuesday night for a mind-blowingly educational and fun-filled evening. And I’m glad I did!

Meet Michael and Anna Costa.

Tuesday night our PUG was blessed and honored to host this amazing wedding photography duo to hear them give their presentation on Standing Out in the Photography Industry.  In just a very short 3 1/2 years they’ve managed to work their way to the top, running a high end wedding photography studio, winning multiple awards in various photographic competitions, getting sponsored by FujiFilm, and speaking around the country. So when they speak you would do well to listen!

The presentation was great and covered a number of related topics from branding, niche marketing, outsourcing and incorporating associate photographers into your business structure. I don’t have time to cover everything they talked about, but I’ll tell you in my own words the one thing I walked away with that really stuck with me and really got me thinking about my own business:

Define your style and brand accordingly.

One of the biggest questions a photographer faces is, Who am I?  What is it that defines me and my photography and makes me different from any other photographer? What is it about me and a couple’s experience with me that makes it unique?

Okay, that was three questions. But they’re all related!

Realistically it probably takes a long time to really hone in on the answers to these questions, but it’s sooooo important to hit these questions head on even in the early stages of a business. There are a lot of photographers out there and a lot of very talented ones, so it’s necessary to be able to tell people why they ought to choose you  (me) and not someone else.  Of course, in a community of industry peers we all want each other to succeed and do well, but at the end of the day we all have mouths to feed and passions to live. If you want to escape the “cube”(icle) and be forever free from its reign, then you have no choice but to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. Pronto! :-)

Part of answering these questions is to find out what we’re good at and - I really appreciated hearing this - what we’re not good at. Most of us love to hear about the things we’re good at but rarely do we welcome the opportunity to hear that we’re just not good at something. Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it hurts the ego and can even be a bit embarrassing. But as I recall reading in Tim Ferris’ awesome book The 4-Hour Work Week, why waste your time on something that you’re not good at and probably won’t get good at? The payoff is vastly and exponentially bigger in bolstering your strengths and being great at something, than strengthening your weaknesses only to go from bad to potentially average. Even faced with the choice between being great at one thing or very, very good at another, the choice is obvious:

Be Remarkable!

So the point I really took away and am grateful for hearing is this: Don’t be afraid to fail! Take risks, spread your wings, and find out what you’re good at. And when you fail, see that not as a negative but rather as  a positive that points you away from something that probably isn’t really for you anyway and towards the path that you’re really supposed to be on.  The better we see that path, the better we understand exactly who we are, what we’re great at and what it is that makes us unique. In other words, we begin to understand who we are, both personally and as photographers, because defining your style is not just about defining your artwork but defining you (me) as well.

And once you begin to make some sense of just what that is - brand it!

—–

P.S. There’s lots of photo-goodness happening this weekend, so stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: branding, Business, michael and anna costa, Photography