Sleeping Dry!

I am way behind in blogging right now. I have so much to say, so I'm going to do a bit at a time and try to keep them coming all week.

OK, so here goes. the biggest thing on my mind is the wonderful thing that is the Dry Sleeper Excel. Got a bed wetter in your house? I did, two weeks ago...But not anymore! I've used this gadget before, with astounding success I might add, to train my child to stay dry all night.

The instructions guarantee that you will be sucessful within two months. It took less than two weeks for my first child, and less than one week for the second. It costs about $80, but it is OH SO WORTH IT!

Here is the link.

Just follow the instructions, and call me if you have any questions. I'm kind of an expert by now. I purchased the Excel model, which has a cord. There is also a cordless model, but it costs quite a bit more, and isn't really necessary. The cord simply goes under their clohes, and it is pretty short so in my opinion there is not a choking hazard.

Make sure you spend the extra $15 or so to get an extra cord. You'll need it in the middle of the night-I kept one ready at the bedside so that we weren't fumbling around in the middle of the night to get him hooked up again.

More tomorrow!

My oldest son G took some fun pictures of me and M in the backyard the other day. I'm posting them even though I look like dog poo so that my kids have some record of me in the years to come.

Early this morning, I stumbled across a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005, at Stanford University.

One part in particular resonated with me, actually brought me to tears-the part about connecting the dots, and that you can only connect them looking backwards. I thought about those words, that solitary idea, for several long minutes because there have been times of my life that I wish I could erase, and yet I know that if that were possible, I wouldn't be where I am or have the life and family I have. And even more profound, to me at least, is that there are things about my current life that I wish would disappear, things that I can't understand why I have to go through, and yet I can be stronger now because someday, I'll be able to look backward and connect the dots to something good.

There are other people who really connected with different sections, like the points that he makes about death, and so I wanted to share it because I think everyone will get something different from it:

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course."

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.

It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

Then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.

I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much."

Workshop: Free To Succeed

I drove up to Austin yesterday to attend a photography workshop called Free To Succeed, and today my head is spinning from all the information. As a matter of fact, I drove the whole way home last night so absorbed in my thoughts that I was in my neighborhood before I realized that I didn't have the radio playing. Man, thats deep.

So today the thinking and mulling continues as I try to put it all together. I think I could figure it all out if I could escape to a mountain and focus on myself, but that ain't gonna happen. So I'll do laundry as I ask myself who I am, and take the kids swimming as I ask myself what I want from my life, from my photography, from the world. Like I said, it was deep stuff.

And here is the most earth-shattering part of the evening-I met David Jay and Jasmine Star!!!! Heck, we even hugged, took pictures, talked a while, and at the end of the evening guess who Jasmine walked out of the hotel with? Me. She swooshed a little of her star-dust my way, and I'm already feeling more successful.

I have the pictures on my Blackberry, but I've never figured out how to get them onto my computer. Sometimes this camera stuff stumps even me! As soon as I get them uploaded I'll post them, and if anyone knows how to do it, I'd appreciate a call!

Things you can do to ensure beautiful wedding pictures.

During the past few weeks, I've been amazed at how many times a small change could have made a huge impact on the look of the wedding photographs. Although some brides have coordinators who already know these things are important, most weddings in our area are coordinated by the bride or her mother, and there is really no way that they would know to do them.

So these are my suggestions. You can implement them yourself, usually at no additional cost, and watch as your photographs go from ho-hum to fabulous.

1. No wire hangers! If your wedding gown is still on the ugly piece of metal from the dry cleaners, please switch it out for something more photogenic. I always try to get a picture of the gown hanging in the dressing room, and I cringe each time I see a wire or plastic hanger because it completly ruins the artisic look of the image. There are padded, cloth covered beauties you can use, or perhaps a conservative but elegant wooden one. I bet you even have one in your closet. Your photographer will thank you.

(This image was taken from a low angle to downplay the appearance of the hanger.)

2. Put some thought into your "getting ready" room. The hour before the ceremony is usually an emotion packed time as the bride makes her final preparations. Friends usually stop in for a quick hug, the parents of the bride get their first look through teary eyes, and flower girls turn cirlces in their newly donned gowns. This is not the time to settle for a blah room. I've taken countless images of the bride in locations such as church nurseries, bathrooms and windowless classrooms with stack of chairs against the wall.

I would recommend scoping out the room where the groom is expected to dress, and switch if his is better. You could also dress at home and have the photographer present. The ideal spot would be a nicely decorated room with window light. It doesn't have to be huge, but you'll get much better images if the background doesn't detract.

(This bride chose a gorgeous hotel room to get ready in, and though it was crowded, I really loved the warm ambient glow and the spotlight from the mirror.)

3. Move the cake away from the wall, and for pete's sake get it out of the corner! I think this is my number one pet peeve. If the cake table is against the wall, I can't circle it to find the best shot. And even worse, I can't get a shot of the cake as it looks in the room, only how it looks against the wall.

At the Enlisted Club on Randolph Air Force Base, I've noticed several times that the staff always places the cake directly in front of the bride and groom's table, in the middle of the floor. Imagine all the photo possibilities this gives me, and then when it is time to design your album I have many angles and views to choose from. Freedom of choice is good. Cake against the wall, bad.

(I love how you can just barely glimpse the guest's table behind the cake. If the cake were in front of the wall, it would look like an image from a cake brochure. By the way, I ADORE the monogram detail.)

4. Schedule some time during the day for portraits of just the two of you. It can be before the ceremony (more about that later), between the ceremony and reception, or during the reception, but the day is all about the two of you and your relationship, why not put a priority on capturing that?

Admittedly, it is dificult to carve out an hour from an already jam-packed day, but I guarantee you won't regret it.


5. Consider a First Look session. So, what's a First Look? It is when (gasp) the bride and groom get together before the ceremony for a very private and intimate moment. The photographer is stationed a good distance away, shooting with a long lens capturing every nuance, every smile and tear. The bride and groom can exchange gifts, talk about the day so far, and savor the moment together. The resulting photographs are phenomenal.

I have suggested this meeting at every consultation I've done, and it's usually the groom that has a problem with it. Tradition dictates that the bride and groom see each other for the first time as she walks down the aisle, and many guys still hold tightly to that idea. I respect that, but this could be the start of a new tradition.

I promise that it won't take anything away from the real moment, when she makes that long walk toward you to become your wife. You will still catch your breath, possibly tear up (I've seen a couple of grooms completly break down) and so will everyone else in the room. I'd even venture to say that meeting each other beforehand will lend a new gravity to the service, because you have already connected in a powerful way with each other.

So there you have it, my top five suggestions for fabulous wedding pictures. I'm looking forward to the wedding where they are all implemented at once. Ah, that would be heaven.

This is what summer looks like to me:

When I met Chip, it was easy to fall in love with him-he was a bad-a$$ race car driver. I spent almost every Saturday night that summer watching him win races at San Antonio Raceway on Highway 16. It was nerve-wracking and thrilling and totally cool, and I was hooked-both on him and on watching him race (racing in general-not so much).

By the second year, I had convinced myself that he was going to propose to me on the track after a win. I was bitterly disappointed when he lost, thinking to myself "Great, now I have to wait yet another week for the ring." I think he lost a few in a row for different reasons, and I was getting more and more impatient.

Finally, he won. The number 44 car pulled up to the front straightaway and I was running like crazy to make sure that when Chip got out of the car he wouldn't have to look for me. The entire set-up was perfect: our friends were all there (even the track announcer was Chip's good friend Milton)and the track photographer was in place to capture my shock and surprise.

He climbed out of the car, I ran up to him and gave him a huge hug. We posed with the trophy girl for the camera, laughing and smiling. And then Chip got back into his car and drove off.

No proposal.

No ring.

No nothing.

And to my surprise, I think the photographer succeeded in capturing my shock.

Knowing him as well as I now do, I can't believe I ever thought he'd propose in front of other people. It's not his style, he is way too introverted and doesn't want to draw attention to himself. He did eventually propose (about 6 months later) during a very romantic cruise to the Carribbean.

So, after we got married and started having kids his racing days seemed numbered. That is, until this year. He is at it again, and I'm finding myself at the track yelling and screaming "Go Chip Go!" along with the kids.

They watched him win last week and got to run out to the track for the trophy and a picture. Talk about a flashback for me! My youngest daughter, M, refused to go through the gate, so we stayed near the stands. I got a couple of images of the back of the car, as Chip accepted his trophy with the boys.


This is Chips car speeding by (note the number of the car!):

Here is the checkered flag as Chip went by, with an enormous gap between him and the second place car:

You can't see them, but the boys are in front with Chip as they get the trophy:

Click here for the view from the front.

Ah, here they come:

Here are the boys with their cousin T, Uncle Matt and the trophy in the stands:

Chip races almost every Friday night at the track in Pleasanton. I'd love to have someone come along with me!

Daisy: Portraits at the Southwest School of Art and Craft

I think I have 5 minutes before I have to leave for an appointment, so I'm going to attempt a blog post in that amount of time...Mark, get set, GO!

This young lady is about to turn 15, and her amazing mom is throwing her a huge party for the occasion. I shot the formal portraits for her Quinceanera last week, here are some of my favorites:



Love, love, love the regalness of this one. There was pollen falling all around us from the tree above, and I think it looks almost magical:


We took dozens of versions of this image, and I like all of them, but this one really grabs your attention.


I almost deleted this image because it wasn't centered well, but the more I look at it, the more I like the placement:


This image would be my choice for an enlargement:


Daisy came up with this pose. I love it because it's strong and soft at the same time:


Have you been to the SA Library lately? The enormous purple pillars that accent the enchilada orange walls of the building serve as the backdrop for this image. I thought the yellow of her dress would look striking against purple, but it turns out that my favorite image from the series doesn't include the dress:


Another royalty-inspired picture. What I love about this one is that if you look closely at the top right, you can see what looks like the top of a castle in the distance:


Thanks for a great evening of shooting, Daisy. I hope you enjoyed it!

(P.S., this obviously took more than 5 minutes. In fact, I think it's been a couple of hours!)

~Five Day Sale~

I am super excited to announce the first-ever print sale for Ever After. The pro lab that I use is having a "Free Second Set" promotion, and I am passing the savings on to you!

Any order placed on or before July 29th will get a duplicate set of prints at no charge, including package orders. The print sizes which qualify are 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 and 11x14, and this only applies to those orders placed directly through me, not online.

Payment in full is due at the time of the order, so if you have an idea of the package you want it would be fine to go ahead and send in a check now and then take a couple of days to choose your images.

This is a fantastic opportunity to get a few prints to share with grandma, so don't miss it!

Hands on Knees

It seems to me that we've had more birthdays to celebrate this summer than usual, but I'm sure that can't be true. Actually more is better, it means more friends and more partying and definately more stuff to keep us busy.

My best friend Gina celebrated her 21st birthday last week(that's my story and I'm sticking to it). We had an old-school, bonafide, girls-night-out; the kind that starts with a day at the spa and ends with breakfast at Denny's at 4 AM. And I'm tellin you, "What happens at Denny's, stays at Dennys."

OK, about the above title, I was excited about our plans while getting ready at home, dancing around the house. My 14 year old daughter just about DIED at how I dance, and told me not to do that in public. So I said, "Well then how am I supposed to dance?" (Little does she know that I was and AM a great dancer)

She just rolled her eyes and said, "Hands on knees, mom. Duh."

So guess what I did? Yeah, baby. Hands on knees. Dirty.

OK, well that is all I can tell you about that night, but I can share some pics.



This is the whole group of us at the beginning of the night. Left to right, Donna, Christina, Maria, Gina the Birthday Girl, Me, Lisa.

Me and Lisa. Good Lord I need a new hair style:

If you only knew how many pictures I have of the two of us just like this one starting from 1983. But we used to have really big hair-and hats.

Maria brought along confetti poppers to surprise Gina with. We are really retarded and don't get out much.
This is me and Donna, another friend of mine since we were kids:
So yesterday I went to a different kind of birthday party, the kind that I go to most often: a kids pool party. Still lots of fun, any time I can socialize with other grownups for a few hours is fun for me.

Here is the the birthday boy. I think his momma's in for a heap of trouble in about 8 years. April, you better get a big stick to beat off the girls.

And this cutie was one of my all-time favorite babysitters, until she aged out of the program. I hate it when that happens.

This is L, another fav of mine to photograph.

This scary thing belongs to me:

Group photo! I love looking back at the group photos from when I was young, so I always try to remember to get one. I did take one where all the kids are looking forward and smiling, but this one makes me smile.

To see the rest of the images, click here. You will have to type in W's sisters name, but if you don't know how to spell it, it ends with ey, not ie.

Happy Birthday G and W! I love you!

Wendy and Johnpaul: Wedding

Lately we've been having summer storms that seem to creep up from nowhere and then seem to dump buckets of water. This was exactly what happened on the wedding day of Wendy and Johnpaul. It was an absolutely gorgeous day before the ceremony, and sometime shortly after they said "I do," the sky just opened up.

Somehow, though, I don't think they even noticed. The party was a huge success, and I never saw Wendy drop her smile the entire day.

I love doing shoe portraits:

The two flower girls were all sweetness. In fact, they kinda remind me of cotton candy:

I am happy to say that this cake tasted as wonderful as it looked:
And here, Wendy, is what you've been waiting for: