Erin and Pepijn’s wedding, Washington DC

Despite snow mounts and winter chill I had a great time shooting Erin and Pepijn's wedding in DC. Ceremony at Cathedral of St. Matthews the Apostle does make impression on me every time.Fairmont Hotel reception was so much fun especially with Passport to Love idea that made all guests travel to many countries/tables and collect visa stamps. Few photos from this event:

Just Won the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2010

Washington, DC- January 21, 2010. WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced Eleven Hearts Photography has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for Contemporary Wedding Photography! The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds.

Eleven Hearts Photography is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers.

“We are excited to recognize and honor the success of the top wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “The annual Bride’s Choice Awards program has given us the unique opportunity to highlight the best wedding professionals in each region as reviewed by brides and grooms who have utilized their services in the past year.”

We are happy to announce that Eleven Hearts Photography is among the very best Wedding Photography within the WeddingWire Network, which includes WeddingWire and Martha Stewart Weddings. We would like to thank our past newlyweds for nominating us for the 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards.

Bianca Richardson | Washington,DC

Bianca was a contestant on Cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model. Last month I had the pleasure to take her pictures.

Demet Evgar | Istanbul

I have decided to use Demet Evgar's photo for my front website page. She looks screaming awesome!

Patti LaBelle, Paul Wharton and Eleven Hearts Photography in Washington, DC

Red carpet shooting for Patti LaBelle at Macy's. Paul Wharton's ability to entertain is amazing. For more information, visit Angel Elliot's A-List at http://blogs.bet.com/news/a-list/tag/patti-labelle

Interview with Elle Magazine

This is the winter editon of Elle Magazine about me. Title states "One Person, Thousand Talent" I liked it:)

Monster of the Night _Number One

Here is the Wikipedia explanation of crochet but what I did tonight has no explanation. I thought I was watching the movie (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) but end up making this little monster. What do you think her name is?

Crochet (pronounced /kroʊˈʃeɪ/) is a process of creating fabric from yarn or thread using a crochet hook. The word is derived from the Middle French word croc or croche, meaning hook. Crocheting, similar to knitting, consists of pulling loops of yarn through other loops. Crochet differs from knitting in that only one loop is active at one time (the sole exception being Tunisian crochet), and that a crochet hook is used instead of knitting needles.

Having Photo Session with Janet Koons in Capitol Hill Studio.

Foto Week DC http://www.fotoweekdc.org taking more of my time than I was expected. I came home thinking this season I need to celebrate my fashion mojo with something. Using vintage veils might be a good start.

Model: Janet Koons

Make up Artist: Tristan Blake

Bottle stopper and business card holder

This idea came to my mind after I saw table filled with guest names at one of my California Coast wedding last year. I liked the idea so much and started to use it whenever I want my card stands out somewhere on the table. I took this photo at my kitchen couple of minutes ago to show you how it looks in general.

Canon 85/1.2L | Capitol Hill Studio

All time devoted assistant Fluffy is holding one of my favorite lens for portrait sessions. The Canon 85/1.2L is a great quality short telephoto lens. The lens produce an extremely shallow depth of field that throws away any background objects out of focus in medium light. I love the fact that it works perfectly without using a high noise ISO like 1600 or 3200 as well.

What I do in general is to focus on subject's eyes and hoping the viewers to accept the rest of the image rendered slightly soft.

Emilia Sin and Peter Padiotis's St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church Wedding in Falls Church, Virginia

Hi everybody, Slacking a little on my blog post lately, and in general, back to back weddings are taking its toll, but...from now I will try to post every day...see how that goes. Wish me luck. This image is from Emilia Sin and Peter Padiotis's St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church Wedding. I shot that image from a small stair behind the mezzanine with my 15mm f1.2 lens. I run back to aisle to catch the first kiss right before they were announced husband and wife for the first time.

Thank you everybody for attending Contemporary Wedding Photography Workshop in Istanbul!!

I just received this beautiful picture from Istanbul Contemporary Wedding Photography Workshop host Muammer Yanmaz.It was such a beautiful day with great people. Thank you for all the phone calls and e-mails after the workshop. I decided to share some of the e-mails (only the good ones:) with my curious fans.

"Çok verimli bir seminerdi. Fotoğrafçılıktaki başarınızın yanısıra, eğitici kimliğiniz de gerçekten çok kuvvetli...

Bu hafta 2 defile çekme şansı yakaladım. Aynen anlattığınız üzere, çekim boyunca elimdeki tek iyi lens olan 50 mm.f1.4 ile bol bol hareket ettim ve çok iyi kareler yakaladım. Ve en önemlisi hedeflenen 5 kişi ile tanıştım:)

Çok çok teşekkür ediyorum. Motive etmeniz ve inanılmaz enerjinizle bizi büyülediniz... Başarılarınızın devamını diliyorum, sevgilerimle" Süreyya Arıkan

"Tekrar tesekkurler, sayenizde cok yararli bir bulusma oldu. Umarim tekrar gorusebiliriz, sizinle tanistigim icin cok cok memnun oldum" Merve Toprak

"Bugünkü keyifli sunumun için teşekkürler. Belki net bir çizgi ile hayatımı kesip profesyonel fotoğrafçılığa adım atacağım bugünlerde çok faydalı oldu bu workshop benim için" Barış ER

Contemporary Wedding Workshop | Istanbul

I had been invited by Muammer Yanmaz to speak at his famous workshop series in his Mecidiyekoy, Istanbul Studio this weekend as a Contemporary Wedding Photographer. This will be the first Contemporary Wedding Photography workshop that will hold in Turkey and I'm so exited and so grateful to be part of this project.

Here is the snapshot from Haber Turk.

Demet Evgar | Istanbul

Demet Evgar is one of the most talented Turkish film actress. She came to prominence after bringing in several awards and nominations for her roles. She is noted for having played diverse characters over her career has since established herself as a Modern Turkish Cinema lead actress, starring in several films, including “Banyo”, "Beyza’nın Kadınları" and "Güneşi Gördüm".She is currently working on the set of "Yahşi Bati" with Cem Yilmaz.

I had this session almost 8 moths ago with Demet Evgar while I was documenting her preparation before her performance at Kenter Theatre. I'm in Istanbul right now and yesterday we were having a meeting for her upcoming movie "Yahşi Bati". These are my quick picks from the previous session.

“Why Loyalty Matters” | Washington, DC

This image is from a photo shoot session at my DC studio for a jacket of bestselling book by Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy. "Why Loyalty Matters" which came out July 7th, 2009 and made the Nielsen National Book scan Business Bestseller list in a week. It is a "Groundbreaking Approach to Rediscovering Happiness, Meaning and Lasting Fulfillment in Your Life and Work"

If you would like to get more information please refer to this link.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Loyalty-Matters-Groundbreaking-Rediscovering/dp/1933771720/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249009088&sr=8-1

Importance Of Using Reflector | Washington, DC

This last portrait session I had at the medical center is a great example to show the importance of using a simple light reflector to turn the location into a studio. To bounce the light onto your subjects you can use reflectors with a variety of surfaces, white, silver and gold. The idea is to bounce some light into the shadow areas thereby reducing the overall contrast of the shot.

By moving closer to the subject or further away you can play with the amount of contrast.

In this shot I used white 22" round bounce to control the florescence light by reflecting some portion of the beam before it reaches the lens.

Deren Kurtay | Washington, DC

I love being part of surprises. Here is couple of pictures from special Father's Day Photo session.

Eleven Hearts Photography Selected One Of The Best Photographers Near Beverly Hills, California

I received an e-mail couple of days ago that I had been selected as one of the 5 best photographers near Beverly Hills, California. This gives me a great pleasure to receive an award from Associated Content Society. I love working in California and be there soon to shoot more.

Mother's Day surprise photo session at our Capitol Hill Studio in DC.

Happy Mother's Day everybody. I wanted to post my recent Mother's Day shooting for this special day. Recently father of Samantha contacted to me to shoot her pictures for a surprise gift for his wife. We immediately arranged the shooting and then gather the prints and the slide shows together. As you can see she is unbelievably cute and being part of these great moments as a photographer will last in my memory for many years.

Tracy Mitnick + Ross Levitt | Baltimore

I shot this wedding as an assistant of a great photographer and good friend of mine Cliff Mautner at Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore. That was such an honor to be around and to see a pro like Cliff at work. He had to deal with difficult light situations all day. At one point he shot the formal portrait session against a huge mirror which is usually a very laborious job because of the reflection. After I got back from the wedding I felt like I attended a really good workshop. Learned so much as usual by just being around him. He is the Light Master.

Can't wait to work together again.