My Blog

This is long overdue but here is our fancy schmancy wedding “trailer”. Our wedding videographer is truly an inspiration to me for the value of good editing and story telling. His cinematography is awesome and I’m not just being biased. Check it out, I think you’ll enjoy it especially for being a wedding video…even if you don’t know me it just looks and feels suh-weeeeet! Go ahead…HD and full screen that B!

Wedding Trailer | The Biltmore – Phoenix, Arizona

My friend, Tracy, is starting a dance company called MarioCo.Dance. She is a contemporary jazz dancer and with the new company, she needed new head shots and dance/fitness photos taken and I had the privilege to shoot it! We shot it using mainly available light and a reflector with exception to the “Box Office” shots which we used 2 flashes for. One 480ex II for the background and a 580ex II in a soft box to light the subject. Thanks to my wife, Chrissy, for having a creative eye for a unique picture and for coming up with the idea to shoot the Box Office shots!

We went to Tempe Center for the Arts last Saturday and braved the 114 degree heat. It was brutal, but I couldn’t complain because Tracy was the one jumping up and down on a trampoline for nearly 3 hours. I still like to whine about it though.

Here are a few of the shots we came up with:

I had a grand idea about shooting a bunch of footage while on our honeymoon and putting together this awesome film and telling a story about our time in paradise as a married couple. Instead, we laid around, ate and drank all day. However, I did manage to get SOME footage though and I finally got around to slapping it all together.

I took this as a chance to mess around with color correction and came up with some pretty fun shots. So the video is pretty pointless with no story to tell, but rather a collage of the things we did while in Hawaii: Eat, Surf, Shave Ice (Anyone know why it’s not called ‘ShavED’ Ice in Hawaii?), Lounge, Cruise, Drink, Hold Hands! Siiiick!

I also added a photo of us in the end to prove that I was present during this honeymoon as well.

Song: Jack Johnson – Moonshine from “Thicker Than Water” soundtrack

We’re currently running a promotion on Facebook for the company I work for called the “Snack Bowl”. It’s a user generated promotion where fans submit their recipes. We decided to choose one of the top recipes that we liked and film someone making it. With Chrissy’s art direction we chose my lil’ sis Amanda (who is taller than me by a lot) to be the host and she was a friggin’ natural! The plan is to do more of these if not for my company, definitely for her blog which is coming soon. Chrissy and Amanda are preliminarily planning to make user submitted cooking videos and this was a great reason to test it out. Stay tuned for her blog, epicurasaurus.com to launch soon.

I was working with one Canon 60D and a wired lavalier mic but we tried our best to create the allusion that there was more than one camera present. I think it was accomplished for the most part. A lot of re-shooting the same thing and editing it together. Thanks to Chrissy because without her there, there would be a ton of inconsistencies in every shot. She’s amazing with the “details”. After all, it’s part of her real job…Ch-ch-check it out!


Make sure to change the resolution to 720p HD on the lower right of the video immediately once it starts playing that way you can watch it in full screen without it looking ugly.

One of my best buddies, Peter, (and groomsmen; only 3 months until Wedding Day!) started a classic wayfarer style sunglasses company called STUN Glasses with another buddy of mine, Ryan. They wanted to feature a photo of one of the sunglasses with a New Years theme. I took it as an opportunity to practice some product photography and the results ended up being pretty good. At least we thought so. This was the final shot we chose after hours of Chrissy and Peter throwing confetti in various methods.

Here is the edited version used on the site.

We used a home made DIY light box made with 12 pieces of wood and white fabric. For the ground, we followed Zack Arias’ lead from his CreativeLiVE workshop and went to Home Depot to buy the white panel board which gives that subtle reflection for only $12. We only used one on-camera flash for this shot. Which was surprisingly enough. I brought a lot more gear but didn’t end up using most of it. I thought for sure at least we would use the flash off-camera, but I think the lightbox did the trick for us, evenly distirbuting the light. I wish I had taken some behind the scenes photos, but I didn’t this time and will next time since we’ll be doing more.

We also took a bunch of regular product shots with blown out white and black backgrounds, but those are kind of boring so I won’t post them. They look good, but just imagine sunglasses set against plain backgrounds and you’ll have your picture.

UPDATE: We had some time to mess around so we took photos of eachother trying our best “Blue Steel” looks. So here are a couple of Peter and me. If you’re interested, I’m wearing COAL and Peter is wearing SLIME. They’re real sick sunglasses, so get a pair. Or don’t, but it won’t be my fault if you step out into the sunlight and your eyeballs melt because you didn’t listen to me!

Here’s 30 seconds of Chrissy, Jody and me decorating my parents’ Christmas tree. I’ve been wanting to try making a time lapse video and this is my first shot at it. This is a huge ball of corny, but I’m a big sucker for Christmas and Christmas decorations!

I just got my hands on a Canon 60D (which films full 1080p HD video) and a few new lenses! So this past weekend I had the opportunity to film Amanda making homemade pizza for Chrissy and me. This time, Chrissy agreed to help me edit and direct the video!

More stuff I want but can’t have, and really, don’t have any business having.
DriveCam Slider



It allows for moving time lapse videos like this one:

Thanks to everyone for your input! I got a lot more than I anticipated. It seemed most friends and family gravitated towards Melissa Jill (check her out, she’s got a great blog too) for the most part. If not their first pick, it was their second.


Chrissy, her dad and I had the opportunity to meet with Melissa a couple weeks ago at her home office. Right off the bat, you could tell she was very personable and very organized. She had all her ducks in a row and her presentation in order. She left us for a moment and let us watch a video and right as it ended she came down the stairs with some snacks and sparkling apple cider. Fancy touch! I’m convinced she had her ear to the wall waiting for it to end so she could make her perfectly timed entrance. Or…she just knows what she’s doing because this is her profession.


Melissa gave us a great bit of advice when looking for a photographer. It was simply to ask them to show you their proof book. Very good advice. What this does is allow you to look through their day’s work, their thought process, creativity and quality from photo to photo. This is what sold Chrissy and I on Melissa. She showed us a proof book and it wasn’t a bunch of pictures showing the same thing. All the pictures were high quality and from different perspectives. The moments varied from picture to picture and conveyed different emotions. It shows the photographer’s versatility and skill if you can look through a proof book and more than 75% of their photos could end up in the final wedding album.


So, Melissa is the official photographer of the Drazkowski/Nguyen wedding. We’re stoked about it! Now Chrissy and I have to put our creative minds together to make some fun/funny/creative photos! Which is another good thing about Melissa, she has so many great and fun photos Chrissy and I would’ve love to take but they’ve already been taken now. Boooo! Oh well, we’ll think of something good.

In an effort to conserve money, Chrissy and I are attempting some Do-It-Yourself projects for our wedding. I know we’re a year away but you can’t blame us for not wanting to scramble at the last minute. And who can blame us for being so excited we want to start doing stuff for it right away? Besides, anyone who has been through a nice wedding knows a year gives you just enough time to get the exact vendors that you want. You’d be surprised at the very mixed reactions we get for having our wedding in March 2011. Some people really hate us for it and some people think it’s perfectly normal.

This weekend we got crafty and made some decorations for the reception site (which we got final confirmation will be at The Biltmore. Stoked about that!). We’re hoping to hang these from the ceiling. We’re deciding if it should be lit from within or if we should just let light shine on it externally. It was easy to make but somewhat time consuming. We need to make about 50 of them if we end up going through with the idea.

Here are a couple pictures of our creation!

Obviously one is lit and the other is not.

unlit vs lit