College Briefing 2015 // Take Back the Night

When I last worked a summer at Forest Home in 2012, I was just coming into my own. I had begun shooting weddings in 2011 and had some during the summer while living a camp. My focus and interest was in portraits and pictures of my friends. It was only until after I left that my interest turned to landscapes and skill sets that involved a little more patience, composition and travel.

Coming back and spending some time in the canyon gave me the chance to go back and see the camp and it's surrounding nature with new eyes and a different vantage point than what I left with. 

After a couple of years of travel and landscape photography, I walked back into the Forest Home marketing department and asked what type of photos they needed from me. To my pleasure, they showed me an inspiration page of landscapes and astro-photography. The rest is history. 

College Briefing 2015 // Sunrise at Inspiration Point

When I started to challenge myself to take photographs that weren't of plants, food, or my dog, I would go to the beach and photograph my friends and the sunset. One morning after an all-nighter, some classmates and I went to watch the sunrise from the top of Signal Hill. It was there that I fell in love with the color and the magic of a new day.

It's been a love and hate relationship since then. As I type this entry, I'm still pretty tired from waking up two mornings in a row to see the dawn in Mill Creek Canyon. This morning different though. As the second morning of the weekend, we planned this one out as we knew the outcome was to be spectacular. As we arrived, we pulled out the Jet Boil to make some coffee and we flew the drone with a newly taped on polarizer filter.

Here are some shots of a new day dawning.

College Briefing 2015 // Urban Rescue

Father let Your Kingdom come
Spirit set a fire in us
For the glory of Your Name

I met Urban Rescue back in 2009 and have been able to photograph them as they've led worship at Forest Home for numerous camp and conferences.  I've always admired Jordan's song writing and how personal his lyrics are. They just signed with Capitol, so hurry up and give them a listen because it's about to be an exciting ride!

College Briefing 2015 // Proclaim

The College Briefing Conference at Forest Home is the camp's longest running conference. The mission of the gathering is to encourage, equip and empower young people to take the Gospel back down the mountain and share it. The mic drop of people that have attended include Billy Graham and Bill Bright.

This year's conference included preaching from Albert Tate and worship led Urban Rescue. I attended and worked my first Briefing in 2009 with both Albert and the band. Check out some photos from a long weekend in the mountains.

Every chain will fall
Every heart will know
We are not alone
Jesus is Alive

Need more visuals? Check out this video done by my friend Andrew Rurik (pictured above).

Engagement // Vicky and Joel

Meet Joel and Vicky! In between an already jam packed weekend of photography at Forest Home, I invited this joyous pair up to the mountains. I worked at camp with Joel and Vicky at Creekside back in 2012 and have since shared in life through Catalina, ice cream sandwiches, frantic text messages about cameras, "welp", and Joel's bold and courageous album art which he drove all the way from Westmont during finals weeks to work on. I am incredibly thankful to call them my friends and super excited as they share in many more moments of life together.

This late afternoon during golden hour was one of the most fun shoots I've done. I had an empty camp to work with, and not to mention, Joel's jokes which will remain unsaid. We can from one side of the canyon to the other and finished with a short drive up California 38 to finish with the sun setting over the  San Bernardino Mountains. Enjoy!