This post is Part 3 of a 4-part series. Read Part 1 – Read Part 2 – Read Part 3 – Read Part 4

Pacific Oaks Vineyard Estate is an ideal location for weddings. You really have to see it to understand. You’d also have to meet Judy, the owner, who is very sweet and easy to work with. She is at least half of what makes the location so ideal. Her husband is a Southerner (like me, he is from South Carolina) and the property is a blend of California natural beauty and Southern architectural charm.

There’s a vineyard, of course, that slopes down a hill to catch the light of the setting sun in quite a romantic way. It’s a real functioning vineyard with a small winery attached to it; at our initial tour of the place, Judy gave us each a sample bottle of her wine. (I drank it with my sister Esther later that evening. It was delicious.) Behind the main house is a ceremony garden with a lush green lawn, and in front of it, huge oak trees and redwood benches. The two large decks are ideal for gathering people and staging events like cake-cutting, bouquet-tossing, and the like. A cheerfully yellow guest room is provided for brides to use in getting ready, mere steps away from the entrance to the ceremony garden. The property is immaculately kept and lovingly tended, and everything is laid out to make the logistics of a wedding day simpler and smoother.

The interior space is not available for weddings, but we got to see it when we scoped out the location. That pool house is amazing! I must say it would be pretty great to get married in that pool. I’d make all the guests take their places in rows in the shallow end, and I’d float down the aisle to the deep end on an inflatable giraffe. We’d make use of the great acoustics in that room by shouting our vows at top volume. Somebody (the aforementioned very talented musician sister Esther?) would cannonball into the pool and then play love songs on the panflute. It would be magical.

But this isn’t about me and my fictional love story, it’s about Jill and Chase and their very real one. They timed their ceremony perfectly. The golden hour was almost upon us when the ceremony ended and we started walking around taking portraits. At Pacific Oaks there are lots of intimate little nooks, great for posing and even better for kissing. We encouraged Jill and Chase to take full advantage of this.

We were pleasantly surprised to encounter some friendly young chickens in the vineyard. Chickens again! One of our favorite wedding shots of all time involves chickens; you can see it in this earlier post. These chickens must be treated well and given everything a chicken could ask for in this life. They followed us around and seemed to want us to pick them up. One of them did try to steal Jill’s ring, but who could blame the chicken? It’s a nice ring!

Remember the baby we took pictures of in this post from a year ago?

Well, now she can walk! And point! And make animal noises! My, how time flies.

This year’s Sadie holiday photo session took place at Wilder Ranch State Park, where there were at least two other photoshoots happening with other photographers, one of which involved a whole family doing a line dance in the doorway of a barn. (I wonder if we’ll ever get a family to dance for us at a shoot. Seems like an great idea, now that I really think of it.)

This year, instead of dressing in a Santa-themed costume, Sadie went for a more rustic-chic look. She was, as usual, adorable. In fact, we agreed that Sadie is steadily making the transition to outright beautiful. She loves Wilder Ranch, especially the hay and the farm machinery. And the bikes she found in a meadow. And the dirt, and the plants, and the goats and the chickens. We just followed her around and watched her enjoy herself.

Below is a movie of some of our favorite photos from that afternoon. The soundtrack is by Land of the Loops. This movie file is larger than last year’s, so it may need a bit of extra time to load.

At the end of the show, you can see Sadie crawling rapidly away in terror, in response to a sheep noise that was louder than she expected. Poor Sadie burst into tears at that point, and thus our shoot was concluded. It was one of those times when a toddler is crying and the adults are trying not to laugh. Aw, Sadie, we’re sorry you got upset, but that was pretty funny.

I’ve got more stuff to post from 2009, but it will have to wait until 2010. Anyway, Sadie photos seem like a good way to end the year. Enjoy the show, and Happy New Year!

The first few photos in this month’s cellphone pics gallery are shots of a book of images by photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. (You can see his stuff by clicking here.) Manuel Alvarez Bravo was just one of the many photographers whose work I saw (in a book, not in real life) for the first time in May. Another was Sam Abell, the photographer who made the image of beans and toast you’ll see later in the cellphone pics gallery. (To see more photos by Sam Abell, click here.) It was kind of funny to find myself exhausted from processing photos and wrestling with their presentation yet unable to stay away from photography. I kept going to the bookstore to try to take my mind off my photo troubles with good old fiction, only to be drawn into the photo books section and seduced by someone else’s pictures. How did this obsession happen to me? I swear I never saw it coming.

This month marked the beginning of a fervent desire to actually buy all of these beautiful photo books. Especially the Sam Abell book. I think it’s because I’ve learned so much about photography in the last two years of doing it as a job, and have a better appreciation now of innovative work. Also, I’ve got a better sense of my own outside-the-commercial-zone aesthetic and can get very excited about photographers who travel in similar directions. Or in very different directions. Mostly, it’s just fun to imagine what it was like to make someone else’s photographs.

For those who may wonder, the little guy in these photos is my nephew Jasper (loves ice, cats, flowers, and putting things into other things). He shows up frequently in the cellphone pics galleries, because when I’m hanging out with him I am too busy to manage a real camera but am compelled to document him anyway. His mama, my sister Joye, manages to take lots of gorgeous photos of him with a real camera, but she has superpowers and extra arms since she became a mom.

This isn’t the first cellphone pics post to include a photo of a dead bird. I keep finding them. What’s up with that? (To see cellphone pics from previous months, click here.)

CLICK THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE MAY THROUGH THE CRAPPY YET WONDERFUL LENS OF MY PHONE.