Katelyn came up with this at first, when trying to put together the ultimate “Zach day off.” (Do I have the best wife ever or what?) A ferry ride, followed by a bike ride on an island, followed by dinner in downtown San Diego. I voted HECK YES and we had our awesome date. We both agreed it was super fun but would have been even better with friends. Fast-forward a few months, my sister comes out to visit with her boyfriend and my brother-in-law’s girlfriend also comes out to visit, so we hatch a plan to do our same date but with 3 couples this time. It was epic, as you can see below.

So, if you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, husband or wife who doesn’t read this blog, you can TOTALLY steal this date and use it as your own and score mondo points. Did I mention it’s pretty dang cheap? Here’s the info:

Ferry to Coronado Island: http://www.sdhe.com/san-diego-bay-ferry.html

Bike Rentals: http://hollandsbicycles.com/page.cfm?pageID=499

And without further ado, the photos…

This is the ferry you take over.

The tandem bike thing is harder than it looks, but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it. Getting the hang of it, for us, involved me trying to get off the bike to make this photo and falling terribly with the camera crashing on the cement!

Only the clear filter was damaged, which was nice. A reminder to have these on all your lenses! (The hood would have saved everything even more)

Anyways, this photo cost us a clear filter (but a funny memory of me falling).

We rode the bike to Hotel Del Coronado, a STUNNING place that I’m dying for someone to get married at and hire us for! (Hint hint)

Then we headed to downtown Coronado and got some AMAZING lattes.

The light got prettier so we redid this shot on the way back, sans the falling.

Waiting for the ferry.

Ferry ride back, mmmmm.

Crossing the street snapshot.

And now, PART II, the triple date!

This is much harder than it looks. I tried to do this with Katelyn after we got this photo and I couldn’t! We almost crashed a few times trying. Kudos to Scott and Jessica!

My sister is the best.

Crab grass.

All the Hodges in this photo are not wearing sunglasses. Weird eh?

Taryn grabbed this one, I LOOOOOOVE IT.

Cupcake Royale
Lockspot Cafe
5 Spot
Discovery Park
Stumptown Coffee

That’s just to name a few! The wedding photos turned out so rad. We’re excited because the wedding started later in the evening (almost 8pm) so all of our photos were done at night, which made for some very different photos then we normally do, but so very awesome. You especially have to check out the photo of Zach’s spiderman stance. He’ll do anything it takes to get the shot!

On a side note, Seattle was FREEZING. Oh my goodness, I am Californiaized for sure, because I had to wear like 5 layers just to stay warm! A blog with all of our personal photos is coming soon! We edit paid work first!

Zach’s spiderman pose which he did to get the shot under this photo

this one

We both like this one, a bit different. Thanks to Andrew Shepherd for the idea!

this is one of my (katelyn) favs

This was hilarious! the ring bearer kept falling asleep and then he’d jump up really quick and the pillow would go flying! This happened about 4 times before the grooms mom motioned for him to come sit with her.

This is another one of my favs!

Just a funny one of Zach that I took! nothing cool or arty about it.

Inner Tubing in Big Bear is $25 for the whole day. That’s seriously a bargain. It is so much fun and isn’t quite the commitment that snowboarding would be. We definitely recommend it. We can’t wait to take the future Hodges’ children inner tubing. Definitely cheaper than a day at Disneyland.

Adalia! Pronounced Add-Uh-Leah

Crash Landing.

Many others much greater than I have written extensively on this topic, but I too am a firm believer that you should always challenge yourself, always be trying new things, exploring new ideas. I’ve been needing an excuse to do some of this lately and the bare walls at Reliance became that excuse. The room calls for black and white anyways, but I made that a hard rule because I am so comfortable in color these days. I tried to focus on tonality and mood and blocked color out of my mind. Exposure became different, post processing became different, everything was different and I loved it. Here’s some of the early results:

Nerd alert: the first chunk that isn’t landscape-ish was processed in color in C1 to get ideal contrast and then converted to BW in DXO with the Ilford Delta 400 emulation and grain, which I’m loving no matter how uncool it may be. (it’s like the line 6 of photography) The landscape-y ones were mostly blended exposures from ACR, which I usually NEVER use. 

OH! I almost forgot, a quick restaurant review: The Swing Inn Cafe in old town. This is my new favorite place, it’s like a time warp to the 50’s. It’s not 50’s diner-esque, which I hate, but it just feels untouched from a very long time ago. Everything is what you’d want from a place like this, the food is decent, no frills, probably drenched in butter, the service is good but not overly attentive, and the vibe is chill. Feels like a place you could hang out at all day. Coffee wasn’t half bad either.

This one is one of my favs, it’s hard to see but there’s an old truck driving away way off to the right side.