WizBlog

Marine family makes our hearts smile

The H family just made us smile. Four year old Miss L and Mr. M, two, were just too cute. A special portrait for their soon-to-be-deployed daddy.

 

Is there anything more heartwarming than a mommy and daughter hugging moment?

 

Well, maybe there is - a daddy and son moment.

 

A delicious family loving on each other. <3

 

 

Beautiful in classic black and white, too.

 

Time for a little dad and mom sweetness.

 

A light-hearted time for family bonding.

 

Travel safely, Marine. And Godspeed.

Tribute to our Defenders

Note to our email subscribers: Click Independence Day Tribute to see the video on the WizBlog

In memorium, in celebration - this is our Independence Day tribute to Our Great Defenders: the men and women of the U.S. armed forces and their families, with gratitude for your service and sacrifice protecting our freedom and independence. God bless the USA!

Sweet Marine Family

Note to email subscribers - click HERE to view video in WizBlog. 

The F family is so very special. Wanted to get their vid posted before the holiday. More stills soon!
(be sure to click HQ to watch in hi-def)

The P family rocks!

NOTE to email subscribers: Click HERE to see the video on the WizBlog.

We had such an amazing time with the charming P family in April.
They have been so patient and understanding while we spent more than a month recovering our melted-down disk with their session images.

So as our gift to you, P family, we hope you enjoy the custom Wizzy & Friends hi-def music video we created for you ... with our appreciation and affection for you being you. xoxo, Nancy & Paul

Meltdown!

 

meltdown (mltdoun) n.
A disasterous or rapidly developing situation likened to the melting of a nuclear reactor core.

**
Dealing with unexpected catastrophic meltdown and loss of one of our primary Wizzy client external drives. Only partially backed up. Drive at recovery doctors. First recovery try NOT successful. Approved $$$$$$ "clean-room" de-construction for more serious recovery techniques.

Stress. Distress.
Re-tooling office to reduce possibility of future failures - six drives and back ups.

Dang it! :(

Behind the Scenes

Authenticity. It's what we value most, especially authentic connections. When we experience families who not only authentically connect with one another, but also with us as well ... well, it just warms our hearts.

Little apology to the P family. We've had a catastrophic failure of our primary drive this week. The good news is that everything was backed up, tho accessing that and getting it copied onto another disk is time-consuming and tedious. The naughty disk is at the recovery shop as I type this. We had already edited about a half dozen of your session images and would prefer not to have to re-edit - but we could, as our session originals are always kept on a separate drive.

So ... until we get word about the fate of the failed disk, we thought you and our readers would be entertained by a few outtakes. Colonel Woggy is so very good about capturing sweet pieces of our session experience. I'm smiling as I post these. For us, THIS is why we adore our business.

Group chimping ...

 

Before we shoot, Wizzy usually gathers the kids and does a little location scouting. Altho she usually knows Camp Pendleton's Ranch House well, the scouting adventure helps to engage the kids in the process, as does chimping.

Seven-year-old Mr. W proudly accepted the assignment as the advance scout to placehold our next location. Check out his cute face. <3 And be sure to look carefully at the space under dad Joe's elbow and above his right shoulder. Hint: Can you spot Miss J's red boots?

 

Our readers know that we usually ask one of our session kids to take the Official WizWog portrait. Darlin' Miss G graciously obliged, while brother W manned the reflector masterfully. Great teamwork!

First, a portrait of our photographer -

 

And her work, with our gratitude -

Devoted to her Marine

What fun we had doing pre-deployment romance portraits for Britney and Nick! They are so in love. And it's always so magical when our Marines are manly enough to be romantic. <3

 

  

   

 

 

Godspeed, Cpl. Nick. And Semper Fi from Nancy and Col. Paul.

the B family rocks!

WizBlog email subscribers: Click HERE to go to view video on our blog.
BTW - Very occasionally a video will freeze/stop playing. Just click your browser's Refresh button - the page should refresh and the video should be playable. Enjoy!

You met the B family HERE.

Now watch them rock: 
Once you click the Play >, be sure to click HQ on the bottom tool bar to see the best quality.

Loving famly of 5.5 | OpLove

We just seem to get the very BEST families! And the H family was one of our extra-special experiences while we captured their pre-deployment family portraits.

First there was delightful Mr. Kole. Soft-spoken and blue-eyed, he took just a few minutes to warm up with us, and it soon became obvious he is one of those rare true gentle souls. He was so helpful being our lighting test subject. Doesn't his sweet face just make you want to smile right back?

 

Then Miss Kadi with the delightful personality and ready smile. She was so helpful, making creative suggestions for family shots. This pose was all her idea. She scrambled up and just charmed the camera. Look at the sparkle in those eyes ... and doncha love the missing teeth?

 

And NOT to be outdone, when Kadi climbed down, little Miss Kali scrambled up to mimic big sister's pose. Check her out 'working' the camera - right down to her winsome head tilt - LOL. Look out mom, if you don't already know it, she's gonna be a force *wink* ...

 

And we couldn't leave out baby Kash, due mid-summer.

 

A special one of the two, to keep Miss Jackie's heart warm while Clint is deployed soon. Awwww ...

 

And the H family, all 5-1/2 of them -

 

As we traditionally do, we handed over our cameras to the kids. Kole got some great shots which will go in his family's OpLove album. Wizzy shot this one of Kole while he was shooting Col. Wogg over Wizzy's head, while Kadi was lining up the big ol' 5D to shoot the two of us. (did you follow that round-robin of photography? LOL!)

 

And here we are, courtesy of young Miss Kadi (and only the teensiest bit out of focus - maybe a good thing, heehee ...)

 

Travel safely Lt. Clint, and come home soon. Semper Fi and Godspeed!

Rawk, doc! | our guitar hero

Often we hear the term "second chance at life" being used fairly casually. What followed Paul's cardiac arrest gave us, quite literally, a second chance of a lifetime ... to a large extent due to our electrocardiologist, Dr. D, in whose incredibly skilled hands Mr. Paul's heart literally rested. And now, with an ICD - implantable cardioverter-defibrillator - safely anchored in his upper chest and heart, we have, as the medics *joke,* our built-in own Doc In A Box. (check out this marvel of modern medical technology here: ICD)

When we heard Dr. D was on the lookout for a portrait photographer for a personal project, we were delighted to offer our services. Our goal: To capture this soft-spoken Authentic Man we've come to know and care about, as he cares about us- sincere, intelligent, witty (likes to watch Seinfeld re-runs and offbeat The Office). His two life's passions are healing ... and his guitar. He loves travelling to Italy and basking in Italian culture. A Chicago native, he's learned to take pleasure in year-round outdoor running here in The O.C. to keep fit.

Words cannot describe his level of compassion and dedication we have experienced with this very special person ... nor can mere words express the level of admiration and gratitude we feel for him. In our time of medical and emotional desperation, he was completely and unconditionally present and available for us. We're hoping he will see  how meaningful he is to (and always will be) to us ... in the images we've captured.

It is our pleasure and honor to introduce to our readers: Aseem, Our Hero ...

 

 

 

Our clients know we don't believe in subtle ice-breakers - LOL. Stethoscope in hand, he was such a good sport!

 

The perfect headshot of this handsome guy! (ladies, did we mention he's single? *wink*)

 

Our fave, cuz it's just so Italia *grin* -

We couldn't resist this rock-style poster image of our Guitar Hero!