Engagement Session at UC Berkeley

While JR is building my new computer at Fry's, and the CEO of Renaissance Gift Baskets is waiting at my office, I am dropping off my car at Oceanworks on Tenth Street in Berkeley.

Angus, the owner, is my guy, or, rather, The Guy, at Oceanworks. He is Berkeley's most loved mechanic, and his specialty is Japanese cars. I drive a Toyota flavored car, the year and VIN of which Angus specified before I went out car-shopping (ask me about it).

Special Note: NEVER buy a car at Toyota of Berkeley. Go to the Toyota dealership by the Jelly Belly factory - Fairfield Toyota. I hope I can blog about the awful service at Berkeley Toyota someday. The underlying principle is that they can sell poorly serviced, i.e., crappy, used cars and Toyota can't do anything about it.

Angus and I went to Willard Junior High (on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley) together. He remembers me carrying my camera around school. So, we can reminisce a little about Ms. Prisk, our French teacher, and other jr. high school stuff. Do they still make Junior High schools, or does everyone go to "middle school" now? My kids went to middle school. What school did you go to - middle or junior high?

What a pleasure it was, then, when a bride-to-be, Janet called to book me for her wedding. "Angus told me to call you," she said. Eventually she told me that Angus was her fiancé.

There's a bit difference between, "Angus told me to call," and "Angus and I are getting married - please photograph our wedding." She definitely meant the latter. They were very pleased that I was available on their date for their Berkeley wedding on the UC Campus.

I love to hang out and chat. But the most intimate way that I connect with my fellow humans is with the camera. More accurately - as much as I wish that I could have dozens of close, intimate friends, I don't have the time nor psyche to be hail-fellow-well-met-best-friends-for-life to everyone who enriches my life. I love to hang out at Oceanworks and chat with Angus. But to take his picture, to engage in a photographic excursion with him and his fiancée is far more intimate, at least for me it is.

That is why I feel so comfortable totally integrating my photography and my life: when I am taking pictures of people, they are becoming, for the moment, intimate friends of mine.

Although most of my brides contact me via the contact form on my website, I would always opt for a phone conversation than email correspondence.

So, we have a happy Angus & Janet, we have a happy Toyota (mine) and a happy me (Eliot).