You guys are all a blessing!! Thank you for making this year amazing!!

Happy New Year!!!

iTunes gift card for anyone who guesses what role he plays in the movie!

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SOOO Excited to show you this shot from my shoot with Bridget Marquardt.  She looks fabulous as always!! Happy 2012 everyone! I LOVE stepping out of the box and being creative… and not only is she stunning… she is INCREDIBLY creative… and sweet… and it is such a blessing to work with her! We always have such a good time! Thanks for another incredible shoot! and Thank you Katarina Van Derham for being an incredible makeup artist/stylist…for being so much fun to work with and for being a friend! You are the best!

Bridget Marquardt Star Magazine

I was SO stinkin’ EXCITED!! and it was FOUR… THIRTY… in the MORNING! lol!!  I couldn’t share the news with…  ANYONE… I mean.. my dogs heard me let out some kind of a high pitched squeal… but that was about it! haha!  I am not one to boast… but I was incredibly excited!

I woke up…  Went to the store…  and the magazine wasn’t out yet!  Sad!  Haha… BUT…I went into the store today…and IT WAS ON THE SHELF!!  It is the one with Jennifer Aniston and the Royal Wedding on the cover if you’d like to see it for yourself!

And in case you’d like to see the non-magazine version of the picture… Here you go!

If you missed the other posts of Bridget & would like to see them… they are here, here, and here!

Bridget… It was a pleasure working with you…and I can’t wait to work with you again!

The make-up artist for this shoot was the crazy talented Katarina Van Derham.  You may recognize her from this post!

**All images except the last one were taken with an iPhone**

When I was a child, it was our family tradition to take a road trip to Disney every 4th of July for a few years…  (The parades and fireworks were the best then!)    So there were several things that were my favorite 20 years ago that I had to see again…  Figment… The Parade of Lights… etc. Oh my gosh… I just dated myself… TWENTY YEARS AGO?! Where does the time go! Anyway… moving on before I feel too old…  

I want to have a contest… and a challenge! For all of us who work a little too hard and don’t take nearly enough time out for ourselves… Please tell me how you plan on laying work (any job- not just photography) aside…and doing something that you’ve been WANTING to do… that you haven’t made time for.  I challenge you to DO IT! And I want to HEAR about it in the comment section!   I’ll give a $10 iTunes gift card to a random winner!  Come on… I’m basically PAYING you to take some time to do what you LOVE!  YOU CAN DO IT and YOU DESERVE IT!!    

I have ZERO clue how I am going to tell this story with as much enthusiasm as there is when I tell people in person…(I mean, I do the explosion sounds, hand motions, and all!)  There are just so many details… Bare with me… I promise it will be worth the read!

I was recently visiting my very good friend Erin. in Chicago.  She told me before I left that they were filming transformers in Chicago… and I got a little excited!  Okay… I’m lying… I was ridiculously excited… and I was HOPEFUL that I was going to be able to see SOMETHING!  We leave Sunday morning to Starbucks on Michigan Avenue…to see if we can figure out where they are filming… and lo and behold they are filming RIGHT there.  We didn’t see any actual filming but we did see Megatron’s face on the bed of a truck… and a couple of “Transformer” cars. Oh! And the Michigan Avenue bridge that was lifted with cars “hanging on for dear life!” haha… It was AMAZING. (These pictures don’t do it justice…)  So we hang out like stalkers for an hour or so… walking close to their base camp… where they would be eating lunch and cooling off in their trailers… etc…and needless to say… It was about 489 degrees outside and 500% humidity… we had to forfeit…. So, we cut our losses…and take our sweat-drenched-bodies back to her apartment.  We didn’t see anything too exciting…but were thrilled we saw what we did…. (see photos below)…

And the story continues… Fast forward to Wednesday… Erin, Chris, Ryan H, Ryan G, and Dean are walking to the Willis (Sears) Tower…(We were coincidentally all visiting Erin & Chris at the same time… and it was a BLAST!) So we were walking toward the tower and we see all of these people gathered… we look over to our left to see what is going on and they are still filming!!! (WHAT?! They told us MONDAY on the news they were not filming anymore! FIBBERS!) So wouldn’t you know that out of ALL of the times I choose NOT to take my 70-200 zoom lens, it would be this time… THE ONLY TIME I NEED IT!  When none other than Josh Duhamel & Shia LaBeouf are standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME… *insert expletives here” haha! I was so bummed… Erin & I are geeking out…the boys… well, they could care less.  So we go to the Willis/Sears Tower and do the “touristy” thing and Erin & I decide to take a taxi back to her apartment to get my 70-200 lens.   On the way, we drive by the movie set and they are on break… so we go to the apartment, grab the lens and go to this bakery in the depths of Chicago… because her mom had been texting us for 2 days straight that we “must go to bakery NOW” and try something called a “Tree-Cake.” She saw it on a food network show apparently and said we MUST try it… so we did… and it was nearly a $50 round trip cab ride to find this place… all for a piece of tree-cake that looked like an over-sized chocolate covered donut… and the flavor? Soft almond biscotti.  But its the experience that counts! (Rant over)  So we head BACK toward the movie set and I ask the cab drive to drive to the front of the set… he is stopped by a red light and we see this sign…

Aaaaaand we got excited!! The light turns green, we turn right…and we are stopped by another red light and a police officer saying we can’t go anywhere UNTIL THEY FINISH FILMING! WHAT?! They are going to film?? RIGHT THERE!!? Someone yells “ROLLING!” “ROLLING!” “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” And all of a sudden we see these guys running through the debris toward us… shooting guns in the air at an invisible transformer…and this HUGE explosion!

Here is Josh Duhamel running toward us…

That’s a wrap!

Well, Almost a wrap… Erin leans out of the window and screams… not once, but twice… “I LOVE YOU, JOSH!” He turns around, smiles, and waves…!!

What a sweet guy! **swoon** haha… Okay, so it was cheesy but we were geeking out!

Here is the crew after they were finished filming that scene… (Ever wonder how non-romantic those romantic parts of movies are? It’s because there are 6,493 people at any given point standing 6 feet away from you! ha!)

Here are some props for you..courtesy of the iPhone! This is Megatron!

And look for this newspaper stand in the movie!!

Here are a couple of sequence shots of Shia performing his stunt… (We counted 3 stunt doubles for him…) He is the one on the left flipping over the taxi!

And here is a scene they were about to start filming…

I thought it was interesting that they knocked out the windows of the building of Hotel 71.

And here is a video of that scene being filmed!

And here is an iPhone video of a scene they were about to start filming on the river… The boat to the right that you see is going to catch on fire! They would light it on fire, then put it out… light it on fire, then put it out…