Website and email down

My website is down for some unknown reason this afternoon. My email went down with it. I hope to have this resolved in the next few hours. If you have any emails you've sent to me at *michael at mnorwoodphotography dot com* in the past few hours I probably won't get them. Go ahead and send them to *mnorwoodphotography at gmail dot com*

Thanks for your understanding. We'll be back to normal soon!

I've been tagged...

over and over and over again. There's this ridiculous game going around photography blogs where people tell 8 things about themselves that you probably don't know and then they're supposed to tag 8 others to do the same... we'll I keep on going to my friends blogs only to see my name. First it was Fred Egan, then David Burke, then Chrissy and a few others but I lost track. So I guess I'll play along before I get ostracized from the photography community.

1. I was a cheerleader in high school along with 3 of my best friends. After volleyball (which we all played) season and before baseball (which we all played) season there was basketball. We had a good team that year and we wanted to be able to go to all the games so the 4 of us came up with the idea of joining the cheerleaders. We could all tumble and we learned some really cool stunts... basket tosses etc. So it wasn't girly. It wasn't exactly manly either though I guess.

2. I did ballet in high school. There was this christmas deal at church and my dad told me I had to be involved. There were all kinds of things you could do like acting, production, set design...etc, but when the day came to choose I just followed a group of girls and ended up in the ballet section. My dad was so proud... you should have seen me plie.

3. I was in a band for about 6 years. I toured all over the place and recorded 2 records... one not so good and one pretty good.

4. I was a golf pro for several years during the band years. Golf during the week, music on the weekends.

5. Counting dorm rooms, I've lived in 27 different "homes" My dad is in the army so we moved a lot and as much as I hate moving it seems like we do it every year for some reason or another (mostly because we don't love the house or area we're living in so we try something new). One of these days we'll find a place we really like and settle down. I hope.

6. I have a wicked good sense of direction. It's like Goodwill Hunting and numbers... except with streets.

7. Even though I like them I don't eat popcorn or chew gum. With popcorn I always get the little kernel shells stuck in my gums and can't handle it. It drives me insane. As for gum, I end up chewing it way too long. I forget about it and 7 hours later I'll realize that I'm chewing the same piece of gum and it completely disgusts me. So for preemptive reasons I avoid both.

8. I met my wife on a trip to Sweden when I was 15. We were just good friends for 4 years then we dated and got married when I was 21. Sounds crazy thinking about it now but it sure seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Almost 8 years later, I wouldn't change a thing.

So now I have to choose a few people.

Tiffany Aicklen
Corey McNabb
Andy Peterson
Craig Davis
Priscilla O'sullivan
Melissa Rich

oh well that's enough.

Old School like an old fool...

Props to the first person to catch that allusion.

A few weeks ago at Danielle and Paul's wedding I was going out to my car to get some pocket wizards and some flashes and I saw in my trunk some film and my film camera. I always keep some with me just in case something happens. I've never had to pull it out but its there just for insurance. Well I decided to grab a roll of T-Max 3200 and shoot it during the reception. I felt like an idiot the whole time because I'd take a shot and then instictively look at the back of my camera. WEll I finished the roll and then last week took it in to get processed and scanned.

Yesterday I picked the images up and was just blown away. I'd fogotten what real black and white looked like. I've always been somewhat dissatisfied with black and whites from digital. They never really look right to me. I mean, they look ok, but just a little "off." Well it looks like I'll be shooting some more high speed black and white film. This might be a controversial thing to say but the black and whites that come from this film just can't be matched digitally. Anyway here are a few images. Nothing too incredibly exciting but you'll get the idea.

Wedding Season.

I've been so incredibly busy lately that I've neither had the time nor the energy to blog. Its always on my mind though. I'll pick up the computer to work on images and I can just hear the groans of the people who visit my blog expecting... hoping to see something new. I have tons of stuff to blog but so many shoots that I have to get processed and out to couples or companies or planners. Its all I can do to keep up with that. Blogging has taken a back seat.

Never fear though, I'm coming back. August looks like its going to settle down. I even get to take a little vacation in a couple of weeks, which will give me plenty of time to catch up. Until then check out a few shots from my shoot this week. I spent Monday and Tuesday with some of the most talented event designers/coordinators and florists shooting their insanely beautiful creations. There are literally hundreds of amazing images from this shoot but here are a couple of my favorites from each table.

So behind.

I am so behind in blogging, so behind I'm going to post a few less images than usual. Hopefully that'll help me catch back up.

A couple weekends ago I shot Fred and Deanne's wedding at Coyote Hills Golf Club in Fullerton. Most golf clubs will host wedding ceremonies but a ceremony site was an afterthought in the process of designing the club. This isn't the case with Coyote Hills. They have a dedicated ceremony site that is actually very cool and a very attentive staff to make sure everything goes smoothly.

It was a very relaxed day with a lot of personal touches. Fred an Deanne are both musicians so that was the theme of the day. From the song Fred composed for Deanne to walk down to, to the smokin' jazz quartet (made up of their friends) that entertained the guests during cocktail hour, to the tables named after famous jazz clubs, everything was personal and meaningful.

Here are a few images from the day.