Zen Greenville SC Wedding Venue Photos | Katie and Rob's Wedding!

I met Katie and Rob just a week before their wedding. Things I knew before this: The wedding would be held in the Japanese Garden at Zen in Greenville SC, her mom (Gidge) was really cool, and they were living in Great Britain.

Katie and Rob met over in Great Britain and have been totally head over heels for each other since. Seriously, these guys just exude so much love toward each other that you can pick it up just by being close by. I had heard a lot of great things about them and about Zen Greenville but I didn't know just how cool everything would be. The wedding was a beautiful, modern, laid back kinda wedding, the type that you just love being apart of. And good thing it was! During Rob's speech he mentioned that it was just a few vendors and ONE couple that were actually from Greenville. People flew in from all over the world to be at their wedding.

It was an absolute pleasure doing your wedding Katie and Rob and I wish you all the best in the future!








Love the super modern decorations and furniture in Zen



The handsome brit!



Katie was so excited!


















Rob just about lost it... almost!





















Ok how can you not be smiling now!



The beautiful Zen interior












The maid of honor toast



The best man doing one of the longest (and funniest) speeches ever!



































To check out more photos from this Zen wedding click here!

New Photo Editing PC Build

I'll just put this out here right now: If you don't have a least a little geek inside you, you might want to skip right past this post!

Anyways so I've finally got my new photo editing PC up and running! It's been about a month in the making but I'm really happy with the end product. I do have to say, it's definitely outrun my expectations. I knew it would be fast, but not this fast!

Controversy time: A lot of people ask me why I don't just go with a Mac. Most photographers/graphic designers use Mac's right? Well, there are a few reasons why Mac's don't work for me.

First, I've been using Windows since almost forever. Unlike a lot of people I've never really had any major issues with any of their operating systems. Besides, I've been very impressed by Windows 7. It's fast, efficient, and stable.

Second, I actually enjoy building my own computers. There is just something fun about researching all the components and then putting them together. Instead of having someone else pick out all the pieces of the system, you get to be in the driver's seat and can make sure you get the best components. Maybe I'm just too much of a nerd to have someone do this for me!

Third (and probably the biggest reason!), I really don't agree with the Mac price premium. The price of their higher end computers is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. In fact, I priced out the EXACT same computer I built here, but in Mac flavor. Was it double the price of what I built? No. Worse. Much worse.

For the Geeks out there, here are the stats on my new build:



Intel Core i5-760 Quad Core @ 4.0ghz



Gigabyte P55 USB3.0 Motherboard



8gb of G.Skill DDR3 1333mhz RAM



120gb Vortex 2 Solid State Hard Drive <-- Awesome!

XFX Radeon HD6870 1gb Video Card



Corsair 550w 80 Plus Power Supply


Extras:
2 x 2tb Western Digital Green Drives
Antec 900 Case
24x Asus DVD Burner
Integrated Card Reader
Rosewill Wireless Card
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit



So how much did this (almost) state of the art computer cost for me to build? Under $1300! How much was the EXACT same system on a Mac? $5300. I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather save the extra $4000 and put it toward something else, like my mortgage or student loans. Before you power on your flame throwers I'm not saying Mac's aren't good for ANYONE I'm just saying that they don't make sense for ME.

The real star of the show though is my new Dell Ultrasharp U3011 30" Photo Editing Monitor. Click the link to check out my thoughts on it.

I've never built a computer with a Solid State Hard Drive in it before. Now I can say that I'll never build a computer without one. Boot up times are roughly half of what they take with a standard mechanical hard drive, load times are anywhere from 2-4x faster, and I can fully restart the computer in under 40 seconds. Now the price of these drives is still quite a bit more than a conventional hard drive, and the capacities aren't nearly as big. I only keep Windows, my programs, and a small working area on the drive, everything else goes on the backup 2tb drives. Life will be good when they have these drives in 1tb for cheap.

Alright, that's enough Geek Rambling for now. Checkout some more photos from this build:



Massive CPU Cooler is a MUST for overclocking


All put together inside!

Dell U3011 Monitor Review | Photo Editing Screen Dream

The new Dell U3011 30" Monitor is a monster. At 30" and 2560x1600 resolution (roughly DOUBLE 1080p) I can open up a TON of windows simultaneously without having to switch back an forth. This is a huge time savings for me because I'm constantly updating my blog, editing photos, writing emails, and backing up files. The screen looks beautiful and the interface is extremely easy to use.

When it's time to get down and do some Photo Editing, its simply awesome. Since the screen has so much resolution I can display around 300 thumbnails on the screen without having to scroll around. During photo editing, the huge resolution lets me see the images with a TON more detail without having to zoom in. Double edged sword? Yes. Since I'm seeing the images so HUGE, if the focus is off just a touch, or there is just a little bit of motion blur, its immediately noticeable. This is also good though because it helps me refine my shooting and guarantees that when these photos are printed or displayed on a more normal monitor, they will look AWESOME.



On top of all this, the Dell U3011 30" Monitor comes calibrated from the factory for both Adobe RGB and sRGB color profiles, so I know I'm getting accurate color. The gamma and contrast are accurate as well because this is an IPS monitor. IPS panels don't suffer from the contrast and color shifts at off angles that everyday TN panels suffer from. Sure this monitor isn't cheap but the quality is fantastic. Dell has some awesome warranties on these monitors and even provides a new panel if you get even ONE dead pixel (and thats saying something with over 4 million pixels!). They have been making these professional grade monitors for close to 5 years now, and this revision is just the latest of a great line of monitors. Highly recommended if you have a need and the money for one of these monitors.



Update 2/25/11: After about 3 months I'm still very happy! The monitor is still working great! Couple more thoughts:

• The swivel base is very useful when meeting with clients because I can just swivel the panel over so it faces them. Just takes a few seconds to get it back to where it should be.
• Not one dead pixel has showed its face on this thing
• Since the bezel is all a flat texture it makes it look cleaner a lot longer
• I've had great luck with pictures printing just what they look like on the monitor

I know I've said it before but the Dell U3011 saves me NOTICEABLE time when working on pretty much anything. Without having to scroll around all the time, I can focus on what I'm working on. The only regret I have with this monitor is that I didn't pick it up cheaper. I've seen the Dell U3011 on sale for several hundred less than I paid for it already. Not that the monitor isn't worth what I paid for it, its just a sickening feeling when you buy something and then see it for a few hundred dollars cheaper a few weeks after.

I also built a new photo editing computer when I got this thing. Click here to check out my complete Photo Editing PC Build.

New Mitsubishi ASX launchedx

Mitsubishi Motor Malaysia (MMM) has added the all-new ASX to its line-up. The ASX is crossover type vehicle. For the Malaysian market they are given a 2.0 -litre petrol engine similar to the one found in the lancer. With 148bhp and 197Nm of torque, the ASX should be a peppy little SUV. like the lancer GT, it also uses the INVECS-III transmission with paddle shifters and it is only front-whell driven, not 4WD.

 

The ASX was better fuel economy

Fully imported CBU from Japan, the ASX retails at RM139,980 OTR inclusive of insurance and comes in five different colours: Black Mica, Titanium Gray, Kawasemi Blue, Red Metallic and White Pearl .

Jenna and Matt are getting married!!

Jenna and Matt are really cool to be around. Matt owns his own business so we have lots of talk about, and Jenna is totally down to earth. We met up for some engagement photos this past weekend and had an awesome time wandering around the woods, down some old railroad tracks, and watching the sunset. Here are a few of my fav's from the day!







































Thanks again for having me guys! I'm really looking forward do your wedding!!

To see more shots from this shoot click here!