To Africa! - Thirst Relief & Grace Ormonde Benefit Shoot

Shane has officially started his trip for the Grace Ormonde benefit shoot with Thirst Relief International. During this trip he will be working alongside 12 other amazing photographers

Ray Santana, Mike Colon, David Burke, Andrew Bryant, Ben Harrison, David & Luke Edmonson, Jason Thon, Jeff LaPlante, Jim Davis-Hicks, Melissa Jill and Phillip Glickman

as well as auction winners Laura Parker and Michelle Walker. Their current plans for the trip include:

-working with Thirst Relief International to provide life-saving clean water to Tanzanians

- A photoshoot with models from South Africa wearing fair trade jewelry by The Leakey Collection and gowns that were donated by the following amazing dress designers:

Ines Di Santo
Amy Michelson
Adele Wechsler
Angel Sanchez
Jenny Packham

– an African safari!


Shane and the team flew out of California Monday evening and arrived in Dubai early Wednesday morning (somewhere around 12:00am from what I understand). After checking into their hotel they all took a midnight tour of Dubai. I'm told it was still around 100 degrees and humid at 3:00am.

Album preview and future visit to Africa

The summer is flying by and it seems like most every week we've been on the road or in the air. Next week will be no different as Shane will set out for Tanzania, Africa w/ Mike Colon, Ray Santana, The Edmondson's and more amazing photographers to work with Grace Ormonde Wedding Style Magazine and Thirst Relief International. All your thoughts and prayers are appreciated during these next couple weeks as they begin an amazing adventure together. I will be incredibly excited to see images from this trip and will be waiting along with you in anticipation :)

Because time is moving by so quickly, rather than creating an entire post of Emily and Jeff's wedding, I thought it may be a special treat for you to see a glimpse of a few pages from their album.

Enjoy!

note: slideshow is accompanied by music

Shane & Erin Melenbacker Speak at PPN Conference

Erin and I had so much fun speaking at the PPN Fall Conference! Actually, probably too much fun as we're beginning to see the pictures surface on Facebook :) We'll be speaking next at the Heart of America Conference in March, so if you missed us this time, we look forward to meeting you there!

Our thanks again to BODA for sponsoring us and giving away a BODA Dry bag, Mike Colon for donating his DVD "On Location With Mike Colón: Toronto", and Big Folio for providing one lucky person with a new website/blog/online hosting combo! We love these products and sites and for those of you that didn't win in the drawing or couldn't make it, BODA has offered to extend a 15% discount to anyone planning to purchase a BODA bag before October 10th. Use code: mel0814


The amazing group we had!


We had a short break, and had some awesome volunteers to play a quick round of "Reception Dance Song" Trivia. The catch... if you knew it, you had to dance it to compete. Photo below is from "Thriller"

Boys Will be Boys...even when they're men.

I love this shot!!! Kenny just sent this to me and although we weren't going to put up another post for a couple days, I had to show this one. I think this will be a classic for a while. Everyone was so fun to hang out with and this is one of the reasons why (left to right: Kenny Kim, me, Mike Colon, Bob Davis, Ray Santana.

Fun at WPPI

Here are some fun pictures we took throughout the week and some awesome people we met during our time at WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International).

From Left to Right:
Picture 1... with Mike Steelman, Ray and Anna, Mike Colon, Harald, David and Travis.
Picture 2... with Becker and Geoff, Picture 3... with Gary and Jim, from Boda Bag


Picture 1...with Gloria, Jose, Picture 2...US!, Picture 3...with Anna.


The Hoover Dam...it took hours to get here because of all the traffic :)


Having some fun out in the desert!


And from our friend Kenny... Picture 1...a group of us after an awesome dinner buffet, Picture 2... at the tradeshow.
Picture 3...Erin and Julie having fun while me, Kevin and Geoff try to take a real photo.

Woooo....hooooo!!!

Welcome to the new blog (Surprise #1)! It's been in the making and now finally finished. A big thanks to Rudy who created the blog we were envisioning. Rudy, you did an awesome job and we loved working with you. For our friends out there, leave us a comment and let us know what you think :)

Below we have linked a fun slideshow of Shane's adventures with Mike, Bob, Kenny and Kenny while in Chicago.

Chicago Photo Fun

On Saturday, Kenny, Kenny and I went to downtown Chicago for a little photo field trip. We had planned on walking around a little bit and then hitting up the Museum of Art but ended up spending all our time in Millennium park. After four hours it was getting pretty cold out so we headed out to the best Chinese food place I have eaten at called Great Seas. It was a great weekend and I had a blast hanging out with everyone, a few who Erin and I will see again in a couple weeks at WPPI. As much fun as it was, It's great to be back home with Erin.

I think I'm going to start a project called reflections :)

Master Your Craft

Today was the Chicago Master Your Craft workshop and it was a full house with 110 registered. Everyone there was really into it and asking a lot of great questions. This workshop has some great information for photographers who are just starting out and those that have been doing it for a while. There are only three stops left on the nine city tour, Dallas, LA and San Fransisco, so sign up quick. Mike flies out tomorrow morning and then Kenny and I are getting together with some other photographers for the day. Hopefully I'll post more tomorrow but just in case I don't, I heard one of the surprises may be revealed soon :)

Bob sharing his knowledge

Theses guys were awesome, they arrived a 6:30 to help the Graphi Studio ladies set up and they stayed until the end to help tear down. After it was all said and done, Mark, David, Alex and Kenny (not Kenny Kim) went with us get some food along with Martin (pictured below) who is the Aperture Product Marketing Manager for Apple.

Chris and I with Kenny Kim and his new shirts

Hang'n with Mike, Kenny and Bob

It's been a blast in Chicago so far with Mike, Kenny and Bob. We meet at the airport at about 2:30, dropped off our stuff and headed out to eat. Traffic was a little backed up so it took a little while but we finally made it to Lalo's, a great Mexican restaurant. From there we decided it would be a great idea to get some Cold Stone ice cream while the temp was about 10 degrees. From there it was to the Apple store and then on to Bob's house for a little Guitar Hero, Boxing and Tennis on the Wii. As any of these guys will probably tell you, I'm definitely no Guitar Hero :) Since it's past 3 am I'm going to let the pics do the rest. tomorrow is the Master Your Craft workshop so I'll post more about that later.

Mike caught this one of me

Kenny Before Ice Cream

Kenny After Ice Cream

Bob's autographed Mohammad Ali gloves And some boxing to go along with the gloves

At the apple store we met Faye, who had this camera. If your reading this Faye, you can get film for this camera online from a place out of NY. Sorry I can't remember the name.