I’m beyond excited to announce the launch of my new company — ColorPop — and our first offering: ColorPop Actions Volume I. This set includes more than 40 Photoshop actions for awesome color, detail, brightness and toning. It’s a year in the making, so if you’re looking for a great new action set that’s incredibly versatile and provides options for tons of different combinations, I hope you’ll check it out. People are always asking how I do my color . . . and this is how.

The ColorPop web site includes four pages of befores and afters (providing visuals of everything except the prep actions, which help prep your images for color work), as well as a detailed How-To section. The actions are fully layered and masked (enabling easy adjustments), and the toning actions combine beautifully to create new looks. This is the action set I wish I’d had years ago, and early feedback has been great. (A huge thanks to all my fabulous beta testers.)

Looking to crank up your color? Click here to visit the ColorPop web site. Hope you all enjoy.

The red shoes in the upper right hand corner of this image collection were created by by Shawna at Sonia’s request. Sonia chose artwork that paid tribute to the author and illustrator Edward Gorey, who was a favorite of Sonia’s when she was in high school. The resulting bottom-of-shoe illustrations were just lovely. But the succulent shoes?

I pronounce them Best Shoes of the Year.

By the way, if you’ve ever wondered where the “Yamamoto” came from, behold the photo of Shawna dancing with her super-handsome husband. And the tiny photo in the lower left? That’s makeup artist extraordinaire Jeannie Jeffries from Couture Beauty, me, Sonia and Shawna. I love working with this incredible team of talent. I hope you’ve enjoyed this five-parter on Sonia’s wedding. She’s an incredible event designer and coordinator, and a good friend, too, so being a part of her wedding was a true joy.

Next up: The gorgeous wedding Flor and Jerome in Quito, Ecuador. I’ll try to start my two-part post on this wedding tomorrow night, but I’m shooting a reception tomorrow (for the delightful Fizzah Raza, who is also a wonderful photographer), so if I get home too late, I’ll start their post on Sunday. And now, the shoes:

Sonia’s Wedding Dress: Pronovias Barcelona

Despite best laid plans for an outdoor ceremony, Sonia’s wedding unexpectedly took place on the rainiest day of the year. A full seven inches of rain fell on the day of the wedding, meaning that the majority of the morning was spent erecting a plastic tent (which itself spent part of the morning collapsing under the incredible weight of the water falling from the skies). The tent team worked incredibly hard to get everything set up so the guests would be dry, and the ever-creative Sonia glammed up the plastic tenting with chandeliers. Plans for a next-door pre-ceremony cocktail party had to be rethought, as it was also to have taken place outdoors. Sonia and Philipp’s guests were instead welcomed into small area adjacent to the ceremony location, where they contented themselves with a very cozy shoulder-to-shoulder cocktail hour. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with getting cozy with cocktails, and everyone had a wonderful time despite the wet skies.

The always-divine Shawna Yamamoto created a look for the decor that perfectly reflected Sonia’s vision of vintage details with pops of color. Long wooden tables were topped with books, wooden letters, metal numbers, flowers enclosed by glass, floral arrangements, candles, bookends and other beautiful details. The cake table included vintage luggage and antique-style photo tags, along with desserts enclosed in glass (not to mention fabric birds atop the cake). Scenes from B&W old movies were projected on the Smog Shoppe’s movie screen throughout the reception, adding a stylish vibe to the entire affair. Eddie Zaratsian from Tic Tock Couture Florals provided a second bouquet for the lovely Miss Sonia . . . because who doesn’t love having two bouquets? The fantastically wonderful Jeannie Jeffries from Couture Beauty expertly handled Sonia’s hair and makeup, and graciously and generously came back to work her magic once again for our day-after session. Daniel Boswell at Imagique did a same-day edit that brought the house down. And the most rocktastic DJ I know — Ajay Manaktala from Special Occasions — spun just the right blend of tunes to keeps guests from Germany, India and America dancing until the wee small hours.

And did I mention the shoes? The shoes . . . the shoes! Shawna Yamamoto created shoes that I pronounce “Best Shoes of the Year,” and they will be the subject of the last post in this series on Sonia’s wedding. I don’t usually give awards for “best of” anything, but when you see these shoes, you will understand why they deserve that honor.

My first post from this wedding will be one of two image collections focused solely on decor. Be sure to check back on Wednesday for Part 2 of this five-part post from Sonia’s wedding . . . because you just know you’re dying to see what Sonia wore.

Venue: The Smog Shoppe
Floral Artistry: Shawna Yamamoto at Shawna Yamamoto Event Design
Hair & Makeup: Jeannie Jeffries at Couture Beauty
Cinematography: Daniel Boswell at Imagique
DJ Artistry: Ajay Manaktala at Special Occasions
Cake Artistry: Designs by Ruben

For those photographers who will be traveling to conferences in the next few months, I’ll be speaking at the Digital Wedding Forum Conference in New Orleans (January 15-19) and doing a Master Class at WPPI in Las Vegas (February 23-29). If you’re a photographer who will be attending either conference, I hope you’ll stop by to say hi or to attend one of my presentations (both on making your color pop and achieving outstanding color in your images). I’ll also be doing a booth at WPPI, but more on that in a forthcoming post. For now, I’ll be blogging daily or every other day for the next two weeks. The posts are already done, but I thought they’d be more fun to view if they trickled out slowly. So be sure to check back often, because I’m in a blog-happy state of mind.

I wish a very Happy New Year to you all, as well as a 2012 filled with health, joy and peace. First up: The wedding of Sonia Sharma.