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.

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.

American Photo Magazine’s Top 10 Wedding Photographers for 2011

Camille & Chadwick Bensler / Jonetsu Photography, Vancouver
Dina Douglass / Andrena Photography, Los Angeles, California
Greg Gibson / Greg Gibson Photography, Washington, D.C.
Jesse & Whitney Chamberlin / Our Labor of Love, Atlanta, Georgia
Jonas Peterson / Jonas Peterson, Brisbane, Australia
Marcus Bell / Studio Impressions, Brisbane, Australia
Nate & Jaclyn Kaiser / The Image is Found, San Diego, California
Parker Pfister / Parker Pfister, Asheville, North Carolina
Rocco Ancora / Rocco Ancora, Melbourne, Australia
Yervant / Yervant, Melbourne, Australia

Here’s the cover (on newsstands May 10th, but on Zinio now), the letter from the editor (explaining the selection process) along with a list of the advisory panel members, and my feature in the magazine. Congratulations to my clients Kristen and Tara, whose images were chosen for this piece. The editors asked me to provide 30 images for them to choose from, and they ended up choosing two images taken in India (in Udaipur and Samode, respectively), four years apart.

Congratulations to all my colleagues who are included on this list, and a huge thank you to all my wonderful clients, whose fabulous weddings and “photography first” mindsets have helped me create so many beautiful images. Also, a heartfelt thank you to Yoshi Morimoto, owner of YM Images, who seconds for me most of the time and is one of the best people I know.

Today, we’ll be doing a day-after session in the rural village of Samode, which is located very close to the palace. I spent three hours walking the village a few days ago, and at one point, I had more than 100 children lined up to get candy (while screaming, “Pens! Chocolate! Pens!”). Lovely people with lots of smiles for me and Yoshi Morimoto, who traveled all this way to shoot the events with me. We head back home late tomorrow (Sunday), and land Monday. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

One of the most jaw-dropping events I photographed this year was designed and coordinated by the talented and lovely Sonia Sharma at Sonia Sharma Events. It’s hard to go wrong with Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland as a theme, but even I couldn’t have imagined just how much a great designer and coordinator (like Sonia) could do with a blank “Alice” canvas.

Guests walked into a paradise featuring huge mushrooms, swirling florals and greenery, and even a topiary caterpillar — all brought to life by the creative team at R. Jack Balthazar. Jesters juggled and rode around on unicycles, while the Mad Hatter, Tweedledee and Tweedledum circulated among the guests. Synchronized swimmers provided a stylized performance in the pool before trumpet players (cloaked in “royal court” garments) announced that the festivities were soon starting. The extraordinary red tent featured chandeliers as well as a huge spinning custom-made sphere upon which stunning visuals were projected. The gorgeous red dance floor was surrounded by a black-and-white harlequin floor, upon which the guest tables were arranged. The table decor included huge “chess pieces” with roses at the base, along with gold-rimmed stemware and place settings. The fine dining was provided by Chef Giacomino Drago, owner of Il Pastaio in Beverly Hills.

As guests walked through the curtained entry to the side of the tent, they encountered an entire room filled with the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party — a dessert table sparkling with projected lights and brimming with custom desserts. A cake designed to look like the Mad Hatter’s chapeau was topped by a dancing Alice, and I was literally blown away by the detail in this stunning cake. Guests danced throughout the night under this perfect red canopy, and few in attendance will ever forget this one-of-a-kind paradise created by Sonia Sharma Events. With fabulous second camera work by Yoshi Morimoto.

I am shooting Neelam and Gaurav’s wedding at the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey today (so sad that it’s raining and their wedding had to be moved indoors), but I promise to get back to everyone tomorrow (my first free day with working computers since I have returned home). I am so sorry for the delay and truly appreciate your patience. When computers go down, everything else stops. Please forgive me, as I couldn’t have known this was going to happen, and I know that I am very behind on responding to inquiries. I will get back to everyone tomorrow. Have a great day, and if you’re in So Cal, stay dry.