Gustavo Fernandez Photographer

I met Lori Paladino of Lori Paladino Photography in August of last year when i attended the Modern Bridal Show at the San Francisco Ritz Carlton in my quest to research bridal shows and meet other photographers. We had fun chatting and talking about the wedding industry. Shortly after we met she had the wedding of Emily and Daniel in August that her Second Shooter was unable to work so she dropped me a line and i was happy to help and learn and excited about the opportunity. We had a great day and i was stoked that she loved my work and would let me know about weddings the following year. Recently she sent me 8 wedding dates for me to Second Shoot with her this year, i was super excited and extremely grateful. Thank you Lori, can’t wait til our first wedding this year.

Lori also works part-time as a recruiter at Google. When i found out i said i would love to have lunch there and experience what i had recently read about in the book The Google Story. It is a truly remarkable place. Seems more like a college campus with so many young people walking around and the only people in suits were the ones on the visitors tours. We dinned at the main cafeteria (which is free to all) and Lori mentioned that there are tons of other places to eat with just about any type of cuisine imaginable. There are just way too many benefits to mention so i looked them up, see the Google employee benefits here. Ok, so if i were to go back to Corporate America i would definitely work here. For example, 15 days vacation your first year when i had to work 3 years to there at my old job. With on-site benfeits like this who would ever want to leave the Googleplex: there’s on-site oil change, car wash, dry cleaning, massage therapy, gym, hair stylist, fitness classes and bike repair. Thanks for having me over Lori, looking forward to coming back and trying some of the other eateries.

Live List of Searches…

This afternoon i had the opportunity to meet Sylvain Gentile for coffee at Starbucks in Dublin. Sylvain and i are both member of David Jay’s Freedom Club and started corresponding back and forth via Facebook once i found out he was local. He comes from a sport photography background (his father owns a very successful sports photography business) and is just getting into wedding photography also. We are both in a similar place where we are trying to absorb as much as possible and learn from each other. It’s funny when you meet someone that is in the same place as you there is definitely no silence in the conversation. Ideas, thought, gossip, are exchanged freely and it is often a great relief meeting someone that just understands. It was great meeting you Sylvain, look forward to hanging out.

Today I had the opportunity of meeting with Sacramento photographer Ruben Gonzalez. Ruben and i met at the last PPSV (Professional Phootgraphers of Sacramento Vallley) meeting that featured Mike Larson. We had lunch at PF Chang’s in Walnut Creek and discussed many topics ranging from marketing to the lack of Hispanic photographers in the area. We spoke on different approaches we could take in our business given our Hispanic background and fluency of Spanish. Thanks for driving down Ruben, look forward to continuing our discussions on the Hispanic market.

Today i drove over to Lodi to meet up with my friend Sam Harnack. We met at the Bambi Cantrell and Jerry Ghionis Workshop in Pleasant Hill last year. Sam has a very successful studio in Lodi where a large part of his clientele is high school seniors. He does and amazing job, check out his website. We grabbed lunch at a local mexican restaurant and caught up on all the wedding business and then hung out at his studio. Over lunch he mentioned to me that he was doing a boudoir session and if the client did not mind i could stay and watch. He created another site just for this type of photography and he said he has not advertised other than some Google Ad Words it and has gotten a good amount of clients just from searches online. Check out his boudoir site called Pajama Glamour. By the way, he has an amazing staff, Miss Libby and the talented Mr Chris are a last and definitely fun to hang with. So the client had no problem with me hanging out and i was able to see Sam work his magic, a very talented man indeed. Thanks Sam for letting me hang out and pick you brain.

Here is a pic i took of Sam and Jerry Ghionis at the workshop we attended.