SAN DIEGO WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG :: SAN DIEGO POTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG: SCHNACK STUDIOS

After shooting at Caracol for bit, we headed back towards San Ignacio and stopped at the Rio On Pools for Christina’s trash-the-dress sesssion. Rio On Pools is this cool waterfall that empties into some small pools that are perfect for escaping the Belizean heat.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we shot some portraits of Jeff and Christina and their bridal party, at the Mayan Ruins at Caracol. The journey to Caracol from the San Ignacio area is about 2.5 hours over a washboard road through the jungle. As if loosening your teeth during the journey wasn’t enough, the road is so remote that there is a danger of being accosted by bandits in the jungle, so visitors to ruins must be escorted by armed members of the Belizean Army.

Since we had a lot of people in the group, we took three cars. I was in a car with Christina’s maid of honor and her boyfriend. Before setting out to Caracol, we were tasked with picking up lunch for everyone, after which we would meet everyone and our armed escorts at the entrance to the national park. We stopped at a little restaurant in San Ignacio and ordered 13 burritos, which we figured would be the fastest thing they could make. Wrong. This restaurant provides everything made-to-order, so they literally had to make the tortillas by hand. After an hour (!), we finally had our burritos, but we were running way late and were most likely going to miss our armed escort.

We arrived at the gate to the national park, which is about one-fifth of the way to Caracol. The escorts had already left, and the next escort group wouldn’t be leaving for another 90 minutes. Decision time. Do we play it safe and wait for the Army, but risk being *really* late to the rest of the group? Or do we go for it, risk being kidnapped by armed bandits, and catch up to everyone else at the ruins? At this point, discretion was not the better part of valor, so we decided to go for it. As we would find out on the road to the ruins, the jungle unit of the British Army was training with the Belizean Army, so there was a higher-than-usual presence of soldiers in the area, which made it much safer than normal.

Once at Caracol we met up with the rest of the group, got the bridal party into their wedding attire, and shot away!

Libby and Ravi are two of the coolest, most down-to-earth people one would ever hope to meet. Since they moved from Boston to California a few weeks back (they’re moving to San Francisco in the beginning of August), the three of us have been quite the power trio–sipping fine wine at the Four Seasons and spending yesterday shooting engagement images on the streets of Del Mar.

We started the shoot over some drinks at the Enoteca at the Del Mar Plaza, then wandered the streets of Del Mar before heading down to the beach. When passers-by would ask what the purpose was for our shoot, the response was that Libby was a former reality-show contestant and that the shoot was for US Weekly’s “They’re just like us!” section. Libby and Ravi are both so good looking that people actually believed us, until yours truly blew our cover by spilling the beans to some valet.

Spent the weekend in Lake Havasu doing, among other things, some portraits of male Riverfolk with mustaches.

The male Riverfolk is an interesting species. In addition to driving absurdly expensive powerboats with names like “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” and thinking that wearing cut-off jeans with fluorescent-green tank-tops looks good, they grow their facial hair in interesting patterns. The mustaches on some males resemble the clean, thick growth of, say, a Tom Selleck or a Gerald McCraney (of “Simon and Simon” fame, aka Mr. Delta Burke).

Some, on the other hand, are thin, wiry and unkempt, similar to a K-Fed or a Kid Rock. They display an attitude that says, “I don’t have quite enough testosterone to grow this thing right, but I’m doing it anyway no matter how lame it looks.”