A B'not Mitzvah and Party At "The Beach"

I have shot so many Bar Mitzvahs, Bat Mitzvahs, B'nai Mitzvahs but this was my first B'not Mitzvah (two girls). These twins were both great subjects and lots of fun to photograph. I shot this image with the Sigma fish eye lens getting close to the girls (but not so close that I would distort them) and aiming upwards.


This was also the first time that I had photographed at this Temple. Cool lighting to work with! I stood in the back with a Canon 100-400mm lens and a Canon 70-200 2.8 lens both mounted on Canon 5D Mark II bodies.

Then after the service it was time to have some fun. The family picked City Beach in Fremont, CA for their party. This was a great choice. The kids had a great time running around and playing all the games. They shot pool, played in the jump houses, had some ping pong tournaments and even did some rock climbing. This was fun to shoot, since it was not your typical dance reception.Who had more upper body strength, the kids climbing the rock walls or me running all over the building carrying the cameras and L series lenses? :) OK - the kids win.

The kids had a blast, but the parents didn't just sit around and watch. They jumped into the fun as well. I took this image with the Canon 85mm 1.2 lens wide open. This lens rocks for low light and creative shooting!

Did I mention that they had dodge ball games? Here is the father of the twins and he is getting competitive in the game. I think this the shot where he was aiming to take out his mother-in-law. He will pay for that later! :)

Towards the end of the evening, City Beach broke out the surfing machine. I had never seen this before. The kids had a great time trying to outlast each other on this thing and I had fun shooting images of this activity. If you look on the wall (to the right of the image) you will see that we projected some huge images from the service and the party. I swear the images were at least 20 feet high and crystal clear. Gotta love that!
This was one of my favorite shots form the evening. I was shooting images of the kids getting their food and thought that it would be cool to get a picture from behind the cook with the burners at the bottom of the frame. He said "oh - do you want real flames?" and I said "heck yeah!". So...he requested a glass of Bacardi 151 and voila. Note: No 13 year-olds were harmed in the photographing of these images. :)