Christopher Cooke Photography

Pretty much anyone living in Northern California, who watches the news, saw this on TV about 2 weeks ago. Well lucky (or unlucky) for me It was about 3 miles from my house!

As I saw the smoke getting BIGGER, I did what every sane person does…Grabs my camera and gets CLOSER! Ok, well any photographer would get closer, sane or not. I found a few spots to grab some shots but was quickly told to move by Fairfield Police. No worries, they are just trying to keep people safe, I get that. Well I called a local online newspaper (or magazine, I dont know exactly what to call it) and they agreed to use my images if I could get closer. So with a “verbal press pass” in my bag I was able to get closer to the action and got some pretty decent shots until we ALL got pushed back due to changing conditions. Once the plastics that were burning starting falling on my head and the fire cooled I decided to wrap it up and head for shelter. Here are some of the images I got from the event. Luckily, no one was seriously injured fighting this inferno!

As a lot of you know I work with pageants on top of weddings, portraits, and everything else. I don’t do a LOT of them, in fact I only do one pageant a year, but I work with pageant girls all year!!

I have been working with Stevi McShane and Crowned One Productions for 4 years now, and every year the pageants get better and better and I get to try new things and work with great groups of young women. When I started photographing pageants I, like most people didn’t understand them. I thought it was just a bunch of pretty girls on a stage and doing nothing more than look good while doing it. Now 4 years later I have met a LOT of these young women and I have learned that there is so much more than gowns and bathing suits when it comes to pageants. I have seen some of these girls grow up year after year, gain confidence, and do a lot of work in their community. It is such a great experience every year to meet all the contestants and have lots of fun during the pageant doing photo shoots and other events. Here are this years contestants at one of our shoots!

The Young Teen Contestants:

The Teen Contestants:

And The Miss Contestants:

As part of my sponsorship of the Crowned One Productions pageants, I do photo shoots for the new titleholders. This is such a great shoot. I get to spend lots of time with the girls, and get to know them and what they are like off the stage. Our shoot is usually one of the first things these girls do as titleholders and it just fuels their fire to go on to their respective national pageants. The photos we get from these shoots are used for the national pageant website, the Crowned One Productions website, promotional material, as well as their business cards and autograph cards.

This year we have ALL Southern California residents as titleholders, but luckily I have been able to do multiple shoots with them and I even got to go to Disneyland with them!Enjoy the photos of this years title holders! I wish you all the best of luck at Nationals! Make us proud!!!