A lot of fellow photographers spent part of this week in Santa Barbara for the United conference held at the Fess Parker hotel.  That’s actually where I stayed at when I was there in November to photograph Zahra and Chris’s wedding at the Santa Barbara Courthouse.  So for the past few days my Facebook feed has had a stream of photos from these photographers that they took in Santa Barbara on the beach, at the Fess Parker, at the pier….just all over the place.  And they’re gorgeous.  It inspired me to finally put up some Santa Barbara pictures of my own that aren’t wedding related.

I’ll admit that while I was in Santa Barbara I didn’t want to pick up my camera very much outside of what I had to do for the wedding.  It was my last wedding of 2013, after photographing around 35 weddings that year, and I just wanted a break from having that hefty thing attached to my hand.  I wanted to look at my surroundings from an unobstructed point of view and not through a camera lens.  Santa Barbara is gorgeous and I could have spent hours walking around finding one thing after another to photograph….but I just didn’t want to.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t like taking pictures or that I get sick of it….that’s not the case at all.  My camera and I just needed to take a little well deserved break from each other.  I needed to stop looking at the world in f-stops and shutter speeds and just look it like a non-photographer would.

But come on….I couldn’t come back from California without ANY pictures.  So one evening at sunset I did decide to grab my girl, go out front of the hotel across the street to the beach and I sat my butt in the sand and photographed what I saw from my seat while also grabbing a few pictures on my way to my sandy spot and on the way back to the hotel.  Oh, and the first couple are from a walk down to the pier where I did snap a few quick photos then, too.  It was too pretty not to  🙂

I look forward to seeing all the gorgeous photos that I’m sure will be coming soon from all the United attendees!