The scripture below has impacted my life more than any other I can think of. Keith Green, a christian singer/songwriter who died in an airplane crash in 1982, quoted this verse on one of his albums. I remember sitting in the back of my parents car when I was maybe 13 years old driving back from our annual summer camping trip to Yosemite listening to a Keith Green CD. He told a story about judgement day from Matthew 25. At the end of the story, he said in a convicted voice "what is the difference between the sheep and the goats? It's what they did and didn't DO!" It hit me like a ton of bricks and has never left me. It's not enough to be a church-going, happy-smiley, "amen brother" shouting, tithing, baptised, nice guy with a fish sticker on my car.

Lord, give me a heart for the sick, poor, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, naked, and lonely. Please forgive me for my selfishness. Soften my heart and give me conviction so I can make a difference.

Matthew 25:31-46

31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.

32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.

33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in;

36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?

38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You?

39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’

40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:

42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink;

43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’

45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’

46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Had to post these videos of Aidan. He's starting to learn his ABC's.

I got a package in the mail today from a photographer I met in Vegas at WPPI named Cameron Ingalls. What a cool guy!! He sent me a super nice note thanking me for encouraging and inspiring him and also sent me a stylish new watch and belt. I remember that my wife and some of the girls assisting me at WPPI (Shyla, Jasmine, Liana, and Kristin) were all raving about this watch they saw Cameron wearing. The band is made from a tie and it wraps around your wrist. Pretty sweet! The belt and watch are made by Neves (seven spelled backwards). I posted a picture of it below that I took with the built in iSight on my MacBook. Check out the belt too - love it! Thanks Cameron!

pic of my new watch and belt - Click here to check out the neves website. Cool stuff!

below is a pic of Cameron I stole from his website.

Just read this scripture and thought it might be as inspiring to you as it is to me!

"How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways.
When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house,
Your children like olive plants around your table.
Behold, For thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord."
Psalm 128:1-6

Maybe it just hit home because my wife is pregnant and I'm going to have two little olive plants around my table :) God is good!

I just released seats on mikecolon.net for my September Newport Beach 4-day Intensive! I'll be sending out an announcement to over 5,000 photographers this afternoon so if you haven't already attened my workshop, now's your chance to grab a seat!

Also, for all of you Colón Experience Veterans, I'm planning my advanced seminar for this November. It will be limited to photographers who have already taken my 4-Day Intensive so keep your eyes peeled!

The email below is from Amanda Phillips who is a recent attendee of my 4-day workshop here in Newport Beach. She is such a sweetheart and an awesome photographer too! I remember Curtis from Living Cinema telling me after making the student montage for my DVD that her images really stood out to him because they were so different than most of the other students. She really does have a great eye as you can see from the image above. She gives me a lot of credit for her success in her email below but I know that her success comes from having such a great heart, a love for people, and a God-given gift for photography. Thanks for the very cool email Amanda! I'll be here cheering you on as you do amazing things in your life and in the photography community! Oh yeah, I almost forgot... Amanda has some very exciting news at the end of her email! Congratulations Amanda!! Guess we'll be celebrating just a couple weeks apart!

Here's Amanda's email:

From: amanda@amanda-phillips.com
Subject: Business Update!
Date: June 21, 2006 7:54:51 PM PDT
To: mike@mikecolon.com

Hey Mike-

It hasn't quite been six months since your first four day intensive
seminar and I feel like writing to you to give you an update on my life
and business. First, I want to congratulate you and Julie on your new
addition. Now Aidan will have a playmate! I also want to say I continue to
keep up with your busy life through your blog and I am still learning from
you and am staying amazed at everything you do! You are a truly gifted
man and I am blessed to have someone like you to be my mentor.

I know you don't like long emails and don't have time for a lot of them so
I will try to keep this short :) When I came to your workshop I was going
into my second year of seriously persuing wedding photography. I had one
wedding booked for the year and wasn't sure I would get much more than
that booked. My goal at that point was to book five total. As of today I
have had to change that goal two times. I surpassed the five weddings and
I am now counting thirteen booked for this year and one already booked for
next year. My business has been blessed over and over. I have taken your
advice and I give back to my community of photographers whenever I can. In
fact, I have two that are always calling me for my help and advice which
amazes me considering this is only my second year! With that, my confidence
has opened up to a new level and worth. Today, I just received an email
from a local publication "The Knot" that they have accepted one of my
weddings to put in a 5 to 6 page spread featuring the wedding couple with
my photographs. I can't tell you how excited I am about this. I just feel
that God has put me in all the right places at all the right times in
order for my business to grow and prosper. But I can't help but think
about "The Mike Colon Experience" everytime something like this happens. I
feel that you are the one who has put me on the track to success and I
can't thank you enough. I knew when I left your workshop something in me
had changed and something great was going to happen, but I never knew
exactly what that was and when. I know now. If you ever have a part two
seminar you can count me in. Thank you for being my mentor.

I am itching to get back to California and I will be there for the Pictage
Conference. If I can help you at your seminar or if you have anything that
needs to be done I would love to be a part of it. Also wanted to tell you
my husband and I are expecting a baby too! We just found out a couple of
weeks ago. My due date is February 6th.

God Bless,
Amanda

Amanda Phillips Photography
http://www.amanda-phillips.com
http://www.amanda-phillips.blogspot.com

Wow! I just got home from France last night and read all of the super nice comments on my last couple of posts! Thanks everyone! I'm home with my family now and my beautiful wife is sleeping peacefully next to me as I type. Those of you that know my wife know that I'm not lying when I say she's beautiful... inside and out! She is the best thing that ever happened to me and I am so blessed to have such an amazing wife. She puts up with so much craziness and is so patient with me and understanding when I have to go out of town. She takes care of our 2 year old son Aidan every day and will even take care of all kinds of things for me when I get home from work just so I can have time to play with him. God has blessed me beyond what I ever could have wished for! I wasn't going to say anything for another week or two but some of you already know so I guess I'd better let the cat out of the bag. We're having another baby! Yep, my Ju Ju is pregnant again and she's the cutest thing you've ever seen with her belly just starting to pop out! What an amazing month it's been! Here are some more super exciting things going on:

Jasmine filmed a few clips of me a couple weeks back for Dane Sander's Simple Photo Minute and it's online now! Thanks Jasmine and Dane!! I know this might be old news for some of you but I've been out of town so please forgive me :) CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO!



Nikon wrote three articles on me this month!
CLICK HERE FOR THE NIKON PRO2PRO ARTICLE
CLICK HERE FOR THE NIKON LEGENDS ARTICLE
CLICK HERE FOR THE NIKON EDUCATION SERIES ARTICLE

Nikon is also featuring me on TiVO for the entire month of June! I'm embarrassed to say that I don't have TiVO yet so if any of you TiVO peeps out there catch my profile... please let me know if you see it and how it turned out!

Thanks again for all of your great comments! I can't begin to explain how much they mean to me! For those of you waiting for a response to an email you sent me, I'll be plugging away on my emails starting tomorrow. If you've sent me a message longer than a few weeks ago and I haven't responded, please resend. I switched computers recently and unfortunately some of my past emails were lost. I plan to get caught up over the next two weeks. Thanks for being so patient!

The sun is rising and Ray and I have not slept yet! We've been up all night looking at the 14,000+ images from the past few days. Today we took the bride and groom (Judith and Michel) through the streets of Paris and it was amazing! We didn't finish until about 9:30pm and believe it or not the lighting was still perfect!

I love these, taken with the 200mm 2.0 wide open. That lens just makes everything look awesome!

You can't find backgrounds like this in the OC!

Below is a shot of me taken by the infamous Uncle Ray. Look at that composition!

And now for some images I know you've been waiting for from the wedding day in Monaco!!

I'd like to take credit for the image above, but I can't because it was taken by Ray's wife Anna. She nailed this shot of the Port of Monaco capturing the largest personally owned yacht in the world The Phocea. It looks like a postcard! Way to go Anna!

Above: Location of the ceremony at St. John's Church in Menton. Below: Location of the reception at Mirazur, a super cool restaurant on the border France and Italy (literally) where we were served a mind-blowing 10 course meal!

Above and Below: The After Party on the beach started at midnight and with desserts and dancing until the wee hours!

After the party subsided, we took off with the bride and groom for some late night shots in front the famous Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco. What a sight!

I want to give a special thanks to Ray and Anna for bringing me out for this absolutely stunning wedding and to Michel and Judy for being such great hosts and beautiful people! Love you guys!

I'm in Paris!! So far I give this trip two thumbs up! Just got back from Dinner with Ray Santana and his beautiful wife Anna. They are such an amazing couple. So genuine and in love, they're just fun people to spend time with. Tonight we ate at the Buddha Bar Paris a few blocks from our hotel. If you're ever in Paris, you have to eat there. Great sushi, awesome atmosphere, and great music. We arrived in Paris last night and to my surprise I looked out the window of my hotel room to see a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower! I have to admit, for a second I thought to myself... I don't even have to go outside, I'll just kick it in on the bed in my air conditioned hotel room, watch some futbol on the tv, update my blog and get through some emails. If I want to see the Eiffel Tower, I could just turn my head to the right and see it out of my window. But that would have been just plain lazy so I got up and went out to see it up close. It is huge! I've really only seen pictures of it on postcards or in other people's photo albums. I've also seen the little souveniers people bring home. I guess I never got a proper perspective because I was a bit in shock of how large the thing is. I stood there in awe while guarding my pockets because I heard from like three people that there was a good chance I'd be pickpocketed there by a gypsy kid. Anna was getting her portrait drawn by a local artist there and said that she saw some kid stalking me while I was watching the artist draw. So far I still have my wallet, blackberry, and cameras with nothing missing. Let's see if I can keep it that way.
Ray had a client vacationing in Paris this week so he arranged an engagement session for them and I jumped in to help out. They were so much fun! It was like a million degrees outside and the only time our schedules lined up was at 9am so kept it short and sweet. See a shot of Ricky and Gabi below.
Stay tuned for some images from the Monaco wedding! I'm going through a couple thousand images to pick some that really do the wedding justice!

Maria and Robert are quite possibly the cutest couple on Earth. They've been married for just a few years now and wanted to take photos as a couple before they made an addition to the family. They said that their parents didn't have any photographs of themselves when they were young couples and that's something they want to have for their children to look at in the years ahead. They both work in the movie industry for MGM and have very interesting careers that deal directly with some of Hollywoods biggest names. We spent about 4 hours together shooting on the beach near the Montage Resort and eating dinner at Javier's in Laguna Beach.

All of these images (except the last three) were taken with the Nikon 200mm AF-S VR f2.0 lens. It's awesome for shallow depth of field and tack sharp images with amazing color saturation.

The unexpected wave is a key factor in getting a client all the way in the water for some great wet and sandy photos ;)

I must apologize to Maria and Robert for promising them a shower when I encouraged them to get wet during the shoot. I honestly had no idea it was out of order! Lucky for me I found another shower for them close by and they were able to rinse off and change before dinner.

Our very kind and patient make-up artist Mara Levarre stuck around to re-apply! I met Mara at the Grace Ormonde cover shoot last fall. She's very cool!

The Nikon 200mm f2.0 VR is also the perfect lens for shooting after dark. The image below was shot at 1/125 sec at f2.0, 800 iso.

On our way to Javier's for dinner I used a remote SB-800 flash to light the image below from behind.

And for a perfect ending to a fun photo session we hit up Gelato Paradiso for dessert!

What an amazing start to an amazing month! I am so proud to say that Nikon just added me to their permanent archive of "Legends Behind the Lens" on the Nikon website! I still can't believe they picked me and I somehow feel undeserving of the title with so many talented photographers out there shooting Nikon! Praise God for this awesome blessing! I'll be featured on the NikonNet.com homepage for the entire month of June! CLICK HERE to read the article!

Also, this week I'm teaming up with my buddy Ray Santana (an amazing photographer based in Miami) to photograph this cool wedding in France! Check out the itinerary below... I'm so excited!

Taken from Judith and Michel's wedding homepage:

Friday, June 9th

We plan to kick off the weekend festivities with a sunset boat ride along the famous Cote d’Azur on Friday evening. We will set sail from the famous port of Monaco, along the coast to Menton, passing the peninsula of Roquebrune Cap Martin for an unforgettable view of the French Riviera from the sea.

Following the cruise, we will have dinner at a local restaurant, one of the oldest in Menton, featuring traditional Mediterranean Mentonnaise Cuisine.

Saturday, June 10th Saturday is the big day!

For those who would like to visit the Principality of Monaco, there will be a private morning tour of the Royal Palace, Gardens, Port, Jacques Cousteau Museum and of course the world famous Casino of Monte Carlo. For those who prefer to sit back and relax in Menton, there is the beach and the old city center waiting to be explored.

The wedding ceremony begins at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and will be held at St. John’s Church in Menton. Immediately following the ceremony we will have a reception dinner at Mirazur, then on to Plage Napleon to dance the rest of the night away on the beach by moonlight.

Sunday, June 11th

Sunday will take us across the border to Dolceacqua, Italy, a short drive away, for a good old traditional Italian style lunch to cure the hangovers and fill the bellies before we bid au revoir and bon voyage!