It was a great opportunity to see Nafplion again, one of my favorite places in Greece and meet my other friends and colleagues that were also invited.
Yiannis Alefantou, George Pahountis, Thanasis Kaiafas, Christos Contsaloudis, but also Takis Athanasopoulos and Manos Mandilaras that I met there for the first time.
I spent there only two days but they were two very fun and joyful days and we all had a really great time.
Just what I needed to start the season.
Thank you guys for the great experience. I wish we can do something similar again.

Along with the kid’s father we were seven photographers and only one Videographer so I decided to shoot more video and less stills to even it out so I ended up with a fusion style video with both motion and stills.

Enjoy!

Vasilios Christening in Nafplion from Spiros Zaharakis on Vimeo.

I had great expectations for the wedding day and I wasn’t let down. The time plan was great, the location couldn’t be better and the guests were prepared to have lots of fun.

We started the day early, walking around in Fira around the St Minas church to scout out the location, stopped buy the Asian Club to have lunch at the (unexpectedly good) Chinese take away fast food as I am a huge Chinese food fan and then we headed to the Panorama hotel to meet the bride and groom.

The bride had already started doing her hair while the groom was still at the swimming pool with his friends.

You could feel it in the air that this was going to be a great day.

Location: Fira Santorini

Preparations: Boutique Hotel Panorama

Church: St Minas

Reception: Theros Wave Bar

Wedding Planner: Amalia Valvi Poema Weddings

Make Up artist: Bianca Treveza

Assistant photographer: Niki Marketaki

Videography: Kostas Moustakas & Benos Rigas WedFilms

Bride getting ready at Panorama Boutique HotelJonathon at the hotel’s swimming poolReady to goThe ceremony at Agios Minas ChurchWe arrived at Theros Wave Bar in Vlychada at dusk, my favorite time for pictures. And Theros is probably the best place to have your wedding reception in Santorini. I don’t think I could ask for more.

Christina paid a lot of attention to details, I got the nicest card with my name on I ever had at a wedding and food was delicious. My veal fillet was just the way I like it, medium raw.

Lots of laughter and tears at the speechesLet’s get this party started…

Me, Christina and Jonathon went there a couple hours earlier so we walk the little streets in Oia and take some engagement style photos in the picturesque town.

It was a long and tiring walk and the day was a bit too hot for everyone but we had a good time and it was well worth the effort.

We finished our photo shoot a little after sunset and the long walk increased our appetite.

The excellent food and service at Feredini restaurant was our reward for that.

I arrived at 11:35 Sunday morning and the tour had already started but Christina & Jon had already arrange that I get picked up and transfered at the boat they were in.

Alkyon (another tour boat) was waiting for me to arrive at Athinios port and get me to Hermes, our boat, at the volcano.

Well, I have to admit that even though I love tours, I am not a huge fan of boats, and even though in the end of the boat trip I managed to get sea sick, the scenery, the people and the hospitality of the couple made it an amazing experience that I am glad that iI didn’t miss. Did I mentioned the people? This was an amazing crowd, they came to Greece to have fun and they sure did. I just love it when people have fun!
The tour started at the volcano, I got on their boat right before their departure to the hot springs where we stoped for a swim (didn’t try that as it wasn’t very convenient for me) and then we docked to Amoudi bay to continue from there with the bus to Kamari for lunch and then the Santo Winery for some wine tasting in the sunset hour.
Almost half of the shots I took the first day were with my little Sony RX100 which proved to be an amazing camera and just perfect for the occasion.
Enjoy!

The feeling of being robbered is not a pleasent one and that turned me down a bit.

However since last week I have all my new stuf on my hands, a new much desired Canon 5D markIII, along with a few new lenses and accesories so now I am up and running again.

The new camera helped me forget about my stolen stuff and I can now concentrate on my job again.

So my first post after the burglary had to be something nice. So I’m posting one of my favorite weddings in Chania for 2011.

I was so happy that Kalli & Michalis chose me for their wedding, I simply cannot describe it.

They both live in Athens but their heart is in Crete.

This was a wedding I lived a little bit more than others since I joined them on their pre-wedding party and we also took a day trip together, to Elafonissi for a next day photo shoot.  It was my favorite wedding in Chania for 2011.

This is the first part with pictures from their wedding day.

Ceremony was in Profitis Ilias and the reception in Costa Costa, enjoy!

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What a lovely wedding it was… The couple Elias and Eliana, both doctors with a great taste in everything, had paid attention to every little detail in their wedding. Photography and videography could not be left out in this perfect setup.
George Pahountis was doing the stills and me and Kostas took care of the video. I believe that we all did a great job there.
Here is a short teaser Kostas just posted.
Thumbs up Kostas, it was my pleasure working with you again.

Well, one thing I know for sure, to win an award in a competition, first thing you have to do is enter the competition (how genius is that?)

Being a member of the Fearless Photographers group for a couple months now, I decided to enter their monthly competition. The fact that some of the best photographers in the world are members there and submit images in the competition regularly, wasn’t working in my favor so I entered the competition not really expecting anything, especially after I found out that more than 2500 images were submitted from great photographers from all around the world.

I was really surprised when I saw my picture not only featured in the awards but also receiving a “best of show” title meaning that my picture was one of the 5 pictures that all 5 judges voted for.

Getting a “fearless” award is a great honor, getting a “fearless, best of show” award though is an even greater one and really not something I could even dream of.

So here is the image that was awarded:

Image taken at the bride’s preparation in Grecotel Creta Palace Hotel in Rethymnon, Crete.

A Big thank you to the judges of this competition: Ryan Brenizer, Joe Appel, Sergio, Jacqueline Dersjant, and Candice Cusic.

If you want to see some great, fearless photography, check out all the awarded images here or through facebook.

If you like more info about the fearless photographers and the  fearless awards just visit the fearless photographers web page and enjoy some of the finest wedding photography in the world.

If you like what you see, you can “like” the fearless photographers facebook page too

It’s a project about free educational seminars in 13 Greek cities, with 13 different themes. 13 students participate in each one of them and the project is sponsored by OPAP (hence the number 13 on the project).

In the end of the seminar they asked them for a group picture of all 13 participants. But it couldn’t be just any picture, it should be a themed picture with a theme of their choice.

Now lefki organizes every year, seminars for enthusiast photographers and some of the members including my self  offer their knowledge for free in a 3 months photography course. This year we broke every record with more than 100 students attending.

It was in our first day when the seminars started that we were all together at Asotos Yios where our seminars take place, and some of the panopticon seminar participants were there too, talking about that group photo they had to take and at that point one of them, Spiros Zervoudakis looked at me, turned back to the other guys he was talking with and said: “I have a great idea…”, “we will do a wedding photo, Spiros will do it for us”.

For some reason some people when they look at me they think of weddings , I wonder why.

I had no idea what they were talking about but I joined the conversation out of curiosity.

When I heard what it was about I was overly excited. I agreed to do it straight away and since it had to be done within just a couple of days I had to act really quick.

I was in charge to prepare the photo shoot of 13 of my friends with “Wedding” as a theme. Well I was not going to do this in the conventional way. Thank god everyone was just as crazy as the idea was and we ended up with some of the funniest wedding group pictures ever. Everyone of them had to get dressed something odd for a wedding. This was going to be fun.

The organizers at Panopticon had a blast when they saw them. I believe it’s going to be hard for them to forget about those crazy Cretans.

The first one was selected to be used and the second was a runner up

Enjoy…

The “Royal” Wedding

The “Mexican” wedding

The party of course had a D.J.s part as well and Christos “Miller”, George Siras from Athens, and Juliet Sikora that traveled from Germany for Stathis & Ioanna wedding in the decks made everyone go mad dancing on the floor.

Stathi & Ioanna thank you for letting me be a part of your wedding, It was really a pleasure.

Spiros.

The Groom

Here comes the bride

At the reception, EsperosBride And Groom Entering Esperos and first danceThe live band Nostodia

The D.J.s, Christos Miller, George Sirasand Juliet Sikora

The groom with the photo and video guys!!!