Samay Studio: the blog

Patel Family - San Francisco Portraits

2009-06-29T17:15:00.001-07:00

Catching up on one of the many portrait sessions from the Spring, here are some highlights of the Patel Family from a sunny April afternoon in San Francisco.

We started out at Baker Beach...it was Aarav's first time at the beach and above all, he was just confused by all the water and sand. So it was definitely cute to see him make new discoveries about this 'wierd stuff' :)

We then moved onto a nearby playground where Aarav really opened up. When photographing kids, I always love to catch them in moments that they just LOVE. In this case, Aarav just loves swings and playground equipment...

And just in time for Aarav's first birthday party, the family had a couple of gallery wraps made to hang in their house. We wanted to do two completely different looks so the first one with black & white photos just have a simple background. The second one is more playful and colorful.

Aarav, I'm glad we got the chance to spend an afternoon photographing you! It's going to be a blast watching you grow up!

Engagement Portrait Session with Kinjal & Alan

2009-05-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

Kinjal and Alan were the lucky winners of our Engagement Portrait raffle last year. We started our shoot at the Embarcadero center in San Francisco and walked over to Union Square. We had certain places that we definitely knew we wanted to cover in the photo session. However, as usual, we stopped and took impromptu pictures as we made our way through the City trying to capture the essence of San Francisco.

With great weather at San Francisco and a fun loving couple, it was no surprise that the 3 hours session just flew by

Congratulations Kinjal and Alan, it was a pleasure spending the afternoon with you!

Bhumika & Bharat's Sign-in Book

2009-05-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

We love taking couples out on portrait sessions. We love it even more when they get to show off their photos to all of their guests! To that end, custom sign-in books are a great way to show off photos and create a topic of conversation at wedding receptions.

Well, Bhumika & Bharat just got married over the weekend, and here's the sign-in book I made for them. We printed it in a really nice 10x10 hard cover book, metallic finish on the cover & thick, lay-flat pages inside:

(pop-up window)

Mayuri & Kunaal's Engagement Portraits

2009-05-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

A little springtime vacation meant this blog was quieter than planned! Sorry about that :)

Here's a few shots from a fun portrait session we had in Half Moon Bay with Mayuri & Kunaal. This shoot was ALL about what they love to do and what's meaningful for them. As you'll see from the sampling of photos, we started at some local stables since Mayuri grew up with horses. We went to the Half Moon Bay Ritz since that's where they became a couple. Had some fun on the putting green, and had a little picnic on the beach. All in all, a very unique session since Mayuri & Kunaal really spent time thinking about what they love about each other and what they love doing together!

On to the photos!

The stables had this AWESOME barn. And the light?! To die for!

A little wine tasting never hurt anyone...

I personally love the whole series of these putting green photos. Mayuri & Kunaal had so much fun there, it's hard not to notice how much they love each other...

I just love unplanned shots. We found some green spots along the way to the beach and couldn't help but spend some time there...

Champagne on the beach? Yes!

Thanks for a great portraits session, see you guys later this month!

Bhumika & Bharat's Engagement Portraits

2009-04-23T15:45:00.001-07:00

I had the lovely opportunity to photograph Bhumika & Bharat who are getting married next month. Even though they live on opposite coasts, they wanted to do a fun session that was all about their time in the City together.

The shoot was a lot of fun, just like the two of them. As you can see from the favorites I've picked out, we went all over the city and founds lots of neat little spots.

As everyone who know me will realize, photographs for me aren't about the location, they're about the emotions. And I've gotta say, this photo in Union Square is my absolute fave because of Bhumika's smile. I just love it!

It was actually pretty difficult to get these two to NOT smile at me :)

Busy, busy, busy...Bharat struck this pose without Bhumika knowing and she kept wondering why I had a funny smile on my face.

And who can complain about the colors of these murals! We could have stayed in this area in the Mission all afternoon if we didn't have to get back over to the Embarcadero!

Bhumika & Bharat, we can't wait for your wedding!

Pallavi & Neil's Reception

2009-04-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Finishing up on Pallavi & Neil's wedding weekend, here are some highlights from their reception....Enjoy!

They had a cute fuschia & orange theme going on...

I love the texture on the fondant on this cake!

Neil's cousins had a lot of fun with some dances they did for the audience.

And, of course, everyone spent the rest of the night dancing away...

The sweetest thing at the end of the night was when Neil & Pallavi's friends conspired with the DJ to play their First Dance song while all their closest friends & family did a nice big group hug to end the dancing. I must say, in all the weddings I've photographed, this was about the sweetest way to finish the night!

Congrats Neil & Pallavi. Thanks for having us at your wedding!

Pallavi & Neil's Wedding

2009-04-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Following up on the previous post about Pallavi & Neil's truly multi-cultural wedding, here are some highlights from the wedding ceremony itself. The wedding & reception were held at the Canyon View Dining Hall in San Ramon. It's a beautiful venue with a view out on the hills in the back. The ceremony itself was held outdoors so the light was just amazing especially as the sun was setting.

For folks not accustomed to Indian weddings, the fact that the ceremony was held outdoors is a bit of novelty since it's actually pretty tough to find a nice outdoor location that can hold the large number of people that are usually invited to such affairs. Safe to say, we photographers are so happy when we get such amazing light ;)

Onto the photos!

The ceremony was split into 2 halves. Following her Tamil tradition, Pallavi changed her sari half way through the ceremony. Amongst other tradtions, the second half included the mangala darna where Neil ties the traditional Tamil Thali around Pallavi's neck as she sits in her father lap. This is different than the North Indian tradition which usually involves a small Mangal Sutra and the bride doesn't sit in her father's lap.

I just absolutely LOVE the look in Pallavi's eyes here! Can ya guess she's happy?! :)

And as with most Hindu ceremonies, it can get chaotic on the mandap. In this case, numerous people had to help Neil tie the thali since it was actually difficult for him to see around all the flowers, etc. It's actually pretty fun to watch & document the little things going on like this. It's not something which the audience sees since it's usually hidden behind a bunch of people on stage who are all trying to help. So many times, I feel blessed at the chance I get to capture these little moments between family members like this one where Pallavi's aunt is explaining to Neil's sister just how the knots should be tied.

Just one more post to go for Pallavi & Neil's wedding! Watch out for the highlights from their reception coming shortly!

Pallavi & Neil's Pre-Wedding Traditions

2009-04-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

As we mentioned in the previous post, Pallavi & Neil had an action packed wedding weekend with elements of both Gujarati & Tamil wedding cultures mixed in. There was a traditional North India baraat, Tamil oonjal, and lots of other tidbits pulled from the variety that is Indian Hindu culture.

So let's start off with the events leading up the actual wedding...

Of course, a beautiful blushing bride starts her day with her sisters and mother in the hotel room :)

These are actually Pallavi's sister's saris...dontcha love the colors?!

Everyone wants a sneak peek at the bride!

If you're wondering why that umbrella's there, it's not because of rain, it's part of the tradition of a Tamil groom going to Kashi for his education. The tradition goes that the groom doesn't really want to get married and would rather further his religious education. Before he meets the bride, the priest and families must convince him to get married for the good of both families. Here, Neil's coming back to the wedding milni with his grandfather who convinced him to return to his wedding ceremony :)

A little Gujarati tradition with Pallavi coming out so that they can both garland each other. It may not look like it here, but their both on the shoulders of their relatives. The game it to prevent the other from getting the garland on. As usual, a wedding day is filled with lots of little games to keep it fun!

And just to clarify, even though Neil is following the Tamil traditions and Pallavi is following the Gujarati traditions, it's actually Neil who's Gujarati and Pallavi who's Tamil. Basically, the whole family ensured that everyone participated in the various traditions and made the entire weekend a load of fun. Some people say that a marriage isn't just about two people getting married, but actually about two families coming together. That may be a cheesy line during many speeches, but I truly believe that to be the case for multi-cultural weddings.

And moving onto more Tamil traditions, Neil & Pallavi had a Oonjal (swing) ceremony...

And to finish this post off, an afternoon portrait of the bride, groom, and groomsmen. Love it!

Look out for more from their wedding day soon!

Pallavi & Neil's Garba

2009-04-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

We had the pleasure of covering Pallavi & Neil's wedding weekend and since it combined both Tamil & Gujarati traditions, it was a wonderful mish-mash of cultures & events.

Here are some highlights from their garba which was held at the San Ramon Community Center. Since it's a semi-circular hall with a half-dome, I always feel like it's the perfect place for garba!

We're used to capturing all the action & movement at garba-raas, but this time, let's start with some of the details. Neil's family added some cute little touches throughout the hall to make sure people know this was a Gujarati affair :)

And the unique Ganesh statue's they had were just wonderful! These were true works of art and I couldn't help but spend some extra time getting some interesting angles on these statues.

Onto the dancing!

Watch out for more from Pallavi & Neil's wedding weekend coming up on the blog shortly!

Sharan & Manny's Engagement Portraits

2009-03-31T00:09:00.000-07:00

We got the chance to photography Sharan & Manny on a really quiet weekday in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and we couldn't wait to share the fully processed photos. We took Sharan & Manny to the Palace of Fine Arts & Baker Beach for a wonderfully fun afternoon. Even though we only met in person for the first time during the photo session, we had talked on the phone a lot before so it really helped to understand what Sharan & Manny wanted. As you can see in these photos, we were definitely going for a really romantic look and the additional processing you see like the textures, blurs, and embellishments are all about bringing out more of that in the photos. Hope you enjoy!

This weeping willow is always so beautiful, but the location is usually way crowded. Lucky for us, it was pretty quiet and we got more than enough time to get some really stunning angles. Funny enough, this is the only photo in this blog posting that doesn't have significant artistic post production done to it!

This is my ABSOLUTE fave from this session. As usual, we time our sessions knowing where the sun will be; Asad noticed this angle and we just had to stop and get some crazy cool backlit photos with some sharp sun flares. Yes, there's artistic post work done on this photo, but a lot less than you'd imagine ;) Yes, the sun's real, yes, the blur's real...just some texturing & color touch-ups added...

Sharan & Manny, thanks for giving us the opportunity to photograph your engagement portraits!

Sai's Arangetram Recital Album

2009-03-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

In our last post, I mentioned the custom designed album we made of Sai's Arangetram. The main objective of the album was to tell a story on every spread about a particular course during the Arangetram performance. This is sort of like doing a wedding album, but since Sai is essentially telling a story with her dance, we have to ensure we relay that story with a relatively small number of photos. Here are a few of the album spreads we included in her album.

While designing albums we think about & try to incorporate into our spreads are things like textures & embellishments as well as detailed photos for use in the background (in this case, Sai's bells, hands, etc). As you can see from the examples below, we try to take a few moments captured in our photos and tell a dramatic story.

We'd love to show some of these albums to you in person, so please schedule a consultation time with us so we can talk to you in greater detail!

As an example of laying out each spread such that it tells a story, the above spread is all about receiving blessings from Sai's Guru and family. Mixed use of color and b+w images in the spread helps to bring attention to the main picture without creating any clutter.

Designing unique layouts for each album really gets our creative juices flowing. We know this album is way for Sai's family to treasure their daughter's arangetram for years to come and compliments like "The album looks INCREDIBLE." from Sai's father inspires us to keep innovating with our album designs!

Sai's Bharathanatyam Arangetram

2009-03-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

Last year, we got an excellent opportunity to photograph the portraits and Arangetram coverage of Bharathanatyam performance by beautiful and talented Sai Radhakrishnan. Bharathanatyam is a classic dance that originated in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.

The amazing hand gestures as means of communication and the delicate neck and eye movements by Sai showed many years of her practice in perfecting this dance form. This first set of photos taken in advance of her recital for use in her invitations, program booklet as well as for the custom sign-in book which we designed for Sai. You'll notice all of the colors in these advance portraits are intense against a deep black background. This helps to create a really stunning set of visuals for everything we design and print.

Following the portrait session in April, we covered the amazing performance by Sai for her Arangetram in August. Arangetram in Tamil means "ascending the stage". The 2-3 hours debut performance was filled with high energy and amazing display of delicate dance movements. The beautiful background images along with colorful stage lighting created the perfect ambience for capturing this dance form on the stage.

As with all staged performances, we don't use any flash so what you see here highlights all of the intense colors as intended for the audience in the auditorium.

This very dramatic lighting with additional shadows is something we look out for since the lighting is part of the story.

As mentioned up above, we designed a guest sign-in book for the Arangetram which was available for all of Sai's guest to view & leave messages on the day of her Arangetram. We also created a custom designed album of Arangetram recital itself. We will be posting the blog for the layouts of the albums soon so check back!

Congratulations Sai for an incredible performance!

Photo of the Week...Again!

2009-02-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't like to gloat, but heck, I will :)

The previous gallery wrap montage which we featured here on the site has won "photo of the week" honors from Pieces of the Picture.

If you're curious about family photography, Pieces of the Picture goes beyond the typical photography tips type of site since it's about more than just a "how to"...it goes into a lot of the thought process and challenges to capturing a family's moments. Have a look at their site as well as their Flickr group if you have a chance.

As we've been getting more into family portraiture, we've been trying a lot of different things so that our work is fresh and can provide lasting memories for our clients. So that might mean portraits in front of a backdrop or outdoor portraits. The way it's presented, I think, makes a huge difference also. So the online versions of the montages we've shown might look great online, but I love seeing people's reactions when they see these huge wraps in person.

Here's the winning photo montage again in case you didn't see the previous blog post:

More Gallery Wrap & Montage Goodness

2009-02-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

We've been getting such a great response on the Gallery Wraps using photo montages, I figured I'd share a personal example of my daughter Sophia. These gallery wraps have a lustrous metallic finish to them and hang without any need for a frame. It's great any where you want something a bit more modern, but as you can see with the background, we can mix it up for a wide variety of look.

This was a Valentine's Day gift to my wife and now hangs in our family room next to the couch. Safe it say it brings a smile to our faces every time we look at it!

If you're interested in a portrait session for you or your children, or you just want to create a unique enlargement like the example here, drop us a line.

Le Family Portraits

2009-02-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

Keeping on the Family portraits tips, here are a few highlights from a shoot we did last year of the Le family.

Mom + Daughter + Dog = Lots of fun!

I had met Abra, Asia, and Bodie before, but I had never had a chance to really talk to Asia or play with Bodie. The great thing about doing small portrait sessions like this is that we get a chance to talk, get to know each other, and have some fun along the way. So when Asia's ready for her Senior portraits (hint, hint), this will be an old hat for her!

Somethingt that I just love is parent & child interactions. On a wedding day, there are certainly chances to see and capture those special moments, but it's such a stressful and agenda packed day that I don't think any parent or child can really appreciate things. In a relaxed session like that, we always find some time to let everyone have some fun not just with their poses & the camera, but with each other.

In this case, Asia had a lot of mock anger/angst like any teenager, but we could see right through her facade :P Of course she was just having fun with it and she ended up having a good deal of fun with shots too :)

Isn't Bodie a sweetheart! He was just happy to be out and about and I wanted to make sure we got some of him into the photo session. I have to admit, he didn't want to do EVERY pose imaginable, but he was a real trooper and was smiling throughout!

Thanks Abra, Asia, and Bodie! It was a pleasure spending the afternoon with you and I'm glad you all love your photos!

After the Shoot

2009-02-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

When we talk to prospective clients, we always try to give them an idea of what to expect before, during, and after their wedding. After all, we pride ourselves on end-to-end service. The last thing we want to do is just show up on the day of the wedding, shoot a few pictures, then disappear. Well, when we talk abut the process we go through after any wedding, we usually talk about our interaction with our clients, but there’s a lot of detail we leave out around our actual photography workflow – what we do with the photo files, what tools we use to edit, and how we finally deliver our clients’ photos.

These details are actually of wide interest amongst the photographer’s community and a few folks on twitter have begun a string of blog postings to describe their photography workflow. It’s all about learning from each other and improving our work to be the best possible. Well, here’s our contribution to that. For our clients, this may be way more details than you care to know about. You can just trust that you’re in good hands :) For other photographers, I hope this run-down helps you and we’d love to know more about your workflow. So post something on your blog and let us know on twitter.

Thanks to Ariston Collander for starting this string and getting all of us to spend a little time talking about the behind the scenes work we do! Seshu Photography is also part of the impetus for documenting our workflow.

So what happens when we leave the wedding or finish your portrait session??

1) Back-up

Since we shoot digitally, ensuring that files are not lost is a huge concern for us. We actually start our back-up process at the events themselves using a portable memory card back-up device. Currently we use a Hyperdrive Colorspace since it’s fast and double-checks all the files before finishing the copy. We copy off cards as we use them up and them store the used CF cards away – we don’t re-use cards until we’ve verified everything the next day. So even before we leave the parking lot, we’ve already got two copies of your photos.
Since most wedding receptions last well into the night, we pick up the next morning with backing up photos onto our desktop computers and external drives. Remember, we always want at least two copies of every photo we take! We only re-format memory cards after we’ve verified that these computer back-ups have completed properly.

2) Photo Organization

This is a MUST for weddings we do since we take several thousand photos on a wedding day. Without organizing the photos, it would be near impossible for our clients to easily find photos they’re looking for later on, and we definitely don’t want to deliver just a stack of photos. So we do this organization up front.
Our main tool for organization photos and doing a variety of photo editing is Adobe Lightroom. The integration with Photoshop and the rest of our workflow is so great that we often wonder how we got stuff done before Lightroom was released!
In Lightroom, we create a folder structure to match our client’s events. Each event will have a top level folder. Portions of each event will be broken down into their own folders. So a couple’s portraits in their wedding outfits will be sitting a Portraits folder which is within the folder for their Wedding. Lightroom makes it easy to move around photos quickly so we can create folders on the fly and keep everything as organized as possible. Typically, for just a wedding day, we’ll end up with around 15-20 folders to ensure it’s easy for our clients to find specific photos. The folders may range from Getting Ready Shots, the Groom’s Baraat (Procession), Portraits, etc. Since each tradition is different, the folder will vary to match our clients.

3) Photo Editing

As mentioned, Adobe Lightroom is our key tool which allows us to do a variety of editing on the photos we take.
The first thing we’ll do is actually select photos which we think meet our final presentation standards. We tend to shoot many more shots than we expect to deliver to our clients. We may take a dozens of photos during the couple’s first dance, but not all of them will have the lighting and composition we love. So we’ll pick the best of the bunch. We do this for the entire set of photos first.
Once we have our narrowed list of photos, we’ll begin with basic editing like color correction. This is pretty critical since the ambient light outdoors or in various rooms can affect the general tone of the photos we take. To ensure we have consistent color balance throughout the day, we correct against baseline photos which we take throughout the day using a white balance card. This ensure that the bride’s dress or sari looks the same color throughout the day. And since the South Asian events we do have such colorful elements, we really need to ensure we get the color right. Pink should always look pink, and not mauve, purple, red, or whatever! Much of this can be automated since Lightroom has great ability to match white balance and other elements across a series of photos.
After we’ve done the basic color correction, we begin on the creative editing for every photo. This might include sepia, black & white, or other color conversions. We don’t always provide multiple versions of each photo, since usually, a photo looks best based on the editing we’ve done. For example, It may be an impressive & memorable photo when finished with a smooth sepia, but it may not be as remarkable when in full color. There’s a host of presets that we take advantage of in Lightroom, but rarely do we just leave it at those presets…they’re just a start. In case you're interested, Presets Heaven is a nice source for LightRoom presets.
While we’re doing this creative editing, we’ll also do a number of touch-ups. Since the latest versions of Lightroom allow for a lot of control in this area, we tend to stick to Lightroom; previously we would export out to Photoshop to do some of these basic touch-ups. This includes some skin smoothing, brightening of the eyes, and selective darkening as needed.
In parallel, we also think about the enhanced edited we can do such as adding textures or illustrative elements to the photo. We never want to over power the photo itself, but many times, these extra elements can add oh-so much punch! For this enhanced editing, we use Photoshop exclusively. We tend to stay away from pre-built photoshop actions since the type of editing we’re doing is so customized to each photo. However, there are a few actions from Kevin Kubota that we’ll utilize. Once we’re done with this editing step, it’s back to Lightroom!
As we go through this process for every photo, we may add additional photos to the mix or remove photos which we originally thought would match our clients’ expectations.

4) Photo Delivery
Once we’ve completed editing our clients’ photos, there’s a variety of things we do to deliver photos:

With the final editing complete, we re-name photos to a standard format which indicates the couple, the folder, and photo number. So our couples don't get something like IMG_XXXX, they get something which actually makes sense to them!
For weddings, we actually deliver an online Webshow to them within a week of their wedding. So this happens before we’ve competed editing ALL of their photos. We tend to pick 100-200 memorable photos from the wedding day and go through the editing described above. We then deliver that Webshow set to music on a page on our site dedicated to the couple. It’s a nice little plus we like to provide our clients very quickly after their wedding. Since everyone loves to get a peek into the photos, this is a great way for our couple’s to share a small number of photos with their guests very quickly.
The entire set of our couple’s photos will be delivered in a password protected section of our website and on disc for them to keep. The low-resolution photos go onto a photo hosting & ordering system we maintain ourselves. The high-resolution photos are delivered to our clients on disc in a nice package which couples can store away. Both the online & disc versions of the photos are organized in the same way that we’ve organized our Lightroom folders. It’s the easiest way for them to view their photos and select photos for future use.
In addition to individual photos and the Webshow, we provide a DVD montage to our clients which can be played on any TV. The DVD montage is usually 10-15 minutes and set to music. The photos we use are the fully edited ones that our clients receive online and on disc. We’ve found that this DVD montage is especially appreciated by the parents of the couple since they don’t always have parent albums and the DVD is a great way to remember their children’s wedding as well as share those special moments with guests.

So what happens after we deliver all of these photos? Well, there’s album design, gallery wraps, photo montages, and host of other things which our clients may be receiving as part of their overall package. We’ll talk about that in another post!

Photo of the week

2009-02-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

Well, whaddya know, a photo from the last photo shoot I posted was selected as Photo of the Week for the "Pieces of the Picture" blog. Always nice to know that people enjoy the work we do and even a little recognition is appreciated. Thanks to Tommy over there for the consideration!

Here's the selected photo:

Here's the blog post on their site about the Photo of the Week

Have a look at the rest of their blog for some great advice on photographing families, especially children: Piece of the Picture

Qureshi Family Portraits

2009-02-02T14:05:00.001-08:00

Wow, what a fun afternoon with the Qureshi sisters and their kids! I've been itching to post these photos to the blog and now that we've presented the photos to the family, I'm happy to show you some of the highlights.

As we've been doing some work outside of the usual Indian weddings, I've found family life sessions to be so enjoyable. There's a very different vibe with an entire family interacting with each other. And notice that I called these Life Sessions, not portraits...after all, the time we spend with these families is about capturing their lives together, not just about posing for a camera. So during these sessions, we do the usual group portraits, but most of the time is spent finding those family interactions which are so special and will be remembered forever.

Anyways, onto the photos! I know the family from Tayyiba's wedding about 3 years ago. We covered many of their events and so it was a great chance to see the family again, especially how the kids have grown and to meet the newest member of the family, Tayyiba's son, the little Z-Man!

Enjoy the photos!

We started off at the Ferry Building in San Francisco....
Talking about family interactions, this is one of those moments which are so common between a mother and her child. I decided to take this simple moment and make it a bit more special with some extra post-work, tying in textures & illustrations for something which highlights that special bond.

Little Inaaya was a bit shy when posing for her pictures, but she just loved showing me her dancing skills! So here's a few shots I took while she showed me how to dance.

From the Embarcadero, we moved onto Baker Beach. The sunsets there just can't be beat!

And this is an example of the unique montage enlargements we like to provide. It's a way to take a wonderful photo and turn it into something really special that will look great in the family room, living room...anywhere you please!

Reena & Kedar - Wedding Reception

2009-01-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

Following up on the previous post, Reena & Kedar held their reception on a warm summer afternoon...the relaxed atmosphere just seemed to fit them so well...

I mentioned before that Kedar's music was the doorway into his soul. Well, he actually performed at his reception and he definitely rocked the house!

Hmm...should we be worried about competing photographers?! :)

Rather than heading straight to dancing to DJ music, everyone started off with some garba-raas.
No photoshop here! Just having some fun with camera technique.

Reena & Kedar, thanks for having us at your wedding! Congrats!

Reena & Kedar - Wedding Ceremony

2009-01-21T22:05:00.001-08:00

Her eyes are the window into her heart.

His music is the doorway into his soul.

Reena & Kedar showed us so much of their personalities throughout their wedding days. As you'll see in these photos, Reena has just about the most expressive eyes I've ever seen. And Kedar is so talented with his guitar. Both of them were so Zen throughout the day and it made this summertime wedding all the more enjoyable. They were married at the San Jose Holiday Inn near downtown. They have this lovely courtyard in the middle of the hotel so it made for a really nice outdoor wedding in the gazebo.

On to the photos!

Reena and her bridesmaids got ready in her hotel room.

The next two photos probably say all I need to about Reena's expressive-ness. That smile and those eyes are the sign of a happy bride!

As I mentioned, these two were so zen throughout the day so we were able to spend a good deal of time taking couples portraits before the wedding. We had a bit of fun by playing some games between the more serious portraits.

Reena's bridesmaids wore coordinated saris. And they were just as ready for a great day as Reena!

Mid-summer baraat in the sun? No problem for Kedar's family...they were ready to dance!

Here's a few moments from the afternoon...

Stay tuned for more photos from Reena & Kedar's reception...

What's It's All About

2009-01-19T17:23:00.000-08:00

We usually keep this blog pretty photography centric, but the energy bubbling in America right now deserves a bigger look. This isn't about photography or getting married or anything as small as us. It's so much bigger than any individual, but it's made up of ALL of us together. Today is Martin Luther King Day. Tomorrow is Inauguration Day. Enjoy the days. Enjoy the moments.

Spare 15 minutes of your time and watch what today is about:

Then spare as much time as you can on Tuesday and watch was America is about:
5 Best Ways to Watch the Obama Inauguration Online

Best wishes on these momentous days. Look for more from us shortly.

Kalpana & Ramesh's Wedding

2009-01-15T23:42:00.000-08:00

You saw their engagement portraits in the last blog posting. Well, here's Kalpana & Ramesh's wedding ceremony. They had a very traditional Telugu ceremony at the Livermore Hindu Temple.

The temple is always so wonderful on a clear summer morning. I love the stark colors, especially against the deep blue sky.

As I mentioned, the couple had a traditional Telugu ceremony, so Kalpana started with a Gauri Pooja.

And if you've never attended a Telugu ceremony, you're really missing out! Kalpana and I spent some time before her wedding going over the little details & traditions that were really for her and her family. And sure enough, we had some fun capturing these little moments. From the jaggery on the heads, to the oodles & oodles of rice & flowers, I've gotta say, the Telugu traditions are so unique to Hindu ceremonies.

The next couple of shots are of people you don't usually see at weddings - the children of the bride and groom! This first shot is Ramesh's son, who just had a blast throughout the ceremony. He clearly had learned about all of the details of the wedding and kept asking his dad about the little things going on.

The other thing I loved about this was that Kalpana's daughter and Ramesh's son were spending the ceremony enjoying the traditions together. Both were clearly elated to have a new sibling. Gotta say, cute & precious isn't normally used for kids this age, but that's exactly what describes them.

Kalpan & Ramesh, it was a pleasure photographing your wedding. Thank you for giving me the privilege!

Kalpana & Ramesh's Engagement Portraits

2009-01-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

Kalpana & Ramesh came to us last spring looking for coverage of their wedding and some classic engagement portraits. The Stanford campus fit them perfectly so we took them out last summer for one of the more classic portrait sessions we've done in a while. But, as you'll notice in the photos below, we tried to mix things up with a variety of stuff over the course of the shoot.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-15T22:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it may be a little late, but hey, we got most of 2009 still ahead of us :)

Asad and I were blessed to be able to take the holidays off, but we're back at it in the New Year. It's good that we rested up since the first two weeks of the year have been flooded with lots of consultations with couples getting married later this year. We've also been busy with some shoots so you should see those on the blog shortly.

Speaking of which, we've got a backlog of events and photoshoots to share with you so those will start going up over the next few days.

The year ahead looks to be interesting since we've been looking at a lot photography outside of what we've been doing for the last 4 years. So expect to see some non-wedding work from us.

And, as usual, if you're interested in booking us for your photography needs, please drop us a line. We're always happy to talk!

Gurjeet & Jessie - Reception

2008-11-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

Finishing up the posts on Gurj & Jess's wedding weekend, the couple had their reception in Woodland near Jess's home. And since the wedding day was so jam packed, they held the reception the next day. This made for something where everybody just couldn't wait to party up.

We had some time for portraits so we actually went to nearby UC Davis and had a relaxed photoshoot amongst the trees & by the water. It's always great when the schedule allows for all these extra moments!

And of course the hot color of burnt orange...everyone seems to comment on how great it looks at Indian functions, and I couldn't agree more...

And the dancing! What Punjabi wedding would be complete without lots and lots of dancing! Can't ya tell that Gurj had been itching to get onto the dance floor? :)

Jess' brother was having a lot of fun crowd surfing...

Congrats you two! We had a pleasure photographing your special weekend. Can't wait to make your album!