Man, I’ve been waiting to post these photos since before I even downloaded them from my camera! And I finally get to share them with you all.

Smita & Vikas just got married over the weekend and I was holding these wonderful portraits so they could surprise their guests with a lovely slideshow. Now that the couple are married I can give you all some peeks into this wonderful session. I actually took portraits of Smita several years ago at Stanford. Now that she was getting married to Vikas, they wanted some relaxed portraits in San Francisco. So we started off at the Palace of Fine Arts for some formals, then moved onto the Letterman Arts Center, and finally to Baker Beach. All of that was scheduled around the Laker finals games which were in full force at the time!

During the session I kept finding new “session favorites” even before looking on the LCD and I couldn’t help but chimping with Smita & Vikas during the session to show them how great things were looking. This actually lead to a really interactive yet casual session. We mixed some poses with some downtime where I just quietly took photos of the couple as they whispered to each other. I knew I was doing my job when Smita asked me “Are you taking pictures of this?” as they were hugging and talking to each other. So now you see why I’ve been anxiously waiting to post these!

So let’s jump right into these as I’m sure you all will love this couple as much as I did…

Congrats Smita & Vikas, I hope you enjoy your portraits for years to come!

As long as I’ve been passionate about photography, I’ve been a voracious learner. I openly learn from people who I think have something to offer. Case in point is that I subscribe to a whopping 144 different weblogs ranging from technique blogs to other wedding photographers’ blogs. By keeping track of so much out there, I really feel like I’ve improved my photography end-to-end by leaps and bounds. And for the last couple of years, I’ve really tried to make it a point to share my experiences and learnings from wedding & portrait photography with others. I mean, what have I got to lose? Call it “Paying it Forward” if you will, but it’s all about offering something to others.

So last month I lead an outdoor portrait workshop with 11 colleagues in San Francisco (North Beach & Baker Beach). Since it’s something I’m quite familiar with, I felt I could help others learn some tricks to taking better outdoor portraits. I tried to break things down as much as possible to make sure I could actually deliver against what I was offering to my students.

Before the photo shoot, I held a discussion session about what folks should prepare for with a portrait session including goals around style & location. I didn’t want to dwell on equipment and settings since I felt it would get us away from most important part of the photo session – the couple. I used this presentation as a guide to help everyone focus and reference what I thought were the important things to keep in mind.

You can download the powerpoint presentation here.

After the session, I followed up with each student to ensure they had some specific examples of portraits which they wanted to refer to during the photoshoot. Yes, I had them all do homework I required this because I wanted the students to find what THEY loved and not just try to re-create photos I’ve taken. Not surprisingly, the students showed me a pretty wide variety of reference portraits.

Well, with ALL that said, here are some of the results!

I’ll start with some photos which I took during the photo session. While taking these photos, I was trying to provide specific points for the students to keep in mind and show where & how I position myself for the photos. Again, I tried to stay away from camera settings, but was happy to clarify how to accomplish a shot from a technical nature.

Here’s a selection of the photos from the students. As students were taking photos, I would chimp with them and ask about their settings and most importantly, if they were getting shots that they liked. I was also trying to setup poses/shots for each student based on their personal goals. I’ve picked 3 photos from each that I think represents their time & efforts very well. The photos were taken by the students, but I did the final editing:

After the photoshoot, I’ve spent time with students to go over their experiences before & during the photo shoot. I really want to understand if they learned what they had hoped for and how the session could have been improved.

I certainly found this session very challenging! I know there were just too many students at the session to really give each student the time I think they deserved. Many times I made the mistake of basically just telling the students “okay, go for it” and simply let them shoot away. This confused the students and the couple being photographed. A huge creative concern for me is that I ended up relying too much on poses during this session. My usual portrait sessions are a mix of poses & really casual/romantic stuff. With so many students, I tightened up a lot and just went to “winning poses” for the couple. Certainly, the poses aren’t bad, but I do think the variety of photos and the more casual nature of my usual portrait sessions isn’t represented with how I lead this larger session. I have other areas of improvement I’m still mulling over and I’m collecting feedback from the students about this.

In retrospect, I have a MUCH better understanding of how tough it is to run a formal learning session (call it a workshop if you want). While I put a lot of time into the planning, I still think I have a many improvements I can make to such sessions. I know the students appreciated the time & opportunity and I’d like to ensure that any future learning sessions I lead provide the most for everyone’s time & effort.

Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank our models, Krystal & Deven for their time and patience with us! They were real troopers with the posing and the weather. It was quite cold & windy out on the beach. While I’m used it (I was in a t-shirt & shorts), I think I was the only one out there so unaffected by the cold! I wish you two the best with your wedding later this year and I hope you enjoy your portraits for years to come!

Earlier this summer, I took Aparna & Jeff all over San Francisco for their engagement portraits and what a fun time! We got to try out some new spots on that beautiful summer afternoon so it made for some wonderful moments. It was also great since they didn’t mind a little public display of affection while we were taking their portraits

We started out in North Beach, then headed to the Presidio, and finally to Baker Beach. With each location, since we had extra time, we were able to find some cool little spots that helped their photos to be as unique as possible.

Here are some samples!

I just love this next portrait due to the wind blowing Aparna’s hair just so and especially that look in her eyes!



Aparna & Jeff, I can’t wait for your wedding next month!

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!

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!

We’ve been amiss lately due to some travel that both Asad and I have been doing. But getting back into the swing of posting some highlights from our recent shoots…

We actually took Sunny & Gary out back in July a little while before their wedding. Now that the fall chill is upon us, it’s actually kind of nice to see these warm pictures

On to the photos!

Although we only met Sunny & Gary for the first time at the shoot itself, it was actually really easy to get into the swing of the photo session. We normally start things out a bit slow & formal, but I quickly realized that there was no need for that.

We started the shoot over at The Palace of Fine Arts and then moved on to Baker Beach. Something about Indian skin tones, blue tones in clothing and the Palace of Fine Arts just goes together….

We actually spent way more time at the beach and for good reason. They were game for lot of stuff including getting wet in the water.

This shot obviously has a lot of work done to it with the color tones, textures, etc, but it spoke to me even before I started editing it. It’s actually posted on Flickr and it’s one of my most viewed shots there. Asad actually took the shot and I wouldn’t be surprised if he counts it as one of his annual faves




This is one of those serendipitous shots…totally unplanned and unposed (just a bit of shoe arranging), but it’s one of my faves from this year…and it’s a nice way to end this post.

Sunny & Gary, congrats on your wedding!

Back to the portraits!

Just a few shots from a shoot we did in June in San Francisco. This was before the usual summertime fog in The City so the colors & light were just so wonderful.

We started off the formal shots at The Palace of Fine Arts. Even though there’s a lot construction going on there, we still find several great spots. And even though we shot at mid-day, the light bouncing off the Exploratorium was just wonderful.

I think these next two shots show off Neera & Trushar’s personalities better. Getting out of the formal outfit and onto the beach on a nice hot day can certainly help loosen things up

And speaking of small worlds…if you read our last post about Manisha & Ashwin’s reception theme of Vegas…I mentioned that they were introduced to each other by mutal friends. Well, it was Neera & Trushar that introduced them to each other…aww how schweet

Anyways, it was a wonderful afternoon photographing…especially since we got to cool off a bit in the nice cold water! Congrats guys! Hope you love the shots!

Wedding season is upon us and, as usual, we’re finding it tough to keep posting here on the blog since we’re wrapped up in events & post-production. Anyways, we’ll certainly try to do better with keeping things fresh here

So onto Shweta & David’s engagement portraits. The happy couple is actually getting married today! So in advance of that, we went out to San Francisco. North Beach and Baker Beach were the neighborhoods of choice on this shoot.

Washington Square is always a nice little spot to start off the afternoon with. Since the weather was great, it was actually pretty crowded and finding sight lines without sunbathers was a challenge!

Look at David all dapper in his suit!

We found this closed down cafe/restaurant that still had a bench outside. The wierd thing is that the restaurant still had all of the tables with ready place settings..glasses, napkins, silverware, etc. It was like they had set everything up for the next day and then just decided to not open up! Anyways, we got this great little spot just off of the street.

Can ya say GLARE! Lovin’ it!

Oooh, textures. Couldn’t help adding some with this shot.

A private moment as we pretended to change lenses No matter how much our couples want to get candids, we still try and mix it up to give them something they don’t expect…
Can you believe Baker Beach was packed with sunbathers and kids playing in the water? We still found a few angles where we had a clear view all the way to Golden Gate Bridge. Beautiful day!

I love how the light bounces off David’s shirt back onto Shweta. Talk about sun kissed.

And finally…kissing in the sun

Congrats guys! Can’t wait to see what you guys have planned for today!