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!

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!

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!