Casa Real Wedding on Gentry magazine Feb 2010

Back a few months ago, we blogged about a wonderful wedding that we photographed at Pleasanton's Casa Real, Ruby Hill winery. It was showcased in Gentry magazine in August 2009.

The February 2010 wedding issue of Gentry magazine now provide that spread of info, using our photography. Woohoo!!

San Francisco Bay Area Wedding Photographer wishes everyone a Happy Holiday!

The scent of pine and the sounds of jingle,
Send my senses into a pappy tinkle,
A year ago, my tears a sprinkled,
My seed and I now, a laughter and a wrinkle.

 
Just came up with the above...it has a deeper story of my family and my life embedded within. But I'm really just writing as a San Francisco, San Jose photographer family, wishing you all a wonderful holiday!

Yes, there is still time to get a family portrait! Give us a call!

Casa Real, Ruby Hill Winery Wedding Photography - Proposal in Paradise

I got totally Gentrified photographing the intimate story of a wedding proposal in Casa Real at Ruby Hill Winery, Pleasanton.

The “Entertaining” section of Gentry Magazine the Gentry South Bay August/September edition features a great article entitled "Carpe Diem" is about how to celebrate in style even in today’s tight economy. Which is exactly what Corina and Alex did.

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Alex hired Lea McIntosh, the South Bay events designer, to stage his girlfriend Corina’s birthday party at the Casa Real event space at Ruby Hills Vineyard. Except, unbeknownst to Corina, he planned to propose to her as well.

Lea put together an awesome team to do hair, make-up, lighting, and provide limo transportation. Stacie Tamaki of the Flirty Guide even showed up to crown Corina’s birthday cake with a beaded, pineapple-shaped topper containing a necklace. And we got to go along for the fun. We shot lovely candids of Tiffany Chiang and Armando Sarabia helping Corina look her absolute best with beautiful make up and an elegant hairstyle. And we captured the moment that Alex proposed, kneeling gracefully and offering Corina an engagement ring from Dilek Sezen Fine Jewelry.

I got a little misty during many of the special moments of this evening and all the preparations leading up to it—and especially at Corina’s surprise and delight when Alex popped the question. If you want to read more about this charming young couple and Lea’s ideas for creating your own magical event, check out the article. And get inspired.

Zooming into the wedding first dance

You have rehearsed your first dance for the twentieth time. You want it to be elegant, beautiful, perfect. Your veil and wedding dress will drift about you in a whirly waltz. Not any different than the father-daughter dance or the mother-son dance, your expression and emotion changes from second to second. As you reminisce your life that lies behind you and look forward to your amazing future, an emotional modulation from happiness to sadness; flow and ebb, flux within your soul.

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This is possibly one of the most beautiful and elegant sliver in weddings that I adore. Yet, this is possibly one of the hardest part in a wedding to photograph (other than the kiss in the church, which is all about timing). You see, lighting for photographers is akin to water to fish. Dance images are always a challenge to shoot, due to how badly lighted the dance floor is, the continual movements of bodies in motion, shifting dance lights and video lights (that the videographers uses-can cause the brightness to veer from too bright-to too dark), the different angles to capture, and most of all, all that to be photographed within 2-3 minutes.

If lady luck smiles upon you, at the end of most weddings, your photographer will hopefully end up with a good 1 to 2 decent but underexposed (aka dark or badly lighted) images. They will most likely processed it into black & white, and claim it as art, or make it into a brownish sepia and chalk it off as creative. The pictures are usually very grainy and if you danced slow enough, the images will just be a little blurred.

My recommendation? One of the biggest question to ask your photographer is to have him/her show you A DOZEN of their dance images from A SINGLE wedding. That's possibly one of the best indicator on his creativity, lighting skills and how well he can tango! To start off with the challenge, here are my dozen, shot a mere few days ago, last Saturday, for Jenn and Matt in Maggiano's Little Italy's lovely banquet room.

- Michael Soo

Our 8 feet lightbox at Smugmug's Mountain View entryway

I gotto say, I can never get enough of a photograph on a beautiful lightbox. It just enhances the image so beautifully. That's also why we were so thrilled to have our image showcased in the main entryway to Smugmug's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Not only that, it's enlarged up to a life size of 8 feet tall !!! With me being a super tall guy, standing at 5 feet 5 inches, that monstrous light panel is almost twice as tall! Well, almost. ;-)

Chris MacAskill had to use a double lightbox (I seem to be using the terms interchangeably due to how similar they are to each other these days) for the image. Check it out below, with the image on the right being the original image. Whee!!!

Retreat, hotel and a zen-like wedding venue

I've always liked boutique hotels. The role of theme designs play a huge role to make guests feel connected and comfortable. The hotel acts as the sum of a well-planned design, which is a rare sight in the world we live in. Ask me about it. In my college years, I would buy pieces of furniture from various shops due mostly to budget constraints. The apartment feel disconnected, from a design point of view. An orchestrated design makes one feel soulful about the surroundings.

Menlo Park's spanking new Rosewood Hotel, nestled at the edge of Santa Cruz Mountains is designed as a calm California Ranch architecture is a boutique hotel of this sort. The food and art pieces are no different. They only use local ingredients and local artists. The texture (see the five images above) tells a tale about what the hotel's design theme is all about.

We photographed Cathy and Michael's wedding there. As they are rather private people, I'll only showcase a small handful of selected images (without the usual slideshow) in this blog.

Do NOT, however, mistake private for boring. How often do you see a cake_in_the_face during a wedding cake cutting?

- Michael Soo

Preferred Photographer for Maggiano's Little Italy in Santana Row, San Jose

We're truly proud to be a part of Maggiano's Little Italy's preferred photographer celebrating Maggiano's Annual Bridal Faire last week. We've also photographed the food, rooms and weddings in this lovely restaurant. I really want to thank the wonderful staffs there that have been so supportive and generous.

Check out our photography album for Maggiano by clicking the images above or below.