I was thrilled when Amy, who is the owner of Mama Lounge in San Francisco asked me to display my work in her office. Mama Lounge San Francisco clinic in Laurel Village specialties are natural medicine for Fertility, Prenatal and Postpartum. Since my specialties are Maternity Photography and Newborn photography, it is a perfect location to display my work!
There was a great article in last Sundays Chronicle of my clients Frank, Sonny and their daughter Ava about their costume skills, especially for Halloween. To see the article Click Here
I had the privilege to photograph them and their spectacular outfits for the last several years. Each outfit is hand made! Each photograph was designed to look and feel like original poster or photograph from the movies.
Elizabeth Taylor, Lisa Minnelli, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gabor, Cher, etc... It does not matter. Ava can play the part of all of them.
Here is a compilation of my favorite photographs from our portrait photography sessions:
Gwen, who is a professional organizer hired me to photograph her and her space for her website Place It The goal was to show Gwen as friendly and approachable. We both liked the results:
Katya and Dirk asked me to photograph their newborn child. We all love the results of this photo session!
My client Michelle asked me to take portraits for her baby’s first birthday. I have a product especially designed for this type of occasion, where I place a birthday cake in front of the child and we watch the fun unfold. I love being able to photograph a kid tearing through their first birthday cake, especially when I can do it through the lens of a camera, capturing every step of the way. From these photos, we create a memory book as a keepsake for that family to enjoy for the years to come.
I always like a challenge, so in this particular photo session, I decided to ask Michelle if she and her family had any pets. Upon discovering that they had a cat and a parrot, I asked if I could photograph their pets in front of a green screen so that I could Photoshop them into their baby’s first cake portraits.
When they brought in their pets, I had their child pose with one of them, so we could capture an authentic interaction between the baby and their pets. Of course, having a cat and a bird in the same place might not end up so well, we went with just their parrot, and the photos turned out beautifully. Who could resist capturing the dynamics available between pets and their human companions?
Using green screen technology, I was able to composite images of their pet cat and parrot next to their child, cake and all. Creating a portrait with both their child and their pets brought out a side of their family that was playful and whimsical. Most importantly of all, my clients loved it.
But of course, we couldn’t forget about the big kids in the family: Mom and Dad! I had them both pose with their child, together and individually. I loved how their daughter’s magenta dress stood out against the muted tones that her parents picked out. Wearing neutral tones works best in family photography. Of course, children tend to look great in whatever they’re wearing, especially if they’re the center of attention.
We took a few more photos of the birthday girl, even adding in their pet parrot for good measure. This time, we didn’t use a green screen, since we wouldn’t have to have both pets in the same place.
I keep a smattering of stuffed animals, toys, tricycles, tiny chairs, and other accoutrements for children and even parents to play with. I have a child-sized bench in my lobby, and their daughter immediately took a liking to it. We brought it into the studio, and it was an immediate win for everybody involved. It even acted as a perch for their pet parrot!
Taking family portraits is always a rewarding experience. Taking photos of children, babies, parents, families, and even their pets together brings me a sense of joy, and brings the families themselves closer together. As a photographer, my job is more than just taking pictures. I create memories for people to cherish for years and generations to come.
One of the curses of doing something that I love is that even when I go on vacation, I bring my photography equipment to try something different or new. So on my recent camping trip to Mono Lake in California’s Eastern Sierra, I wanted to try photographing star trails. In order to take pictures of the stars, you need to be as far way from city light pollution as possible, and as high as possible. My goal was to find the highest possible camp site in California, and I got many funny looks from Park Rangers when I asked them about this! I ended up in the White Mountains at 12,000 feet, where I took the star trails photographs. At night, the temperature dropped to 35 degrees Fahrenheit-but anything for arts sake! These are my three favorite images, one of the star trails above my campsite, one panorama of a rainbow over the bank of Mono Lake, and one panorama of Mono Lake.
After a photo session with a client in Alamo Square that ended at 7, I waited until 8 to take this gorgeous panorama. It was worth the wait! The photo, of the famous Painted Ladies Victorian houses, has downtown San Francisco in the background. The final panorama image is compiled out of eight separate images.
My client Paul is a speaker and an insurance agent, and he needed to update his image for online professional websites, and speaking tours. To do this, we had a photo session to produce professional headshots in our San Francisco portrait studio, as well as more casual portraits. Paul, after seeing the photographs, said: “The photos are amazing, I really like the way I look.”
It was a pleasure to photograph clients Ann and Paul at their recent wedding. Taking place at San Francisco City Hall, there were two rooms where the wedding took place- the signing ceremony was in supervisor Scott Wiener’s chamber, and the actual wedding ceremony was in the Supervisors Chamber. City Hall weddings are very popular right now, and while there, I saw at least 15 other wedding parties!
My client Marica hired me to photograph her whole family. In our San Francisco portrait studio, I had the opportunity to take family portraits of her family, her brother’s family, and her parents. She told me it was the first time in her life that she had a formal photograph taken with her father. The family photos included pictures of the grandparents with their granddaughters, the two cousins playing together, and photos of the entire family together. It was a great opportunity to take these very special photographs for my client.
I have had the honor to photograph many gorgeous San Francisco City Hall Weddings in the past, and doing so have picked up some useful tips about getting married in City Hall:
Recently, I was able to take a series of black and white portraits of my client Michelle’s youngest son. We wanted to show his silly and unique personality in the portraits, and I think we succeeded in capturing the charisma of this young boy- a new model superstar is born! Michelle brought in her two older sons as well, and I photographed all three of them together for a family portrait with lots of love between the siblings.
In an effort to take non-boring landscape photographs, I chose to take a series of panoramas that show three different gorgeous views of San Francisco. The first photograph was taken at the Broadway Pier, and shows a night view of downtown San Francisco. This picture is actually 40 separate images that were stitched together in Photoshop, and the final file size is huge, at over 6 GB! The second panorama includes the Golden Gate Bridge in the bay, as well as San Francisco in the background. It was taken from the Marin Headlands, and was stitched together in photo shop with 26 different images! The third panoramic view of San Francisco was taken from Twin Peaks and shows the entirety of the city. It started out as 24 separate photos, and then was transformed into one beautiful image in Photoshop. I am available for commission work!
In a studio session with client Carolyne, her husband, and their daughter, I photographed both family portraits and individual shots of this unique family. The husband is a professional boxer, so the family wanted actions shots of him. While the little girl was changing, I got the chance to take portraits of her father as a boxer, plus family portraits as well.
We ventured outside our San Francisco portrait studio for a photo session in the gorgeous Park Presidio of San Francisco. Amid the nature, we photographed client Gisele and her family. Gisele is the owner of newly opened Spark Creativity, on Church Street in Noe Valley. The family portraits included Gisele, her husband, and her kids, and feature whole family photos as well as sibling photos. This was one of my favorite family photo sessions in a while- the entire family looks so happy! The best compliment I can ever have from a child photo session is when children ask their parent if they can do it again next week! When Gisele ask her kids why, their reply was that they had too much fun at this photo session. Even father mentioned that it was very painless experience. He had a lot of reservations about it beforehand.
My longtime client Gitta, and her son Ari, flew in from Australia for a mother-son photo session in our portrait studio. To add some interest to the family portraits, we used green screen technology to put Gitta and Ari in different places around the world. It was a very popular game on Facebook to name the places where photographs were taken, and the backgrounds include such places as the pyramids of Egypt, to the Eiffel Tower in France, and, of course, the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
