Why do I say this is the Best Engagement Session in San Francisco? Perhaps this is one of the times when I am most relaxed, blessed to be a friend to my clients. That is also the time when we get the best images.

You see, this couple are not just any clients, they are now close friends of ours. We met them during our wedding consultation for their 2011 wedding. Jenny is an architect and Josh is an engineer. When we found out that Jenny is a meticulous architect, she soon became the architect who drew our photography studio addition! Check out a page (out of 17 pages) of her drawings for our permit submission toward our upcoming photography studio remodel!

Not only that, she wrote me a super sweet Yelp review after the session. I went all red when I read it. When it comes to photographing people who are so special, we go doubly above and beyond for them. Their wedding will be held in Hotel Valencia, Santana Row, San Jose. I’m looking forward to photographing their wedding!

We ended our shoot in a sea cave. A supremely exciting and fun-filled day. Here are a few of the images.

Josh, now he’s a cool looking guy. Look closely and you’ll realize that he resembles Edward, the main character in The Twilight Saga…

18 year old Reilly is leaving Atherton, California for college in Texas. Everyone is excited for him, but at the same time, sad. As fine art photographers and cinematographers, our imagery and video/cinema speaks about the family we photograph. Even more so when each family members have so much love and fun with each other.

We almost felt like close relatives, being there, absorbing the love and resonating and reflecting the TLC back into our photographs and cinema. This was photographed in the backyard of their home during our family portraiture session in Atherton, CA (next to Menlo Park and Palo Alto). Enjoy Texas, Reilly!

(Notice Georgia whispering “I love you” to Reilly when she was leaning on his shoulder? )

Behind the scenes in the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers photoshoot by Soo Photography.

Who do photographers go to when they need a photographer themselves?  Do you know that 50% of our clients are photographers?!  We get doubly excited when our clients are photographers since their expectations for quality is significantly higher than everybody else’s.  That gives us wonderful challenges that we can work towards!

We get our share of camaraderie with fellow photographers since we teach photography & photoshop workshops, we have a forum with over 1,500 local photographers and we are setup to be the smug leader for Smugmug Pro in the Silicon Valley fairly soon.

Aaron, a good photographer in his own rights and a member of our forum (I say “our” because I see the forum as a property of the community) and Lani have been together for 9 years! I really enjoy the fact that they are shy at times but do finish each others sentences. Lani loves Mexican and Aaron loves sushi. I did suggest them to live near a Jap-Mex combo restaurant (we did pass a Chinese-Mex restaurant on our way to the engagement shoot. So these things do exist). Engagement photos below,

…all shot within the confines of a water temple, golden gate park, japanese garden, golden gate’s baker’s beach. It was a really fun day where the sunlight was kind to me, allowing me to craft such portraits for them to enjoy for a long time to come!!

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The past two months has been nothing but a truly humbling experience for us. We have been blogged, reviewed, voted and published. Here are some of our recent delightful encounters that made us blush to no end…

• As of today, we’ve been voted to TOP THREE of the BEST Wedding Photographer in the entire San Francisco Bay Area by San Francisco Chronicle. Help us Capture The Love become #1 !!!

• Queensberry saw our work and they love what they saw!

• Profoto, a high end international professional lighting company interviewed and blogged about us

• James Robinson, a fellow photographer found us via the Profoto Blog and went ahead to interview us

• Our work was published by both Gizmodo AND Engadget at the same time!

• We got into the front cover and numerous pages of the highly successful Nesting Newbies magazine!

• We’ve taught in several highly successful workshops in Santana Row and were requested by Smugmug to be the South Bay’s Smug Leader, proceed to give talks and organize activities for hundreds of local photographers!

We feel really blessed and we’re definitely counting our blessings and appreciate all the support and love we have gotten over the years from everyone!

I wanted to help Nancy and Kevin create a dream photo shoot, but what inspires one to dream? Is it the dress? Is it the location? Or is it just that magical feeling of love?

For this engagement shoot, Nancy wore the English Garden sheer strapless dress from Ema Savahl Couture. Detailed with sparkling flower appliqués made in the warm shades of nature, it is a romantic, dreamy gown. The dress, blooming with flowers and made of airy fabrics gave Nancy an ethereal look. It was the inspiration that turned the backdrop of the Pulgas Water Temple into the home of a Roman god, the columns of the Legion of Honor into a rendezvous spot and Golden Gate Park into a fantasy world of love.

And so the dream began:

She was a beautiful maiden who lived in the woods. She never ventured outside, for she had been warned, “Once you step outside, you may never be able to return.” But that one beautiful day, she could not help but be drawn to the light beaming from the other side. Wandering to the edge of the woods, she stopped to embrace the light, ready to step out of her world and into another.

What a beautiful new world she had never seen! Through the lavender fields, she frolicked, her airy chiffon gown flowing behind her. Was the sweet scent wafting from the flowers in her bouquet or was it just the magical scent of her beauty? Her presence caught his eye.

Who was this beautiful maiden, wandering about? He had to know. He greeted her on the plains of his meadow and offered to share his world with her.
It began with a friendly stroll through the meadows…

They spent much time together, roaming about his land. They had many a secret rendezvous. Some were hidden behind the columns where she gave him pecks of love on the cheek.

With spring breezes blowing by, their love bloomed with secret kisses underneath the flowering cherry blossom trees.

This beautiful maiden completed him. He could no longer ever live without his soul mate.

However, as time passed, she missed her home. They both knew that she soon would need to return to the woods.

It was then that he realized he needed to be with her and so he gave up his world to be a part of hers. She was now his world.

2010 has been kind to us. All our photography workshops and classes have been jam-packed and we’re really fortunate to share our experience and knowledge with the photography community.

Smugmug (a premiere multimedia hosting/sharing/selling site) sponsors a handful of photographers around the world to speak in Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI). For those who are not familiar with WPPI, it is THE largest annual photography convention in the world. Tens of thousands of photographers from across the globe will make their yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas to learn, share and experience.

So, when Smugmug asked us to speak for them, amongst the likes of David Jay (entrepreneur and photographer); Robert Evans (photographer who shot the weddings of Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes and Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston, etc.), it’s quite an honor and a humbling experience. Here are the speaker schedule at the WPPI tradeshow.

Monday March 8

10:00 AM to 10:20 AM Gustavo Fernandez

10:30 AM to 10:50 AM Peter Garr

11:00 AM to 11:20 AM Robert Evans

11:30 AM to 11:50 AM Michael Soo YAY!

12 Noon to 12:20 PM ShowIt

1:00 PM to 1:20 PM JVS

1:30 PM to 1:50 PM ShootDotEdit

2:00 PM to 2:20 PM Tofurious

2:30 PM to 2:50 PM Katie Humphreys

3:00 PM to 3:20 PM Scott Jarvie

Tuesday March 9

10:00 AM to 10:20 AM Jefferson Todd

10:30 AM to 10:50 AM Bob & Dawn Davis

11:00 AM to 11:20 AM Steve & Jenn Bebb

11:30 AM to 11:50 AM Bui Brothers

12 Noon to 12:20 PM Alex Garza

1:00 PM to 1:20 PM Michael Soo YAY!

1:30 PM to 1:50 PM Robert Evans

2:00 PM to 2:20 PM Dawn McCarthy

2:30 PM to 2:50 PM ShowIt

3:00 PM to 3:20 PM JVS

3:30 PM – 4:00 PM ShootDotEdit

Wednesday March 10

10:00 AM to 10:20 AM Tofurious

10:30 AM to 10:50 AM Katie Humphreys

11:00 AM to 11:20 AM Pepper Nix & Mitch Burt

11:30 AM to 11:50 AM Gustavo Fernandez

12 Noon to 12:20 PM Jefferson Todd

1:00 PM to 1:20 PM Peter Garr

1:30 PM to 1:50 PM Steve & Jenn Bebb

2:00 PM to 2:20 PM Bui Brothers

2:30 PM to 2:50 PM Alex Garza

 
Wedding album design isn’t a chore for us. It’s an exhilarating part of our wedding package and photography process. It gives us a lot to look forward to.

Ever tried to buy a special gift for someone close to you, carefully wrap it and place it under the christmas tree? Despite Christmas being a week away, you can’t wait to see the expression of that special someone when they open that present, right? THAT’s exactly how we feel when we design wedding album.

This particular album is done for Christine and Ben. We were so excited about showing them the album that we photographed the albums and email them these teasers,

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(Ben wrote me an email within minutes saying, “We’re on our way over”)

Now, what makes the Queensberry line of albums from New Zealand, our selected album maker is beyond their scrumptious leather, suedes, silks, buckram and bengalines. It’s their hand crafted treasures, an extension of style, design and absolute exquisite photographic albums that retain memories. Their albums are the absolute best out there and we are glad that we are a selected few in the country that carry these albums. Don’t take our word for it, check out the guest album and engagement album that we created for Christine and Ben for their May 15th Wedding in The Ahwahnee Hotel located within the Yosemite National Park. Wedding photography in Yosemite and the Ahwahnee will be absolutely fun and exciting. I can’t wait to photograph there again!

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So we are truly blessed to be blogged by Profoto. They are possibly the highest end and one of the largest lighting company for commercial and advertising photographers around the world. Their reach is quite phenomenal. We were working in Intel Developer’s Forum in Shanghai, trying to rent light for an on-stage demonstration to 10,000-20,000 attendees. We searched high and low in the metropolitan city for dependable lighting packs. The only ones that we are the Profotos.

We used to use monoblocks; however, our work on fashion, product, commercial and advertising means that the light source’s color rendition needs to be highly accurate. You really don’t want your blue dress to look magenta, do you?

Good Lighting is….definitely Priceless!

What turns a landscape/fashion/wedding photographer on? An engagement session in Yosemite National Park, California of course!!! I was like a kid in Disneyland, frolicking from one spot to another, having a field day!!!

This was for Christine & Ben’s Engagement shoot. They are expert photographers themselves, in their very rights. Their home is sprinkled with amazing landscape imagery from wall to wall. Absolutely stunning work! Ben showed me his Phase One P45 digital back and a Mamiya 645AFD. For those who doesn’t know what I’m blabbering about, these are Ferraris of cameras. Yes, if you were to sell the above two equipment, you can easily buy TWO Toyota Prius. Although with the current recall situation, I would avoid Toyota for now.

Being a photographer, Ben’s awesome, he’d spot interesting camera angles to be photographed. I was impressed and told him that he should quit his job in Google to come be my photography assistant. For some unknown reason, he just ignored me.

Their wedding is set for May 2010 at The Ahwahnee Hotel, in Yosemite Valley. Being in Yosemite is fun enough but in The Ahwahnee Hotel? Oh my God! There is just no comparison when it comes to the Ahwahnee. With the distinction as a Four-Diamond hotel and designated as a National Historic Landmark, Queen Elizabeth II stayed in the Ahwahnee when she visited Yosemite. So did a host of celebrities and royalties; Mel Gibson (while filming Maverick), John F Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Eleanor Rosevelt, just to name a few.

The temperature was 36 degrees Farenheit and Christine wore nothing more than a bareback dress. She is such a trooper. I do also have to say that she is possibly one of the most delightful person to be around. I’m not exaggerating when I claim that everything appears so much more joyous and lively when she walks into the room.

The amazing engagement shoot is featured in the below cinema. I choose Feb 14 to blog about this, not just because it’s Valentine’s day, but rather, they are on my mind and their Guest Album and Engagement Album JUST arrived. More on those in my next blog!

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