Since Bee and Eric both enjoy nature, they chose to have their wedding ceremony at Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park, while opting for a traditional Asian banquet reception at the Grand Palace Restaurant in South San Francisco. The two locations vary greatly in terms of the background scenery. Our job, as photographers, is to think ahead about how to work with the different locations to capture the perfect wedding pictures, no matter what the backgrounds look like.

With its natural green scenery, and tucked away in a quiet area of Golden Gate park, Shakespeare Garden offered a great backdrop for photos. It features plants and flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare and is designed with many elements of an English garden including arched brick walkways, flowering trees, and old-style benches, all of which are simply beautiful for picture-taking.

Grand Palace Restaurant, shown above, like many Chinese restaurants, presented us with some challenges. The restaurant had yellow walls and harsh yellow lighting which aren’t the most attractive for pictures. However, with our experience, we were still able to capture beautiful photos by working certain angles and using our own camera lighting. That’s what great photography is about – being able to work with whatever background you have and yet creating that special moment in pictures.

Between the two locations, we captured another special photo as well against a backdrop of the city. On the way from the garden ceremony to the reception, the bride needed a restroom and so we followed her as she wandered about in her heels and wedding dress. It’s a rare sight to see a bride on a city street and so we couldn’t resist snapping shots of her and her stylish BCBG shoes. “Who knew that walking to find a restroom could look so good!” exclaimed one of the bridesmaids. The city streets can provide an interesting background but often, it can look cluttered as well. It’s all about how you take the picture, but we have to agree, the bride looked awesome rocking her dress in her BCBG’s.

Dress by David’s Bridal
Bride’s shoes by BCBG
Bridesmaid dresses by BCBG
Bouquets and flower arrangements by Nicole Ha

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!!

[Show as slideshow]

But this isn’t the best part of the story…my day got better!

I got an education and some great pictures with a fantastic San Francisco business, Brilliant Earth. Did you know that Canada is the world’s third largest diamond producer after Botswana and Russia?

No risk of blood diamonds here! Brilliant Earth only uses Canadian diamonds and renewed metals (gold, platinum) for their jewelry. They also ensure that all other precious stones they use are certified from conflict-free sources. And as if this weren’t green enough, Brilliant Earth donates 5% of its profits to African communities suffering because of the diamond industry! Boy, is that some best practice or what?!

The customers of Brilliant Earth are double winners, proud to wear beautiful jewelry and proud to support the environment, as well as survivors of war-torn places.

In keeping with “green,” a VERY green location was chosen to photograph the jewelry: the Strybing Arboretum (San Francisco Botanical Garden) in Golden Gate Park. For all of the jokes about never working with kids or animals, or if you think it’s tough to get a model to smile perfectly…try coaching plants!

One would think that plants stay perfectly still. The truth is, not really. The wind (even the slightest breeze) can cause severe havoc to close-up macro photography. Shooting at a small aperture means that every bit of light needs to be coaxed into the camera. My portable Profoto 600R provided a lot of light for what I needed.

Shooting a shiny and translucent product in the studio is hard enough. Shooting outdoors in the park means that I would need to juggle light control, wind management, artistic direction, placement and replacement (thank goodness we have a stylist on board!) of the pieces.

I helped balance rings on very fragile blossoms. I inserted gemstones into very private places of VERY old trees. And I made a quiet succulent Queen for a Day…and the jewels look pretty good, too!

- Michael Soo