Hazel Photo

Dream team in the golden hills of West Marin:

From the ceremony design in the round,
to the warm sun,
the cool breeze,
the side quest to Elephant Rock,
the black dots of cows wandering over far hills,
the live cumbia,
the golden monstera…

This wedding was richly layered, and indelible.

Congratulations Sasha & Tobias!

Planning/design
Photography
Venue
Florals
Catering
Band
DJ
Lighting
Rentals
Beauty .salons

There’s something musical about this pair of photographs I made during cocktail hour at Stanly Ranch. The spacing, the movement, can you hear it?

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Photographer: .com
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Jamie & Alec were a magnet for the good light. We found it in Half Moon Bay for their engagement session and it returned for their wedding in Walnut Creek on Saturday. Oh, also, these two and their people certainly know how to party.

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Bridal Gown :
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Coordination : .asirenscalling
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I couldn’t stop smiling through documenting Masha & Gray’s wedding at . There were explosions of color at every turn, and the industrial chic canvas of the venue made those colors pop ever more so. Everywhere I looked I found pansies, including exquisitely painted onto their ketubah, and across guests’ arms. When we slipped out for portraits we discovered a mural of poppies and lovely pockets of light. There were human pyramids, natural wines, holy stone fruit, ecstatic hugs, bubbles, and pie.

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Golden hour on Kodak Gold.

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Photographer: .com
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Marissa & Cameron had their wedding vision dialed in from the moment they reached out to me last July. The exact words were, “Our wedding will be a laid back summer Italian garden party, emphasis on party.”

It was a deep pleasure to see their vision come to life.

Also, that ravioli by Feel Good Foods was its own type of masterpiece.

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Congratulations to Elizabeth & James (and Herbie)! You guys asked for an Abbey Road moment on the walk over to ceremony, and for that, I am grateful.

This was a sweet return for me to Barndiva, a Farm-to-Table Michelin star restaurant in Healdsburg. Carrie of Boheme Events wrought her alchemical sorcery on the already charming space. The images speak for themselves.

Planning + Design
Venue
Photo
Florals
Audio + DJ
Rentals
HMU
Paper
Ice Cream
Shuttle
Dress
Suit

LOOP / DATE / LOOP

A 24 hour loop beginning tomorrow morning and continuing into eternity.

Here I am excitedly anticipating the first photographic art project I have embarked on in years.

Hang around to see how it turns out.

How is everybody feeling about motion blur these days? I’ve been embracing 1/20 of a second throughout the day, and I’m feeling it. Camera shake is a whole different story. I’m still not a camera shake person…but maybe I can be convinced?

Congratulations Jamie & Sam! Last Saturday at Stanly Ranch was dreamy, to say the least. Favorite moments: Jamie and her bridesmaids working on Wordle to ease the pre-ceremony jitters; The sky full of white rose petals and smiles; Angular light cutting through the modern lines of the Glass House and over the exquisite tablescapes as dinner begins.

I loved returning to the property a year and a half after I first photographed a wedding there. It remains a generous landscape somehow natural and modern at once.

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Photographer: .com
Beauty:
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Friday: Excitedly delivering Big Sur wedding gallery.
Saturday: Making more magic in Napa.

Flimy goodness from Jessica & Sergio’s wedding at Wind & Sea Estate.

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Catering: .john.harry

Congratulations Camille & Dane! The spirit at your wedding was electric: the wind whipping your hair about, the hill at Fort Mason dripping with wildflowers and their scent, the strength of the sunlight against your faces, the tapping of your loafers on the concrete stairs, the magical San Francisco light, as the sun began to set, streaming through the lofted French windows, the sea lions dozing on the docks out those windows, kids in floral dresses spinning on the dance floor, the burn of slivovitz across generations, the new feeling of spiraling jewelry around fingers on familiar hands… and and and

Venue: Gallery 308
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When a wedding timeline allows, I like to take a few minutes to make parent and grandparent portraits. I’ve made countless portraits of my mom my dad and my grandparents over the years, and they remain some of my favorite photographs in my life.

Hidden perk of my job #437: I get invited to secret clubs full of espresso martinis and hidden green rooms behind bookcase doors that can only be opened by waving a hand at a bronze bust of Woodrow Wilson.

Venues: San Francisco City Hall & The Battery
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Tyler & Aidan were wed in an intimate ceremony at Falkirk Cultural Center on Saturday. The gardens were overflowing with poppies, birds of paradise, pride of Madeira, and countless succulents. Between the grand Victorian, the greenhouse, and the open space, we were embarrassed for portrait locations.


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HMUA: .bridal
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Things I didn’t have on my bingo card as a high-schooler: Wedding gown aficionado and styling expert.

But, hey, even back then, I loved clothes, and found the tropes of a butch wardrobe limiting to self-expression.

So here’s a wee celebration of some of the wedding dresses I have met and loved over the years.

Need it be said, dresses worn by fabulous and generous people, all.

Bayzha
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Kerianne
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Venue : Private estate

Lena 
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Madeleine
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Cate
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Johanna
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Venue : .navarro

Marie
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Madeline
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Sarah
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Christy
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In a redwood forest, up on Panoramic Highway, and on the dance floor, Annie & Connor had guests smiling the whole night. This is how my wedding season started back in January.

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Venue: Old Mill Park Amphitheater &
Catering:
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Sommelier:
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In a redwood forest, up on Panoramic Highway, and on the dance floor, Annie & Connor had guests smiling the whole night. This is how my wedding season started back in January.

Photography
Coordination
Venue Old Mill Park Amphitheater & Mill Valley Community Center
Catering
DJ
Sommelier
Florist
Lighting

Doesn’t it feel like it’s been raining for months? You know when it didn’t rain? On Jessica & Sergio’s wedding day in late February. It was a spectacularly beautiful day at .

This one was a long time in the making as Jessica & Sergio had been together for more than 20 years before their wedding day!

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Catering: .john.harry

There are plenty of reasons to love a black and white photograph… but stick around for a moment, let’s do a deep dive…

(Pictured 10 favorite b/w photographs from my 2023 wedding season, long year-in-review post linked in bio)

Beginning from first principles, what is it that makes a photograph good? Well, it is better than the other photographs taken or untaken… the moments 1/60 second before or after, the compositions shifted a bit to the left or the right, up or down. But that’s nearly tautological…

What makes a particular composition and moment singe the memory of the viewer? I’d say it’s unity of being, with a combined legibility and resistance. The viewer knows what an excellent photograph is about (legibility) but, the viewer understands that there is a deeper meaning that escapes their grasp beyond the initial legibility (resistance.) The unity of being implies a sense of wholeness through complimentary lines and tones and patterns etc. This is also easier to achieve with the omission of color.

Black and white images can help to isolate emotion, gesture, movement from the noise of color, simply by the subtraction of color, but also through marking a photograph as distinctly not a true-to-life view of the real world. A black and white photograph announces itself as an interpretation of our world, a step outside of it.

Please feel free to add to my incomplete reflections in the comments!

This past year I had the privilege to slow things down and focus on what I love most, human connection, laughter, the decisive moment. Some folks call the photographs I love best, candids, but sometimes I feel like calling an image a candid implies that it is discardable. I feel exactly the opposite. When everything is moving around me, and I tune in to the energy of the moment, and I anticipate what is going to happen next, and I make an image that conveys exactly what it felt like to be on a dance floor on a particularly special evening, I have made something worth saving forever.

A 2023 weddings year-in-review blog post is now up, with many more images. Thank you to the many people involved in making these memories happen.

The beginning of a prose poem I wrote about Madeline & Matt’s wedding. The full magic in the link in my profile.

Vignettes from an unforgettably whimsical garden wedding at Beltane Ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma Valley, California.

Her delicate dress of embroidered French cotton lace, buttons all down the back.

His whimsical olive linen suit lined with citrons.

Her crown of dried flowers affixed with a splash of orange ribbon.

The magical lane of Persian rugs leading down the aisle to the towering majesty of the live oak draped in a shawl of flowers.

The dulcet tones of their friend/officiant’s southern twang.

The ethereal light reflecting off her vows and onto her alabaster cheek.

The fine line between tears and riotous laughter that was crossed again and again as Madeline and Matt exchanged vows.

The air suffuse with dried flower petals as they ecstatically flew back down the aisle. As if all the world were filled with flower petals cascading through the air…

(More in the full post in the profile)

Photos
Flowers
Venue
Hair & makeup
Dress
Rentals
Sheep 🐑
Band
Caterer
Chicken cake & dessert
Planning, Design & Uplighting

Ruth and Tom’s San Francisco City Hall Mayor’s Balcony and Wayfare Tavern reception blogs are now up! This was a lovely afternoon filled with an intimate reception, glowing City Hall photos, pizza back at their place, a walk to the park and Muni ride, and handwritten letters to their guests at dinner. Check out the blog for all the lovely details.

A few favorite frames from my Twin Lens Reflex on black and white film at Megan & Peter’s wedding at .events

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Venue: .events
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A gorgeous day in the Presidio to finish off my wedding season. Congratulations Harry & Maddie! I couldn’t ask for sweeter, chiller folks to photograph. Thank you for trusting me to document your wedding. It was such a lovely day!

Venue : .logcabin
Photo :

A few frames from my Yashicamat 124 G from Christine & Craig’s wedding at Carneros Resort back in September.

I’ve had more requests to shoot film at weddings this past year than I ever have before. I learned on film back in the nineties. There was no other option. It has been a delight to bring back my old friends.

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Beauty:
Signage:

Hannah and Elton at Oceano
5/28/22

2022 was like drinking from a fire hose. As the 2023 wedding season is wrapping up I’m thinking about all the weddings I never had a chance to post about. I find myself thinking back on Hannah and Elton’s wedding at Oceano. It was late May in Half Moon Bay - there was a mariachi band, Chinese banquet, and so much joy, love, and energy that I’m still thinking about it today.

Here’s the thing, I used to be mad at engagement sessions simply because they weren’t weddings… but all that has changed in the last few years.

I stopped trying to make engagement sessions into something they weren’t, and leaned into the idea that I was just tagging along for a date night, ideally through beautiful spaces that were important to the couple.

With Sasha and Tobias, we returned to an Oakland bar that was central to their early relationship, and then headed over to Lake Merritt, just a few blocks from their apartment, to take in the sunset.

A spectacularly beautiful San Francisco day at The Officer’s Club in the Presidio to celebrate Jill & Julio’s wedding. I couldn’t ask for easier people to photograph.

Venue: .officersclub
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Cake: