Definitely one of our favorite shoots of the season at San Francisco City Hall. The bride was not wearing a traditional wedding gown. It was more like a very elegant cocktail dress. The material was shiny with a very soft look to it and the back of the dress had a plunging opening. In addition, this was one of those brides who really likes to do dramatic poses so she made our jobs as city hall wedding photographers quite easy. When you have a wedding dress like this to work with, the best thing to do is find some natural light. Specifically, window light. Why? Because the shine in the dress and soft material would sometimes be lost in a flash picture. Of course we use off-camera professional lighting, which has its own advantages. However, for this type of wedding gown, nothing beats Natural Light.
As you can see in the image above, the natural window light not only accentuated the texture of the dress, but it also reflected soft golden colors on the bride's face. This truly is one of my favorite windows shots taken on the 3rd floor of San Francisco City Hall. We love that north light that streams in to the building from these windows and you can see what a nice job it does with accentuating the texture and colors of the bride's wedding dress.
We plan on posting a complete portfolio of this City Hall couple soon on this website. It will also include their Engagement Portrait session which was done in various parts of San Francisco a couple of months before their city hall elopement. We really enjoyed this couple and it showed us how great it is to book an engagement portrait session prior to the big wedding. It helps develop rapport before the city hall ceremony and makes everything go more smoothly. This is one of the reasons we decided to add a new package including an engagement session as part of the package. This package includes 2 days of wedding photography coverage with the first day including an engagement session in San Francisco somewhere. The second day coverage will be full coverage of your wedding and will include 1.5 hours of SF City Hall photographer coverage. Why not make it easy to do both?
