Sharan & Manny's Engagement Portraits We got the chance to photography Sharan & Manny on a really quiet weekday in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and we couldn't wait to share the fully processed photos. We took Sharan & Manny to the Palace of Fine Arts & Baker Beach for a wonderfully fun afternoon. Even though we only met in person for the first time during the photo session, we had talked on the phone a lot before so it really helped to understand what Sharan & Manny wanted. As you can see in these photos, we were definitely going for a really romantic look and the additional processing you see like the textures, blurs, and embellishments are all about bringing out more of that in the photos. Hope you enjoy!




This weeping willow is always so beautiful, but the location is usually way crowded. Lucky for us, it was pretty quiet and we got more than enough time to get some really stunning angles. Funny enough, this is the only photo in this blog posting that doesn't have significant artistic post production done to it!

This is my ABSOLUTE fave from this session. As usual, we time our sessions knowing where the sun will be; Asad noticed this angle and we just had to stop and get some crazy cool backlit photos with some sharp sun flares. Yes, there's artistic post work done on this photo, but a lot less than you'd imagine ;) Yes, the sun's real, yes, the blur's real...just some texturing & color touch-ups added...







Sharan & Manny, thanks for giving us the opportunity to photograph your engagement portraits!

Labels: Engagements, Portfolio, Portraits

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  Sai's Arangetram Recital Album In our last post, I mentioned the custom designed album we made of Sai's Arangetram. The main objective of the album was to tell a story on every spread about a particular course during the Arangetram performance. This is sort of like doing a wedding album, but since Sai is essentially telling a story with her dance, we have to ensure we relay that story with a relatively small number of photos. Here are a few of the album spreads we included in her album.

While designing albums we think about & try to incorporate into our spreads are things like textures & embellishments as well as detailed photos for use in the background (in this case, Sai's bells, hands, etc). As you can see from the examples below, we try to take a few moments captured in our photos and tell a dramatic story.

We'd love to show some of these albums to you in person, so please schedule a consultation time with us so we can talk to you in greater detail!






As an example of laying out each spread such that it tells a story, the above spread is all about receiving blessings from Sai's Guru and family. Mixed use of color and b+w images in the spread helps to bring attention to the main picture without creating any clutter.

Designing unique layouts for each album really gets our creative juices flowing. We know this album is way for Sai's family to treasure their daughter's arangetram for years to come and compliments like "The album looks INCREDIBLE." from Sai's father inspires us to keep innovating with our album designs!

Labels: Album, Arangetram, Bharatha Natyam, Dance, Performance, Portfolio, Recital

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  Sai's Bharathanatyam Arangetram Last year, we got an excellent opportunity to photograph the portraits and Arangetram coverage of Bharathanatyam performance by beautiful and talented Sai Radhakrishnan. Bharathanatyam is a classic dance that originated in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.

The amazing hand gestures as means of communication and the delicate neck and eye movements by Sai showed many years of her practice in perfecting this dance form. This first set of photos taken in advance of her recital for use in her invitations, program booklet as well as for the custom sign-in book which we designed for Sai. You'll notice all of the colors in these advance portraits are intense against a deep black background. This helps to create a really stunning set of visuals for everything we design and print.














Following the portrait session in April, we covered the amazing performance by Sai for her Arangetram in August. Arangetram in Tamil means "ascending the stage". The 2-3 hours debut performance was filled with high energy and amazing display of delicate dance movements. The beautiful background images along with colorful stage lighting created the perfect ambience for capturing this dance form on the stage.

As with all staged performances, we don't use any flash so what you see here highlights all of the intense colors as intended for the audience in the auditorium.







This very dramatic lighting with additional shadows is something we look out for since the lighting is part of the story.










As mentioned up above, we designed a guest sign-in book for the Arangetram which was available for all of Sai's guest to view & leave messages on the day of her Arangetram. We also created a custom designed album of Arangetram recital itself. We will be posting the blog for the layouts of the albums soon so check back!

Congratulations Sai for an incredible performance!

Labels: Arangetram, Bharatha Natyam, Dance, Performance, Recital, Stage

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