I have been building my photography business for a few years now. I thought I would like to shoot pretty weddings, for people who are in love, that want images with feeling and an artistic style. Special pictures for special people.  What I have encountered, about 30 percent of the time, what looks to be like a rude email. “What are your rates? I am on a budget!” No Dear so and so, no Thank you, no sincerely and most importantly, no I love your work and it is exactly what we are looking for.

I received an email yesterday along those lines, with another similar to it, that said, I only want to communicate through email. My response, delete delete! I am not a desperate photographer or artist. I do it because I love it. I don’t have to make a living at it. I only have to create work I am proud of.  I am free to choose whom I want to spend time with, whom I want to photograph. I can’t express how great it feels to be free.  People don’t understand, I have to like my subjects in order to capture great pictures. Why? Because I am going to bring my perception of my subject to the image. Ansel Adams said, the image is a marriage of the subject and photographer. I don’t do email because I need to hear the tone of my client’s voice. Voice tone says everything. I can determine from the first conversation whether it is yes or no for me. If we like each other, then we meet and the deal is usually sealed. I am interviewing them too. 

Once I did a wedding for a bridezilla. Once and final time. I knew it when I booked her, but I thought it would be OK. I was with her for 9 hours and that was doable, but I had to look at her face in the editing room for another 40 hours. Every time I looked at her I was in a bad mood. Never again. 

For this reason, to stay true to my compass, I have taken on the job of managing our local chamber. Which allows me the creative freedom to work with whom I want, when I want? The condition of  my job is the Board’s flexibility to allow me to photograph weddings, they were very generous with me about this. My issue is time. I must be discerning about how I spend it and with whom.

Dave called me a few months back and explained he was a photographer from Chico. Creative imagery is very important to him.  That he has also photographed weddings and that he was looking at the regional talent and he found that my work impressed him most. We had a great first conversation and then a really nice meeting where I met Karen. I felt great about them after our meeting and we booked each other for their October wedding.

I  realize with this attitude I won’t be shooting 6 weddings a month for a thousand each and I really don’t want to. What I am and will be doing is one or two a month for for 3k to 5k  and working with people I want to spend time with and who also want to work with me. Maybe I sound like an ass, but I have worked very hard for a long time to find this sweet spot.

I am confident I can shoot anyone, but I can’t shoot for everyone. My clients know who they are and what’s more important is I know who they are and we like it like that. They are looking for special pictures and I am looking for special people.

Mike and Alexia contacted me through the Knot and we booked the wedding over the phone. We photographed their engagement session at Sutro Heights above the baths at Ocean Beach in San Francisco a few months ago. When I found out their wedding details I was completely excited to be able to document their wedding. It seems the wedding was designed to be sweet, beautiful, tasteful, classic, chic and without airs. The Hastings house boasts stunning gardens with a clean cottage to get ready in and has the beach as a backdrop, the Farallon Restaurant’s Beluga Reception Room at The Kensington Park Hotel doesn’t get any more classic, tasteful and quintessential San Francisco than that. Completely up my alley and the thing that synced it for me was Alexia said they liked my work because it felt alive the other work they looked at seemed soulless. I think it’s still one of the best complements I have ever received. I respect her politics tastes and her amazing education. Alexia and Mike are a wonderful couple who seem to operate on courtesy, partnership, mutual respect and an honest friendship. I learn a lot about people at weddings and Ian I left wanting to be more like them. After hearing Alexia’s mother’s speech about how her daughter chose a husband I wanted my daughters to learn from Alexia. Ian and I also enjoyed them immensely. It’s a day for us either will soon not forget.

We ate a very late dinner at the Farallon restaurant and it was one of the most amazing meals of our lives. I can still taste it.

Beautiful Heather Greene now Upton’s  Wedding in Lake Almanor is finished. It was such a beautiful wedding and day. I feel so lucky I was able to photograph their wedding.

I was wondering if I should advertise in my local Costco Store ad. I thought it worth giving a shot. I’ll try anything once. Liz called me because of that ad and we had instant phone repour. I liked her very much over the phone and so we decided to meet in Chico rather than have them drive all the way to my studio we met at Starbucks. They called me a few days later and I was booked. We met in Chico again and photographed their engagement session at Bidwell Park. It was their I took one of my favorite engagement photographs. Ian and I covered their wedding in June it was such a beautiful day, beautiful ceremony and beautiful bride and groom.

My friend Natasha Jacobsen is putting together her floral design site. She is a cutting edge floral design artist out of Sonoma. She has been doing floral design and weddings for 20 plus years. She asked me to cover one day of weddings in her life. I feel so lucky to work with her. Her artistry is undeniable and I have so much to learn from her. Her floral designs breath. I love flowers so much photographing them was really all my pleasure.

I heard from Jane she was getting married and I couldn’t stand the idea it wasn’t going to be documented in a special way. It was a Sunday wedding, I wasn’t booked and she is my photo shop tutor, fellow community member and fellow artist.

Generally a photographer is usually the last to get booked for a wedding and not the obvious priority until 5 years down the road when it becomes a big regret that it wasn’t covered. I can’t tell you, seriously, how many times I hear  ”I wish we knew how important it was” or “we didn’t really pay attention to style or our photographer sucked” or “we were so uptight , because he was  weird and dominating”.

It’s really an odd industry I have entered into because the buyer doesn’t realize they have a need. Time and time again I see it in regret.

I adore Heather, she’s a lovely girl and I couldn’t let her regret not having had this day documented in the beauty it was presented. She is in love with her Ian, there needs to be a photo of that.

In the case of the wedding photographer,  ignorance isn’t bliss. Bliss is seeing how blissful we were. And with that said I am making a commitment to photograph the bliss in my family more.

So a bit of advice.  

Book a pro photographer even if it’s for just a key few hours. Uncle Ed has a great camera but you are his experimental subjects for his little photo hobby, if it was really just about the camera there would not be a pro photo industry and is that what you really want to be an experiment?

Look at the work this pro photographer does, if you are in love with it,  call them. If you like them over the phone, meet them eye ball to eye ball. Would you enjoy spending time with this person?  Because they are going to be part of one of the most special days of your life?

Heather is gorgeous, that is obvious, but she radiates a sunbeam of happy energy that discounts all the exterior pretty and draws us in. I loved documenting her special day and feel honored she let me pressure her into it! Hopefully she’ll live to be grateful for it. 

Beautiful Heather and Ian 10 years together and now married!

I hated having to go to Chico fair grounds for the wedding fairs back when I was promoting the Bidwell House as a wedding venue. I am snob when it comes to my taste preferences. I am. I used to feel bad about it, now at 46, I have accepted the things I like to eat, look at, listen to are what I prefer. Right wrong indifferent…it is me. So going to the wedding fairs and watching vendors set up and promote “the cheese’ was enough to make me puke. I hate the cheese. The only real joy was watching her. I’d be set up in 2 minutes. Table, flowers, photobook brochures. Then I had nothing better to do than watch as she would put together, from scratch an elaborate  stunning display of food and flowers in a way that was so unique and  fresh. This was 1o years ago and she was arranging with fruit in flowers.  Not only was her booth breathtaking, but her food delicious. She also served cheese but there is nothing cheesy about her or her business.

I have been dieing to work with her ever since. Last Saturday she brought me in to cover for her and document her end of the event she was creating. I had the opportunity to watch her team and Salvagno’s team transform and create a first class wedding reception in the middle of a yard at The Bell Ranch. Amanda Leveroni at Bacio in Chico is a first class act. I watched her team of 50 people pull off a plated and served filet prawns dinner for 250 + like they do it everyday. I had so much fun watching how they did it with precision, respect, kindness and beauty. She has to be a super hero of a boss to have people work that beautiful and hard for her. I really respect what she can do and who she is!

Catering  Amanda Bacio

Flowers Design and Planning  Terrie at  Salvagnos

Cake Melissa at Mims in Chico

I have  been with my husband for 23 years. I have been married a long time. I  love my husband, I like my husband and I am in love with my husband. The three being quit different things.  There is no other person on the planet that can send me through  a  gambit of emotion. To say we have a passionate marriage is an understatement. I have a very rich marriage. At times it rings me out and every once in while I fantasize about moving into a little place all my own and being alone on the coast. Taking a rest from the work of my marriage.

What I have learned about marriage is getting married isn’t a marriage, it’s a party. Just like being in love with an infant, so that when they are unruly teenagers we won’t kill them, the beginning of a relationship serves the same purpose. Remembering the beginning ; long term marriages seem to have a way of tainting one’s today’s with yesterday’s injuries. Hearing marriage vows keeps it fresh, new and real for me. It also causes me to reflect.

I photograph weddings and the odd thing about being behind my camera is my ears hear everything. I hear every word of their vows. Every word hits me in my gut. Whether the couple being married is taking the the vows that I am hearing seriously,  matters not,  I am taking them very seriously. My marriage is serious business to me, a whole life,  family, trajectory of many lives hang in the balance. Marriage is not for the weak or faint of heart.  The longer I am married I come to understand for me marriage is a sacred covenant not a contract. That was the message I took away from this wedding. Even though I already know it on some level, sometimes I forget it. Sometimes I feel like it’s a contract that can be renegotiated or adjusted or absolved.

Shirley, who was there in my early married life and Yoda to me, said “Marriage is made everyday Kim. One day at a time.” I know a little today what that means.  I speak for me only, because I am by nature stubborn and a flawed human being, I look at my marriage as my sacred spiritual work.  One day at a time, it  demands  I grow up just a little more that I love a little  more, that I change a little more. Thank God I know Love to be a verb, just like faith without works is dead, so is love without right action, because when I want to move to my quiet little cottage on the coast I am shown one more time there is something I must work on and change in myself. At the end of the day I find, it begins and ends with me and it is a lesson I have to keep learning.

Once when I was having a moment where I thought my husband wasn’t taking this marriage work as seriously  as I was, I asked him. ” Honey is this a  marriage of convenience for  you?” He laughed hard and loud, and said with a big smile “There isn’t anything convenient about it.”  Now that may sound bad, but I took it as a  great sign. He’s working too and he wouldn’t if it didn’t matter to him. We both are in it one day at a time.

Photographing Weddings is good for me and my  marriage.

I have been in love with the Mendocino Coast since I was 20 going up to through Booneville to Greenwood Ridge and on down to Elk. We have great friends there. We would escape the San Francisco work week for a backwoods weekend often. When we took the job at the Bidwell House Bed and Breakfast we first thought it was in Mendocino. We wished. We are were we are supposed to be, but visiting there is always a slice of heaven. The enchantment of the Redwood forest, ferns, blooming Azaleas and Rhododendrons, with the coasts bounty of lush colorful foliage, there is no other place more vibrant to photograph. I don’t think I have ever seen it more beautiful.

I am a Mendocino Wedding photographer because I want to be there as much as possible. My friend Khamoore  has Mendocino Floral Design there. Their work is progressive, stylish, timeless, stunning. I can’t wait to shoot one of her weddings.

The wedding we just photographed was just outside of Albion in the Redwoods. We photographed Alli Marion and her Beau Cory Fagerskog. I have known Alli since she was 13. Her mother and I worked together for years making weddings at the Inn. Making one more wedding, this wedding was truly special.

Her mother worked for me for years while I managed the Bidwell House B and B .  Alli began working summers for us and weddings. I moved on from there 5 years back and isn’t funny…we have one more wedding to do together and I couldn’t be happier about it.