July 2016 – Hazel Photo Weddings

Boston Commons Proposal Photos

Joseph and Josephine are Brooklyn born and raised just like yours truly. Josephine had just finished her first year as a school teacher. Little did she know what Joseph had planned. The two had always liked Boston, still a big city, but somehow cleaner and more peaceful than their hometown. They spent much of the beautiful July day strolling through Boston Commons. Joseph had packed a picnic and a blanket. He hadn’t told Josephine he had a special ring in a box burning up his pocket. I had scouted a lovely spot under a willow tree, and told Joseph how he might get Josephine into the best position for the proposal photos. He pulled it off spectacularly! and she received the proposal with calm, joyous open arms. After they had a moment to sit with their brand new engagement, I stepped in, and we had a lovely engagement session walking around Boston Commons. Proposal photos are a tricky business. They are even more nerve-wracking than photographing a wedding, because it all happens in a matter of seconds. But when they come out well, phew, they make me weepy. It was an honor to witness the love these two share.

San Francisco Professional Headshots

The job market is hyper competitive in San Francisco. Professional headshots can give an engineer, a UX designer, an entrepreneur, a consultant, a writer, or even a professional freeloader, the competitive edge.

What does it mean to make a professional headshot?

Is there something really so different from using an iphone photo?

The answer is absolutely yes!

In our digital age of Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, and Instagram feeds, we are overwhelmed with an unending stream of information. The easiest way to contact a potential employer or client is by email, but email is extraordinarily impersonal, and the inboxes of professionals are constantly overflowing with emails from other potential job candidates. In an email there is no voice, no face, no body language. Have you ever noticed how very easy it is not to respond to an email? A well executed professional headshot as a profile photo attached to an email or on LinkedIn or Twitter can make the person on the other side of the message feel like they know and understand you when they have never met you. A poorly executed headshot can make that person write you off immediately before they read anything it is that you have to say. You look sloppy, like you couldn’t be asked.

At Hazel Photo we make professional headshots with precise natural light techniques, and with naturalistic flash, both indoors and outdoors. We pay attention to the details. We find the most flattering angles. We coach our clients into natural inviting expressions, even when they are a bit camera shy. We use light modifiers and reflectors to bring appealing dimensionality to the faces of our subjects. Photographs without professional lighting can end up feeling impersonal. Our use of light, makes for a more dynamic and engaging portrait that will help you to connect to people you have never met, and open up doors that didn’t seem possible to open previously.

For more examples checkout https://paulgargagliano.com

boss lady San Francisco Professional Headshots - Hazel Photo

San Francisco Film Wedding Photographer

Does anybody still use film for wedding photography anymore? Never fear. The answer is yes! Hazel Photo is a San Francisco film wedding photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Does Hazel Photo use film for the whole wedding? No. That would be cost prohibitive, and frankly a bit scary for the fast paced parts of the day, and in low light settings. Hazel Photo uses the hybrid technique–Some film and some digital mixed together.

There aren’t many wedding photographers using film anymore in San Francisco. Why would anybody want to? For one thing it makes a photographer slow down and think. Many photographers who cover weddings with digital cameras take more than 5000 photographs over the course of an 8 hour wedding. With digital it doesn’t cost anymore to snap another picture, so the photographer takes another and another. Maybe one of them will be spot on, but there isn’t the same careful thought behind that spray and pray style. Digital photography can encourage a laziness about framing and timing. Film forces the photographer to think more precisely about those things. This can create the most important and lasting images from your wedding.

There are a great number of advantages to digital photography, especially in low light settings, and especially with flash. It is easy to see if the lighting is working by looking at the back of the camera. Clearly one cannot do this with film photography. But there are other reasons to make film wedding photographs, and thankfully there are still people doing so in the San Francisco Bay Area. The difference between film and digital photography is a bit like the difference between a record player and an mp3 player, or, if you must, a loss-less format like FLAC. Analog sound recording performs a natural clipping at the top of the range. Digital is unable to accomplish that natural clipping. The same is true with film, the chemical process of exposing film, and then processing in developer allows for an effortlessly natural color palette and a beautiful dynamic range.