Thank you for visiting our San Francisco Bay Area Wedding Photographers website. Our main goal is to provide you with the best Bay Area wedding photography experience possible. Beautiful, romantic, creative images of your wedding to last a lifetime combined with our fun, positive approach will make your special day memorable. Please visit our Prices and Packages page to see what we offer to Northern California engaged couples. This site also features our San Francisco city hall wedding photography specialty, but mainly our full-day Weekend/Friday coverage for medium and large weddings. We are located in the East Bay but are available for your wedding no matter where it is. We are also happy to create a custom package to fit your specific needs and budget. We travel throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area at no extra charge! View some of our best work by checking out the Bay Area Wedding Gallery page.
We are also one of the premier Bay Area wedding photographers shooting weddings at City Hall and have many 5 star Yelp Reviews to prove it! To view additional SF City Hall sample albums and receive valuable information, click San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photography packages and prices. We photograph weddings at SF city hall at least 12 times per month, let us handle yours! We also have a City Hall Menu for people interesting in learning more about these specialized Services.
To determine our availability for your San Francisco Bay Area wedding, please go to our Event Calendar by clicking the Contact Page in the main menu and enter your actual date. We will contact you within 8 hours to let you know our availability. You can also receive a customized quote for your specific wedding photography needs. We are happy to answer any questions you may have regarding our well established photography service. If you are planning a weekend full-day wedding, please let us know the hours of coverage you need. We can cover anything from 4 to 10 hours and will handle the day's events from Bridal Prep all the way to the last dance. We possess over 20 years of Northern California professional wedding photography experience and would love to work with you! Please email us for a specific quote or use our Quote Request form and hear from us quickly.
We have photographed most of the popular wedding venues in the San Francisco Bay Area including City Hall multiple times. Northern California cities where we have covered multiple weddings include: San Ramon, Walnut Creek, Concord, Clayton, Livermore, Danville, Pleasanton, Fremont, Pleasant Hill and other parts of the East Bay. These are just a few of the many locations we have photographed extensively throughout the Bay Area. We will also be happy to do a site visit with you to share our thoughts and ideas to make your marriage experience perfect. We feel like the best Bay Area wedding photographers should not charge for site visits and we never do! It helps us to provide you with more suitable coverage when we know more about your venue and your own photography preferences. In addition, it gives us a chance to build rapport with the engaged couple. Once you book your wedding with us, feel free to schedule a site visit and we are happy to join you to learn more about your wedding and venue (if it is one of the few venues we have not been to). We can do site visits anywhere in the greater San Francisco Bay Area at no charge. One idea is to have us come with you during the actual ceremony "walk through". This will help determine potential issues and opportunities for great photography, but also help you plan your wedding day timeline. We have received fantastic and helpful insights from our couples during these practice sessions and highly recommend doing this! The other obvious benefit is that it provides us with a timeline of the ceremony so we know what to expect and can position wedding photographers accordingly. This is also a great opportunity for the the engaged couple to let us know what some of their favorite photography spots are at the venue.
If you have read this far, you are probably wondering why we keep mentioning San Francisco City Hall. Well, it just happens to be one of our favorite places to photograph weddings. After doing it for over 10 years, SF City Hall weddings have become one of our specialties with over 600 weddings creatively photographed. If you would like to learn more about having your nuptials at beautiful and historic San Francisco city hall, scroll down on this page to the section about planning your wedding there. You can also click the link at the bottom of this section to check out our full feature page with photos of San Francisco civil ceremonies. We continue to focus on photographing large Bay Area weekend events and you will see many examples of our full wedding coverage on our Gallery Page and in other areas throughout this website. Obviously, many of you reading this right now have already decided on a venue and plan on having a full scale wedding. If that is the case, please consider us when you make the all important decision of choosing your San Francisco Bay Area wedding photographer. As mentioned above, we have been a leading wedding photographer for many years with over 1,600 weddings under our belt. However, if you have not decided and are still thinking about where to have your wedding, we invite you to scroll down further and check out additional information. This link provides details regarding San Francisco City Hall Weddings. Please feel free to email us with any questions regarding any of the above. Note: After a long closure, City Hall is now open effective June 07, 2021. Weddings are also back with no restrictions other then the obvious (masks, social distancing, etc.)
Mike Dubnoff has been a top professional wedding photographer in the Northern California area since 1996. Mike's style provides you with an ideal blend of documentary photography combined with creative and romantic images. Most importantly, we make it a fun experience for both of you! You will receive plenty of photojournalistic images as well as posed traditional pictures. It's important to hire a professional you can trust and we have been earning that trust with over 1,600 weddings creatively photographed in the San Francisco Bay Area alone! This experience has allowed us to work with engaged couples from many cultures, including Catholic, Filipino, Indian, Greek, Jewish, Russian and Asian to name a few! We have been servicing the East Bay including, Antioch, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek / Concord and all of Contra Costa County for many years. We also cover the South Bay, including Fremont, San Jose, Palo Alto and Mountain View plus more. Our City Hall specialty takes us to San Francisco quite frequently with many other SF local venues often included in our coverage area. These popular venues include the Palace of Fine Arts, The Legion of Honor, Crissy Field, the Golden Gate Bridge and the North Beach Area. Other Northern California destinations include Clayton, Napa, Marin County, Livermore and beautiful Sonoma Valley. Check out our Facebook Wedding Photography page to see more sample albums, packages and our affordable packages and prices for every budget. If you would like to contact us to check our date availability for your wedding, click the link and provide us with just a few details about your upcoming nuptial event. We also cover non-wedding events also, just let us know the nature of the coverage needed.
The key difference with Dubnoff Wedding Photography is that we listen to you! We won't waste your time during your professional consultation telling you that we are the best wedding photographer in the San Francisco bay area. Instead, we ask what is important to YOU and get a feel for the type of photographic styles you prefer. Set up a free consultation and tell us what you want! We can show you all of the options we offer in Digital albums such as Flush Mount / Magazine Style. One of our specialties is San Francisco City Hall weddings. You can check out some recent weddings by going to our San Francisco City Hall wedding photography website. We are one of the leading professional SF City Hall wedding photographers with over 600 civil ceremonies creatively photographed over the past 12 years. For Indian weddings anywhere in Northern California please go to our San Francisco Indian Photography website or check out our Indian Wedding Photography page.
The internet is full of articles with the intention of helping the bride and groom choose the best professional bay area wedding photographers. We thought it would be helpful to look at it from a different perspective and help engaged couples avoid some of the most common mistakes people make when choosing a pro SF bay area photographer. It is one of the most important day of your lives soyou need to get it right.
1. Relying on Vendor Referrals - In general, most wedding and event vendors will try to provide you with an honest photographer referral when asked . The problem is that in most cases, these well meaning vendors really don't have enough personal knowledge of your service to make an informed and accurate recommendation. For example, I know a DJ who often refers me to his customers but has never even seen any of my images. He knows that I am pleasant to work with and polite to my customers, but hasn't personally seen one of my wedding albums or digital images. Even more disturbing is the fact that a very large number of event vendors trade referrals with no real knowledge of the other's work. So for example, a florist will agree to send her clients to a particular professional wedding photographer, but only if they agree to send referrals back. No trade, no referral! We never do this by the way! This tells you nothing about the quality of the wedding vendor's work. You are much better off talking to actual San Francisco brides and grooms who have worked with professional wedding photographers. In most cases, the couples are happy to share their experiences with you in an honest and straightforward way. This will undoubtedly lead to a more accurate referral. You could also just come right out and ask the vendor specific reasons why they are referring the professional to you. Their answer will most likely tell you all you need to know and make it clear that this is an informed referral and not just a trade. If all they can say is that they liked working with the photographer, this is not enough! Ask them for specific reasons and details, if they cannot provide you with any, keep looking! Another idea would be to check the photographer's Yelp Reviews. When researching pro bay area wedding photographers in Yelp, do not just rely on the number of stars they average. Take the time to read the actual reviews and get a great feel for their style and approach. Just because a wedding photographer rates highly doesn't mean they are the right professional picture taker for you.
2. Judging a Photographer Based Solely on a "Greatest Hits" Album . There is nothing more misleading than choosing a photographer based upon viewing a compilation of their best pictures from dozens of different weddings. At the very least, this may tell you how good a photo they are capable of producing under ideal circumstances, but it tells you nothing about what your final result will be. Insist on seeing one entire marriage and make sure they show you at least 50 images. This will provide you with a much better idea of the style and quality of the best photographer's work. The important thing is to discover how YOUR final wedding pictures will look. So seeing the best of 40 different weddings is not going to help with that in the least! This is especially important if choosing a photographer for a San Francisco city hall marriage. Make sure that all of the components that you want in your wedding photographs can be seen in the portfolio. Are there lots of candid shots during the reception? How is the lighting indoors? Does it look "flashy"? Is the posing of the bride and groom creative? These are some of the things that are important to understand and will ensure that the wedding photographer is capable of producing a variety of images and not just "wow" shots. It is important to select a picture taker who can do it all from start to finish!
3. Ignoring the Wedding Photographer's Personality. This is a very important factor! You will spend the entire day with your wedding photographers, if you don't like him or her, it could make your special day miserable. You are looking for a person who is courteous, not bossy and will get along well with your guests. Obviously, they need to be talented and experienced, but don't ignore their potential for bad or rude behavior. An ability to handle stress and yet stay pleasant is the key to a great wedding shooter. Some bay area photographers will tell you that they are like a "fly on the wall" at your event and you will never even know they are there. This is probably not the best choice for a couple who wants to make sure they get all the important and memorable shots. In reality, you probably want a combination of both of these attributes. Communication with your photographer is key, but of course you certainly do not want to spend the entire day talking to them! Some of the so-called fly on the wall photographers may be too shy to engage with you and talk to you about posing and obtaining important family shots. Or they may not even know how to set these shots up and would prefer to stay in the background. Great bay area wedding photographers possess the ability to balance all of these things. Your wedding photographer should be assertive enough to get the necessary images, but not obtrusive and overbearing.
4. Paying Too Much Attention to the Sales Presentation. - Just about any San Francisco wedding photographer can go on and on about why they are the perfect choice for you. They can talk about their great equipment and show you beautiful images. They may even impress you with their sparkling personality and tell you about their "vision" for your wedding pictures. This is all important stuff, but how much does it really tell you about the person and what they are offering you in particular? A good business professional will ask you questions and find out what YOU want in your wedding photography. If they spend the entire sales presentation preaching to you, it could also be that they don't really care about your own needs and preferences. Seek out affordable bay area wedding photographers who ask you lots of questions with the goal of discovering what YOUR vision of the wedding is. A 2-way conversation is more likely to result in a good match between bride, groom and photographer! I remember attending a San Francisco wedding photography workshop and was quite surprised when the presenter let us know that our brides and grooms don't really know what they want. It is up to the wedding photographer to tell them! While I kind of understood his point, it is not the way I approach my profession. He went on to discuss how the most important thing is to get great shots for your own portfolio. Do the bride and groom care about these things? Certainly not! I believe there is plenty of room for the artist to express his or her own vision while paying attention to the desires and specific requests of the bride and groom. Many wedding photographers refuse to photograph weddings where the couple doesn't want the photos published online or on Social Media. Again, not the point!
5. Confusion Over Wedding Packages and Pricing. If you can't understand the pricing, keep looking for other wedding photographers. Package pricing, if it's flexible, is a solid way to go. It provides you a better idea of what the ultimate cost will be without any final invoice surprises. A la carte pricing can be misleading because you may assume certain "obvious" items are included when they really aren't (like a wedding album or black and white pictures!) However, a company that only offers strictly structured packages without some flexibility should also be avoided. Ultimately, you want to find someone who will work within your budget guidelines and provide you exactly what you want and make it affordable. If you don't see an inexpensive package that fits your needs, ask if you can design your own. Probably about 30% of my customers ask me to modify one of my existing packages or prices to fit their personal preferences. We are happy to do this because our main goal is to make sure we are satisfying the needs of our Bay Area brides and grooms. Forcing a client into choosing a package unsuitable for them accomplishes nothing. If your chosen City Hall wedding photographer refuses to offer custom packages, move on. It might also be a clue to the type of person you are dealing with if they don't have some flexibility. Your wedding photographer needs to be flexible and understanding.
To Save Money! - Let's face it, getting married in the San Francisco Bay Area is expensive. We checked a number of sources and the average cost appeared to be right around $60,000. This number climbs much higher if you limit your choices to San Francisco specifically. There was a broad range of surveyed responses, but nothing fell below $28,000 and of course it's quite easy to go above the average. Can most young couples just starting out afford those types of costs? In most cases, no! Especially given the high cost of living in the Bay Area these days. Yes, parents will help and people figure out a way to get it done through loans, credit cards, etc. But why start your life together in debt? San Francisco City Hall costs around $100 for a simple ceremony (not including the Marriage License) and $1,000 for a private location that is roped off for your privacy with additional room for up to 60 invited guests (seated). This means you can have your wedding in one of the most beautiful venues on the west coast for pennies! Take your guests to a local restaurant and hire an affordable city hall wedding photographer and you will still be under $4,000 for your whole event! Another option is a 2 hour rental of city hall during the weekend. The cost for this is $5,000 but is subject to other fees and expenses not included in the price. Especially if you need security and other important items.
Convenience - One of the best things about having your wedding at San Francisco City Hall is that so many things are provided for you. You can obtain your marriage license the same day as your wedding and you can do this right before
the ceremony if you so desire. An experienced volunteer officiant to perform your marriage ceremony is provided at no extra cost (they are referred to as Marriage Commissioners and are not really judges) In addition, you have a safe, indoor, beautiful
location to celebrate your wedding surrounded by your closest family and friends. You can easily hire a city hall wedding photographer from the many available on the internet that also specialize in shooting at this magnificent venue. Many of the best San Francisco city hall wedding photographers have been doing this for over 10 years so you know that they have experience and will do a great job of you. Another notable
convenience is that after your ceremony you can walk to many fantastic restaurants nearby to celebrate with friends. Exceptional eateries such as Absinthe and Paxti's are just a few of the nearby locations close to San Francisco city hall. All three of these locations are less than a 15 minute walk and are highly rated. There are many other exceptional places to eat within a short Uber ride from
the building. If you opt for the reserved space (Mayor's Balcony or Fourth Floor Gallery)
the SF City Hall Event Department will help you with whatever set up items you need. It's all right there! They will also provide you with a free officiant if you arrange for it in advance. Most of our clients prefer to bring in their own officiant
for convenience and to allow for customized vows and/or sermons.
Beauty and History - San Francisco City Hall is well known as one of the most sought after wedding venues in the United States. People come from all over the world to visit and to get married in this incredible building. Built in
the early 1900's, city hall possesses old world charm with modern amenities. Former Mayor Willie Brown took great pains to update and remodel the interior of the building to make it a great place for all types of events and not just weddings. Some
parts of the updating included adding modern upgrades, but still retained the historic look of the building. Many of the rooms in the building had added false ceilings to help with sound obstruction, but had become run down and ugly. These ceilings
were pulled out and the beauty of the building was allowed to show through. The architecture is incredible and you are free to wander through the halls and consider all of the history that has occurred here. Don't forget, Joe Di Maggio and Marilyn
Monroe got married at San Francisco City Hall! So many other famous people have spent time here and yes even married here. Way too many to list on these pages. If you arrive early, check out the self guided tour available on the South Court 1st floor
(it is on the left as you walk in). If you are planning on hiring a professional city hall wedding photographer, be sure they include some architecture photos in their work.
San Francisco open your Golden Gate- I remember as a kid, watching the Newlywed Game on TV and being surprised at how excited the couples were when they won a 1 week trip to San Francisco. Big deal, I would think, I live here in the Bay
Area, it's just San Francisco. Well, apparently I was wrong. As it turns out, San Francisco is one of the most popular wedding destinations in the whole world. It may not quite match Paris or Rome, but it's definitely in the conversation. There is
so much for a newlywed couple to do here it boggles the mind. Some of the best restaurants in the world are right here in the "City by the Bay". Fisherman's Wharf,
North Beach, Union Square, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts are just a few of the places you can visit and enjoy during
your stay. Hire a professional San Francisco wedding photographer and have them record your experience of visiting some of these iconic locations. Or if you do not plan on getting married here, hire a wedding photographer and do an engagement portrait
session. You will have fun and see some great sites travelling around San Francisco.
City Hall Wedding Photography - If you have read this far, you probably knew this was coming... Yes, San Francisco city hall is an amazing place to have your wedding photography completed. A professional wedding photographer can escort
you to any of the 4 floors (preferably all of them!) and capture some amazing images. SF City Hall's architecture and lighting has to be
seen to be truly appreciated. The building is laced with natural frames for great photo composition. There are a number of San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photographers who understand this and will do an excellent job for you. Before choosing one,
be sure to check out their web pages to make sure they have lots of examples of photography in the interior of the building. It takes some experience to capture the beauty here without being fooled by the lighting. We are good friends with a number
of wedding photographers specializing in taking photos at this historic building. We would be more than happy to recommend them if are looking for a specific style of photography that is different than ours.
We are proud of the fact that we are Northern California natives and grew up exploring the beauty of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our vast local experience means that we have probably photographed a wedding at your venue at one time or another. It would take up too much room to list every venue in this area, but I thought it might be helpful to mention some of the places we have photographed multiple weddings (in no particular order). To see a more complete list of wedding reception venues that we have photographed over the years, click the link:
We don't just do weddings! Dubnoff Photography offers many other services in the San Francisco Bay Area. We would be happy to photograph your family portrait or High School Senior portrait session. In addition, we also specialize in Equine Photography throughout Northern California. We have been involved in photographing these other types of portrait sessions for many years and love doing it. To see some samples of our High School Senior Portraits click the highlighted link. If you are interested in some beautiful portraits with your horse, please check out our gallery of Bay Area Equine Photography. We are available to do these photography sessions throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area and will come to wherever your Horse is located. In some cases, we can also supply the horse and the venue for the shoot. In this situation, no riding will be allowed because of insurance reasons. Just ask us for details and availability.
When you think about looking for the best SF Bay Area wedding photographer, you probably figured you would just search the internet for photos that appeal to you the most. You might ask yourself about which photos have the most impact and if they provide any kind of emotional connection or impact. This is a good way to find a Bay Area wedding photographer, but there are more things to consider. Besides selecting a photographer that displays appealing photos on their website, it's very important to understand the style of each potential candidate. Let's explore some of the current, most popular styles of Northern California wedding photography and the names they are frequently referred to as.
For additional information on the various styles of SF Bay Area Wedding Photography and some fascinating history about marriage and photography, please click the link.
My mother was an accomplished artist and enjoyed painting our neighbor's Victorian houses in San Francisco. Growing up, you could look out my bedroom window and see these beautiful "painted ladies" and this helped inspire my mom to specialize in this type of art. My dad loved photography and gave me my first Nikon Camera to play around with. He had a great eye for photography and loved taking scenery photos with slide film. I often tried to grab the camera away from him when I was kid and I think that's where it all started for me as a professional photographer. My parents encouraged me to explore photography as a profession because they knew that's what I was hoping to do. I photographed my first wedding in college while attending the University of San Francisco and I really enjoyed seeing the happiness my photos created. I immediately started shooting weddings especially in the Walnut Creek and Concord areas. This made me realize that this is something I want to do for a living, plus I actually got paid to do it! I have lived in the Northern California area my whole life and feel very lucky to be able to use wedding photography as a means to explore so many beautiful venues and meet some great people. We work with brides and grooms from all types of cultures and get to visit all of the great tourist spots and even San Francisco City Hall on a regular basis. To be honest, I never dreamed I would be able to make a living doing something I love so much! To discover more information about the SF Bay Area wedding photographers check out our About Page on this site.
If you need other wedding vendors click: Seattle Destination Wedding Photographers. To find other marriage professionals in the Bay Area and Northern California including other San Francisco wedding photographers click the link. We encourage you to check out other styles and experience levels just to make sure you know what you are receiving in terms of style and experience.
Featured Locations and Older Galleries:
Flush Mount Album Samples:
Summary of Photography Services Offered:
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