San Francisco Bay Area Wedding Photographer

Welcome to our San Francisco Bay Area photography website. Mike Dubnoff has been a top professional wedding photographer in the Northern California area since 2002. 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! If you would like to contact us to check our date availability for your San Francisco city hall wedding, click the link and provide us with just a few details about your upcoming nuptial event. We offer discount pricing for brides and groom on a budget.

Affordable SF Bay Area Wedding Photographer

We offer all levels of affordable wedding photography packages to our Bay Area Clients. We will work within your budget to create a custom package that works for you. 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. You can check out some recent weddings by checking out our Gallery Pages from the Menu above. All weddings will have 2 professional photographers present. I always shoot each wedding personally assisted by one of my exceptional photographers.

Local experience with Bay Area Venues

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!

Bay Area Wedding Photographer with Many Cultures

To be a San Francisco Bay Area wedding photographer means that you are constantly exposed to a very diverse client base. We love the experience we have had with so many different cultures and religions. This experience has allowed us to work with couples from many cultures, including Catholic, Filipino, Indian, Greek, Jewish, Russian and Asian to name a few! I feel like it really helps us to know what is coming with each of the different types of ceremonies and traditions.

San Francisco Wedding Photography

When you think about looking for the best San Francisco 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 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 wedding photography and the names they are frequently referred to as.

• DOCUMENTARY This is probably the style that is most popular today. If you ask most modern wedding photographers they would most likely tell you that they shoot weddings in the documentary style. The idea here is to document the wedding as though it was an event you are covering as a reporter, but of course in a creative and artistic way. In it's most basic form, the wedding photographer follows the couple around throughout the day and takes mostly candid photos of them. The hope is to catch special "moments". This includes Hugs, laughter, tears and any of the other emotional moments that occur during a wedding. The photographer (or photojournalist) should be unobtrusive and barely needs to speak to the bride and groom throughout the day. Other names for this style include: Photojournalism or Reportage. The best wedding photographers will provide this type of coverage but still mix in some traditional types of images also.
• TRADITIONAL - Probably the style most of us are used to thinking of when we hear about wedding photography. In it's purist form, Traditional photography sometimes involves shooting from a predetermined "shot list" which includes many of the poses and family photos the couple wants. In addition, unlike Documentary wedding photography, the photographer is very involved in the process. Choosing the best backgrounds, lighting techniques and posing the subjects are all part of a traditional wedding photographers skill set. This style of photography will usually be more time consuming and require a larger time commitment from the bride and groom. Other names for this style include: Conventional, Classic and Posed.
• CONTEMPORARY - In my opinion, many of today's best San Francisco wedding photographers fall into this category. The idea here is for the wedding photographer to create the photo by putting the couple in beautiful backgrounds and lighting, but then not being quite as rigid with posing. The best Contemporary photos appear candid but are really partially set up by the photographer. In other instances, the wedding photographer simply places the subjects in better light and backgrounds, but still shoots mostly candid photos. One good example is something we often do during bridal prep... We walk into the room where the bride is getting ready, but notice she is preparing by the garbage can with dim uneven lighting. In this situation, we would politely suggest that the bride move closer to the window with a cleaner background, but allow the candid moments to occur and record them. Other names include Illustrative, Fashion or Modern.

For additional information on the various styles of San Francisco Wedding Photography and some fascinating history about marriage and photography, please click the link.

San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photography Specialty

One of our specialities at Dubnoff Wedding Photography is San Francisco city hall. Yes, San Francisco city hall is an amazing place to have your wedding photographed. 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. In addition, there are huge window that let in amazing natural light to make your photos even more memorable. 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. Don't trust your precious memories to a friend or relative, hire a pro! More importantly, the most experienced city hall wedding photographers understand that the Grand Staircase is not the only place to obtain great images in the building. They will take you there, but also to the many other great places available for beautiful photos. Each of the 4 floors offer something different in terms of unique wedding pictures.

Bay Area Wedding Photography with a Smile

We feel our positive attitude and friendly demeanor set us apart. We will have fun with you on your wedding day and make sure the photo session is not too complicated or precise. We possess an easy going style which will help you relax while your photos are being taken. This makes you feel much more at ease and produces better and more natural wedding photos. This is the ultimate goal, to provide the bride and groom with memories to last a lifetime. We have found that if we smile and converse with our couples, they smile back. We are looking for natural reactions and emotion in our city hall photography, not posed and stiff. This approach has served us well over the past 12 years and has helped make us one of the leading San Francisco Bay Area wedding photographers. We hope to continue to provide this friendly service for many years! Please let us know if your experience does not match up to this ideal, we promise to make it right.

Family History of Artistry in San Francisco

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! Eventually, I discovered the amazing city hall venue and decided to specialize in weddings here in San Francisco. 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 city hall wedding photographers check out our About Page on this site.

Please visit our Sitemap to view the many pages of our Dubnoff Photography website!

San Francisco Bay Area Wedding Photography