Orange County Wedding Photography
Congratulations! If you clicked on this page, you must be looking for a wedding photographer. I started my photography career more than a decade ago as a wedding photographer and I still get giddy when I get the chance to capture a bride and groom on their wedding day.
Let’s Chat
Now, you might think a portfolio is the most important thing when you’re choosing your wedding photographer, but I’d like to argue that it’s actually their personality and whether or not you would enjoy working with them. During your wedding photography experience, you will be spending many hours with your wedding photographer, so you want to make sure that you not only admire their work, but appreciate them as a person.
I insist on meeting all of my potential wedding couples. We can either meet in person or through zoom because I think it’s so important to know that we can work well together. Trust me when I tell you that it will show in pictures when you are enjoying your wedding photography experience. The first step in this process is to get together. We go over some of your wedding details, look through some wedding albums and decide if we’d make a great creative team.
Lights
I have taken wedding photography workshops from some of the best photographers in the industry. Because of this, my style reflects a little bit of everything. I usually let the venue and the couple dictate the direction their wedding photography aesthetic will go. We can do light, airy, natural light, bohemian style or we can add some dramatic lighting and go for a more editorial romantic glam look.
I bring a variety of lighting to help create the perfect look for your wedding pictures. I pack flashes, continuous lights, video lights, etc. No matter what the light conditions are on your wedding day, I’ll be able to adapt and create the beautiful wedding portraits that you want. I’ve shot wedding in outdoor receptions lit only by string lights and grand ballrooms lit with dramatic up-lighting.
Camera
Most wedding couples don’t really care what type of camera that I’m shooting with, but I’m realizing more and more these days that everyone is becoming a little more knowledgeable when it comes to photography. I’ve been shooting with Canon equipment from the very beginning. I actually started as a film photographer! Yes, I had to actually get my settings correct without being able to look at the back of my camera. I had to wait a week or two to see what the pictures actually looked like haha.
I’m definitely much happier nowadays with how far cameras have come and what they are capable of. I bring Canon 5D Markiv and a Canon 5D R5 mirrorless bodies with me to shoot with. I have an extensive range of lenses that I use during the day. Different poses or scenes will require specific lenses. You can be assured that I have backups in case of any technical problems that may occur.
Action
My approach to wedding photography is to let as much happen without my direction, but to step in when needed. I will typically set a scene or direct people generally where to be during certain moments. Once they're set, I then just let them resume what they were doing. So many people worry that they will look “awkward” in their pictures. My goal is to make everyone as comfortable as possible. Everyone turns into a super model by the end of the day. If all else fails, my trick is to have the wedding couple focus on each other and don’t worry about “posing” for the camera. Capturing those genuine interactions between the bride and groom is one of my top priorities on the wedding day.
Travel
My studio is located in Brea, CA in sunny Orange County, but I am available to travel far and wide. I have photographed weddings all over Southern California and Las Vegas and am available for destination weddings all over the world. In fact, I’ve done family sessions as far as Ireland. I’d be excited to travel anywhere to document your wedding day. Special travel packages can be customized to fit your specific needs.
ENGAGEMENT SESSION FOR ORANGE COUNTY WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY
Once you have chosen me to be a part of your wedding celebration, we can start the planning. First up, the engagement session. Not all couples choose to include an engagement session as part of their wedding photography, but I highly encourage it. Engagement pictures can be used for so many different purposes. One of the most common is probably save-the-date announcements. This gives your wedding guests a heads up as to when you’re having your wedding ceremony so that they can start to make plans before you send out an official announcement.
I also suggest enlarging and printing your engagement pictures to put on the walls of your house. It’s such a great reminder of what you were like as a couple. Your wedding pictures are going to be images of you dressed in wedding attire so it’s nice to have engagement images of you as a couple in casual attire. Another thing that I love to do with engagement pictures is to make a wedding guest book. A guest book includes all the images from the engagement session. If you don’t want to make a whole book, you can make one large print of your favorite engagement picture and have people sign the matte border of it.
Importance of Engagement Sessions
Even if you’re not interested in the pictures from the engagement session, it actually serves and even greater purpose. It gets you comfortable in front of the camera for your wedding pictures. The engagement session is almost like a date between myself and the wedding couple. It’s a chance for us to get to know each other a little better. Then when it comes to the wedding day, you can have all the trust and comfort that your mages will turn out amazing.
I’m not always the chosen wedding photographer for the couples that I do engagement sessions for. Sometimes venues will have assigned wedding photographers and couples will choose me to do just their engagement pictures. This is common and just as special. Engagement session pictures will usually take about and hour or a little longer and I suggest couples bring at least three outfit changes. We may not get to all three changes, but it’s always good to have more options than not enough.
PLANNING FOR ORANGE COUNTY WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY
Engagement Sessions are usually the first thing that we do once we commit to work together. Once you have secured more of your vendors and wedding venue, I help all my couples work on a wedding photography timeline for the day. I use answers to an extensive questionnaire that I send you and come up with suggestions on when and where we do certain pictures during your wedding day. The wedding photography timeline makes it so that you don’t have to worry about where to be at any point during your big day. I will also work with your other wedding vendors to make sure that we all have the same expectations with how the wedding day will go.
Videography
I used to offer videography as part of my Orange County wedding photography packages but I have since decided to focus solely on photography. However, I still work with some amazing wedding videographers that I trust implicitly and will recommend if that is something that you are interested in adding. It’s so important that all your wedding vendors work together to give you an amazing wedding day experience.
After wedding
Within 48 hours of your wedding day, I will post some sneak peeks on social media platforms. You are welcome to share the pictures with friends and family. Your final edited images will be ready within 3-4 weeks of your wedding day. All of my wedding photography packages include high resolution digital files. You will receive a link to download the images once they are completely edited. You can expect approximately 40-50 images per hour of coverage, but that is just an average and can vary depending on the size of your wedding. In general, the more guests that you have and larger your wedding party, the more wedding pictures you will get.
Wedding albums
You want to display your wedding images in as many places as possible. You worked hard on all your details and looked beautiful on your big day so you should be reminded of that often. I offer wedding albums as part of my packages to make sure that your wedding pictures are printed and preserved. The print companies that I work with print using archival paper and inks. This will allow them to last for generations to come. I also suggest putting up some enlarged canvasses or acrylic prints of you as a couple on your big day. Whatever your printing needs, I’m here to help.
Growing Family
Many of my wedding photography clients will eventually turn into my maternity clients and then newborn clients. I consider it the ultimate privilege to be able to become a family historian of sorts. Doing wedding photography, maternity portraits, newborn pictures, and then family pictures every year. I have actually been able to do this for quite a few families and they have become friends more than clients and that’s the way that I like it. So, hopefully you enjoy working with me on your wedging day because you may not be able to get rid of me.
Freebird Studios is an Orange County Maternity, Newborn and Family photography studio located in Brea, CA and serving Fullerton, Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Rowland Heights, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Riverside, Laguna Beach and all of Los Angeles and Orange County.
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