Robert Valdes Wedding Photographer San Francisco Bay Area

Here’s a jolly ‘ole wedding I found that I photographed waaaayyyy back in 2006!. The exact date was Saturday August 26, 2006. This was a great wedding that started with Groom’s prep and Bridal prep at the Hotel St. Claire in San Jose, CA. It’s common for couples to get married at St Joseph’s church [where this couple got married] and have your reception either here at the Hotel St. Claire or up the street at the Fairmont Hotel.

In any case, Joanna & Joseph had their reception at the Fabulous Hotel St. Claire, a venue I have been proud to work at least a dozen times in my 20 year career. Here are some of the amazing wedding pictures that I took that day. If you would like to see more, please send me an email and we can make arrangements to meet and for me to show them to you. Comments to follow pics, enjoy…..

We began with pictures of the Groom in the Lobby of the Hotel.

Yes, this is a good idea.

The father of the bride. I always strive for natural poses in a natural setting even if the setting is unnatural.

The bride expressed to me that she really wanted to see the details of her dress.

The girls are horsing around before the wedding.

I love getting organic and natural journalistic wedding shots such as this one below.

The mother of the bride passed down a ring to the Bride. It was a very emotional exchange.

Some poses over by the window. I use natural light whenever possible to achieve a more organic nature to me wedding photographs.

Ok so now we are over at St Joseph’s church in downtown San Jose, CA. The church is right up the street from Hotel St. Claire. It s a beautiful church with a huge DOME. I have been fortunate enough to work here at least a dozen times in my 20 year career as a wedding photographer.

It gets pretty dark in there and they do not allow any flash for the ceremony. Most catholic churches do not allow flash for the wedding. However, from this far away, a flash would not do any good. I rely on my FAST lenses and steady hand to get little stolen moments such as this.

Ok, this shot is up from the balcony. Sometimes, they don’t open the balcony so I was happy to get these from the top.

After the wedding I took them over to this little square PLAZA like area, I forgot what it’s called. Anyway, this was a fun couple and I got many natural style wedding photos.

So back at the Hotel St. Claire. This is a picture of the front of Hotel St. Claire from across the street.

The room looked fabulous as usual. The Hotel St. Claire has a great wedding and banquet manager.

A shout out to my buddy Adrian from Sound In Motion DJ’s. I worked with this guy many times. Him and his partner KING RAFFI. We’re all old timers in this biz…lol

The first dance of the bride and groom were very emotional. I got a combination of close ups [like this one] and wide angle.

They cut the cake and that was pretty much the end of the night.

I hope you liked all these wedding photos from way back in 2006. Just goes to show that I have been doing great work for many years. My style has changed a bit from this time. And I have a new camera since then. So my quality is much higher now as well. But I think it’s great to look back every once in a while. It’s important to know where you been, in order to have a clear vision of where you are going!

Here is a great web site to help you plan your wedding day. YourBridalPlanner.com specializes in weddings and wedding vendors, reviews and much more. Vendors register for your FREE vendor listing. Brides and Groom’s register for your free account to make Quote Requsts from vendors, make a wedding website or publish your Real Wedding.

Please follow this link to open a FLASH gallery of photos that I took at a recent wedding [January 2010] at the Dublin Ranch Golf Course in Dublin, CA.

click here to open the gallery of wedding images taken at the Dublin Ranch Golf Course

There is a historical Catholic church in the North Beach area of San Francisco called Sts Peter & Paul Church. It is a very popular church as well with many Celebrity weddings being held there. The Church is across the street from a public park called Washington Square Park.The church is very beautiful inside with many statues and religious works of art.

Here are some wedding photos of a great couple we had the pleasure of working with.

The balcony is literally 5 stories TALL and you must hoof it up a flight of stairs. You better hope the door is unlocked when you get there LOL

A word of caution when you are filming a wedding at this church and other public venues in San Francisco or any other city for that matter…..Always watch your belongings. Grab and runs are rampant through out this area. There are alot of homeless in Lincoln Park which is right around the street. Plus there are alot of TOURIST TRAFFIC in and out of this church which is an additional security issue.
 

There’s a place called the OUTDOOR ART CLUB in a little town called MILL VALLEY, CA. I recently had the pleasure of photographing a wedding there. They had the ceremony in the back, below the huge redwood trees. Cocktails were served on the patio while the luncheon was served in the main room. After lunch they danced on the front patio. For someone looking for a really nice place to have their wedding, the Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club is a top recommendation.

Cinta Salon in San Francisco, CA is a popular place for brides to get their hair done on their wedding day. I recently had the pleasure of taking wedding photographs for a bride who was getting her hair done there. It’s rare that a bride wants this type of coverage, so I was excited at the prospect of capturing an additional element of the bridal day of preparation.

These are some really nice wedding photos I took of at Elizabeth Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, CA. This is one of my favorite couples whose wedding was in January of 2010. I took the couple here  after their ceremony for the photo session. Their wedding was not held at the Gamble Garden. But there reception was close by over at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Millbrae, CA.

I got  lucky with the lighting that day. It was raining all day and then there was a brief moment where the rain stopped. The rain clouds that weren’t raining provided a really nice soft light for the pictures. I didn’t have to use any flash for any of these shots.

Let me know what you think! You can see more shots like this on my award winning photography website!

For the second year in a row, since the inception of the awards, I am the proud recipient of the WEDDINGWIRE.COM Brides Choice Award.

I was doing some clean up and stumbled across this old photo of me taken with Cardinal William Levada and Cardinal Ricardo Vidal. This photo was taken in 2004 at a photo shoot I was doing for Monsignor Fred Bitanga, whom I got to know so well because I was doing alot of wedding photography at St. Patricks Catholic Church in San Francisco, CA. Monsignor Bitanga was retiring and the even was his 40th Jubilee. In attendance at the event were his very esteemed aforementioned colleagues. At the time William Levada was the Archbishop of San Francisco. Enjoy!

One of the advantages of having my own video crew is that I can often get some great shots of me in action! Through out the year I have accumulated footage that I have personally edited to create version 2 of my promotional video.

Version 1 of this video was first produced at the end of 2007 so the footage was quite old and I was 30 lbs heavier then as well. You can tell the new footage because I wear a BLACK GLOVE on my grip hand. I call it my POWER GLOVE and it does nothing else but give me a better grip on the camera and the padding on the glove reduces hand fatigue so I can shoot longer and more controlled. I still have some old clips in the video that I will one day replace. You can tell the old clips because I am heavier and I am not wearing a glove. I also do not have the big white dome thingy on my flash in the old clips.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy this new version. Please leave comments and let me know what you think!