Filoli Couples Photography: A Return Session in Woodside
A couple of months after I photographed them on the coast, this pair wanted new pictures somewhere they'd never been. We landed on Filoli, where the gardens, the troll on the trail, and an empty ballroom floor all got their turn.
Best Bay Area Outdoor Photography Locations
Thirty-five locations across the Peninsula, East Bay, Marin, and coastal California — ranked, mapped, and annotated from years of shooting them. The ones most photographers overlook, the ones that only work at specific times, and the ones that deliver every single time.
Personal Lifestyle Session at Shoreline Park, Mountain View
Shoreline Park hides in plain sight in Mountain View. Most visitors come for the lake and the picnic tables. I came for the eight different backgrounds you can walk through in ninety minutes.
Filoli Portrait Session for an Older Couple: A Gift
A Bay Area family commissioned a spring portrait session at Filoli Gardens as a gift for an older couple they love. We started inside the mansion, where they were most themselves. The morning opened up further in the sunken garden, when I asked them to dance.
Why I Don't Offer Mini Sessions for Mountain View Families (And What You Get Instead)
A toddler who took ten tries to learn a high-five. A mother who said the morning was transformed. This is what happens when you give a family more than fifteen minutes.
Shoup Park & Redwood Grove | A Redwood Grove Fifteen Minutes from Home
Most families think a good session needs a destination. Some of my favourite family mornings happen fifteen minutes from the family's front door, in a redwood grove most Los Altos locals drive straight past.
From Soft Light to Sunset: A Bay Area Couples Session
The forecast said overcast all afternoon. The first hour delivered exactly that. Then the sun came through — and the register of the entire session changed.
How to Choose a Family Photographer in the Bay Area (Who Actually Captures Your Family)
Most "how to choose a family photographer" guides patronize the people reading them. They pretend you only want "real and candid" moments when in fact you want your family to look beautiful and have it feel real. Here's what to actually look for.
A Commercial Model Session at Filoli Gardens, Woodside
A signed model, a couture gown, and Filoli's formal gardens at the worst possible time of day for a portrait session. The brief was commercial — and that changed every decision.
Inside the Filoli House: A Black and White Editorial Session
Filoli's interior is photographed often and rarely well. The reason is colour. A couture gown inside a 1917 country house, shot in colour, reads as period drama. Shot in black and white, it reads as something else entirely.
An Editorial Session at the Pulgas Water Temple, Woodside
A Greek-revival rotunda above a 175-foot reflecting pool, in the hills behind Crystal Springs Reservoir, almost nobody on the Peninsula knows is there. The session was about composition, not coverage — pink chiffon against grey stone, a dress, a column, a long cypress allée.
How to Prepare for an Outdoor Family Photo Session in the Bay Area
Most family photo session prep advice is written for a different kind of session than the one I shoot. Here's the prep I actually want families to read before an outdoor session in the Bay Area — kids by age, weather realities, multi-generational logistics, and the partner who'd rather not be photographed.
Nine People, One Walk: An Extended Family Session at Wilder Ranch
Nine people, one walk, three generations. The day moved from the historic farm at Wilder Ranch to the cliffs above the Pacific — an extended-family session that earned every frame the long way.
Red Against the Ruins: An Editorial Portrait Session at Dumbarton Shoreline
Most sessions look for a beautiful setting. This one looked for the opposite — crumbling concrete, rusted infrastructure, and graffiti-tagged walls — and used a single deep red dress to make it all work.
Spring at Filoli: A Personal Lifestyle Session at Woodside's Most Photogenic Garden
There's a version of Filoli that most visitors never see — the garden at 9am in April, before the tour groups arrive and the light is still cutting sideways through the formal hedgerows. That's the version I showed up to photograph.
Stanford Cactus Garden Photography: A Bay Area Location Guide
The Stanford Cactus Garden doesn't appear on most Bay Area photography location lists — and that's the reason to know it. A hundred years of crested cacti, agave taller than a car, prickly pear that blooms for two weeks in spring, and the kind of dry sunset grass most photographers walk past. Here's how to shoot it.
Personal Lifestyle Session | Stanford Cantor Arts Center
Most people walk past the Cantor Arts Center and see a museum. I see a location that most Bay Area photographers haven't fully figured out yet.
Evening Light at Montalvo Arts Center: A Personal Lifestyle Session in Saratoga
Villa Montalvo looks like a film set at dusk — lamps lit, the formal gardens going dark, the estate completely empty. Most photographers are long gone by then. We were just getting started.
From Daylight to Neon: A Day at Niles Flying A and the Niles Depot, Fremont
The light shifted four times. The wardrobe shifted once. The day started in white Western styling at a 1938 gas station, moved through a railway depot in black, and came back to the gas station after dark — this time under neon.
Spring Light and Wisteria: A Personal Lifestyle Session at Gamble Garden, Palo Alto
The message came in at 7pm. By 6:30am the next morning I was already at Gamble Garden, camera bag over one shoulder, walking the paths alone. Forty-five minutes of scouting before she arrived — and wisteria at absolute peak.