Megan and Arif’s Wedding at the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto

Megan and Arif had their wedding at The Garden Court Hotel in Palo alto. It is one of the cutest hotels in the area. I love the charming courtyard, with the pretty hanging lights, where guests can mingle throughout the evening. I knew from photographing here before that from certain rooms, I can get a pretty awesome overhead shot of the courtyard. The staff at the Garden Court Hotel were kind enough to give me access to one of the rooms to take the shot I wanted, which you can see below. The service at this hotel is great, from the management on down to the staff.

The ceremony was held in an a ballroom on the 2nd floor. The reception and cocktails were held downstairs. Because we had planned to do all the portraits prior to the ceremony, there was no rush and the wedding party even had a chance to stroll down to a Joya (a local restaurant and lounge) for a relaxing lunch prior to the ceremony. Megan was gorgeous in her white dress as everything flowed effortlessly into the evening. It was a very elegant wedding. Congratulations to Megan and Arif! Please enjoy this set of teasers.

All the pictures were taken with the Canon 5d Mark 3, Fuji X100s or the Fuji XPro-1, and the Ricoh GR. If you look through the gallery it will tell you which cameras took which pictures. Many photographers find that it’s rather unordordox that I don’t always use my Canon 5d Mark 3 but instead use smaller cameras. They are used to thinking of photographers only using large DSLR cameras. I find it refreshing and exciting to have choices and I find that often the smaller cameras are better for me in some situations so I use what works for me and allows me to get the shots I want to get. With my Ricoh GR for example, I can reach up and get shots that are high above me head and then drop down and get a low angle shot so much faster than I can with my DSLR’s. The Fuji X100s allows me to discreetly focus manually in very low light where even my Canon 5d Mark 3 struggles unless I use a flash on the camera, which is something I rarely do. I cannot accurately manually focus DSLR’s for the life of me. All the cameras have at least 12 megapixels and that is more than what I need so the fact that the Canon 5d Mark 3 has 22 Megapixels instead of 16 or 18 is a rather mute point for me. What is important is that the smaller cameras help me capture moments that I may have missed with my larger cameras and for me that is what it’s all about!