City Hall Wedding - Crissy Field Photos

We timed this wedding just right, but not on purpose. We took the newlywed couple on our typical city hall photo tour only to discover that a band was coming into the building to celebrate Fleet Week. The groom had this great idea to pose in front of the band on the Grand Staircase to turn this potential wedding photography disruption into a positive memory. Some City Hall wedding couples would have looked at this as a negative since band's presence made it impossible to obtain one of our traditional Grand Staircase shots. However, this couple saw it as an opportunity for something fun. This was a great idea and the resulting photo came out perfect. After the San Francisco City Hall wedding photographer was complete, we took the Bride and Groom to Crissy Field for some additional pictures and guess what happened? We were disrupted again, but this time by the Blue Angels! This is the kind of problem that we like. Our groom especially was very excited by the fly overs and so he asked us to see if we could include one of the Navy Jets in the background of their Crissy Field wedding photos. If you look carefully at some of the outdoor images, you will see the Blue Angel fighter jets in the background. They look small in the background, but they were definitely captured. Great memories for the couple and a fun time in San Francisco during Annual Fleet Week.

Turning Problems into Photo Opportunities at City Hall

We spoke above about how the Grand Staircase closure during our San Francisco city hall photo shoot turned into something fun and positive. Anyone who has read my blog and also looked at this website knows that I think that San Francisco city hall is an amazing place for wedding photography. There is a downside, however. City Hall is a public building and they have occasional special events scheduled. Especially on Fridays where you never know if something is going be happening. Usually these events or public issues can be worked around, but occasionally there are problems. I counsel my couples ahead of time to be aware of this, but to also maintain a positive outlook. There are always things we can do to get around issues that arise. Also, as mentioned, sometimes the problems turn into great opportunities. One recent example was an Insurance company special event that took over about 1/3 of our Photo spots at SF City Hall. The color scheme of their decorations was mostly purple. Well guess what our bride's color were? That's correct, Purple! So when the bride saw this she immediately suggested that we go around the building and seek out all of the purple backgrounds we could find for wedding photos. The photos actually turned out amazing and we even managed to get a picture on top of the purple colored Grand Staircase to boot!

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