What Services Do You Offer?
Photography and Cinematography for weddings events, engagements, anniversaries, parties, and more! We also do engagement photo shoots, families, and children.
Are you available for our date? What do you charge?
Please send us an email via our contact form for the quickest response to check availability and find out what our current pricing is based on your event details.
What is Required to Book Your Services?
A signed agreement and retainer fee which goes towards the cost of the package is needed to reserve your date(s).
How many people will be there to shoot our event?
The number of photographers and cinematographers will be based upon the event and collection. For example, a pre-event for an Indian wedding may have fewer team members than a large wedding ceremony.
Do you travel?
We are available for assignments around the world. We have done weddings in Southern California, Virginia, Texas, New Jersey, Mexico, and more! We are eager to do a wedding in India so if you are getting married in India let us know! We also love to travel to places like Bahamas, Jamaica, Hawaii, and other exotic locales.
What is your style?
It’s a great question that has no one-word answer. When we shoot a wedding we use a variety of techniques to capture the moment. Our style will be based on the couple, the mood, and the moment we are capturing. We love capturing images in a variety of styles because a wedding day encompasses many moods and allows us to use many techniques, including lighting, posing, and editing to create the style. We also work with each client individually to find out what images they are drawn to and what they like most about our work and then we focus on that.
What length films do you make? Are they long, short, or both?
We are best known for our cinematic highlight films that you can view here on our website and blog. We also edit long-form documentary films that capture pretty much the entire day and are edited with titles, transitions, and music. These films will range in length depending on the content of what we are shooting. For example, a five-minute speech would be five minutes in the documentary film. A twenty-minute speech would be a twenty-minute speech, so you get the picture.
Do you edit your photos?
All of the images released by our studio have been color corrected and adjusted to display properly on your computer and produce pleasing prints. We include these images with all of our packages and portrait sessions. Further “detailed editing, also known as retouching”, is done on enlargements ordered through us, as well as, for albums that are created by our studio. This would include reducing dark circles under eyes, removing distracting background elements, additional detailed skin retouching, and so forth.
What’s your turnaround for photographs and films?
Our turnaround time is 4-6 weeks for images and 3-4 months for films. We keep you updated as we are in the editing phases and usually beat our estimated delivery timeframes.
What equipment do you use?
We primarily use professional cameras and lenses made by Canon. We are “very techie” so to speak, we are pretty much in the know when it comes to new gear and tech.
Do you offer raw photos or raw video footage?
We edit all of our images and give you high-resolution jpegs so the raw version is not needed. We do sell raw video footage on Mac formatted hard-drive.
Are you a “videographer” or a cinematographer”? What is the difference?
We are cinematographers and also consider ourselves “wedding filmmakers”. There are lots of terms used for people who shoot weddings. Videographer, cinematographer, wedding filmmaker, etc. The main difference is a videographer mainly captures the day as it happened and then delivers a product that is just that. A wedding cinematographer or filmmaker will be looking for certain types of shots and angles that have a more cinematic look. For example, instead of shooting the groom put on his coat, we may show him picking it up, then putting it on, and then close up shots of his hands as he buttons it. For each shot, we are choosing different angles and lens focal lengths to make it more cinematic and what you would usually see in films, not in simple wedding videos. That means more detail, care, and planning are put into the composition, editing, and scenes to create a mood and look and it is not simply shooting what is there.
Do you make albums?
Yes, we offer custom designed lay flat flush mount wedding albums that are gorgeous! Pricing is based on size, the number of pages, and material choices. We keep it simple and offer three options to fit all budgets.
Do you give us a CD, DVD, or Bluray of our photos and/or wedding films?
We create an online gallery for every event we photograph and send you the link to view and download the high-resolution images. This is a great method because you get your images instantly, they are backed up in the cloud for you, and you can view them anywhere in the world. It allows you to also share the images with your friends and family around the globe, as well as, give them the option to download the images if you have provided them the password.
For our films, we upload better than Bluray 1080P HD quality online for you to view and download. This allows you to have the ability to view the films on any of your devices or connected televisions. You can also download the master files of the films and save them, share them on USB and have the same quality without any loss of resolution. Weddings are forever and your films should be made to withstand the test of time and this is the best way to do it. DVDs and Blu-rays are definitely going away and will be gone for good within just a few years.
Can we choose the music for our films?
Yes! You are given the opportunity to give suggestions of music you would like included in your documentary film. We also take suggestions for the cinematic highlights films, however, we want to ensure the song(s) chosen work well with the edit and we prefer to use music that we can license for these short pieces. We find that music that is not as recognizable makes for a better film as it becomes more timeless and more artistic. Choosing popular music from a certain time period will date the piece.
Do we have the right to make our own prints and albums with the photos?
Yes, with all of our packages and portrait sessions you have the ability to make your own prints and albums. We recommend going through our studio for prints because we will make each image perfect prior to printing and use the best quality labs available but you are free to do what you wish with the images, except for selling them for a profit. Our studio does retain copyright to the images, we give the client “unlimited license to print the images for personal use”.
Do you charge a travel fee?
We do not charge a travel fee for events within the San Francisco Bay Area. For multi-day events where we need to have a hotel room in between the days of events, we will either arrange that on our own and bill the client or the client will arrange that on our behalf. For far away events that start early in the morning, we may request a room the night before that the client pays for. For destination weddings, we include our travel costs in the final price and base that rate upon the cost of airfare, rental car, hotel room(s), etc. Please contact us for more details.
Do you only shoot Indian weddings? How come this is what we mostly see on your website?
We shoot weddings of all types, sizes, and religions. We sort of became known for shooting Indian weddings because we are really good at it. We know how to anticipate the moment, how to work effectively to be unobtrusive, yet be everywhere, and we have a good reputation within the Indian community. We often shoot other types of weddings but because our main clientele and revenue comes from Indian weddings, we have decided to focus on that.
Do you have insurance and backup equipment?
Yes, we carry a $1,000,000 liability insurance policy and can provide proof to your venue as needed. We always carry backup equipment.
Do you know the customs of our Indian wedding?
We are well versed in all types of Indian and South Asian weddings. We have done hundreds of them including Gujarati weddings, Sikh Weddings, Punjabi and North Indian Hindu weddings, Muslim weddings, South Indian weddings including Kannada, Tamil, and Telegu weddings. We have also done Bengali, Nepalese, and a ton of fusion weddings. There is almost no combination we have not seen. With our great depth of understanding of these ceremonies, we are able to better position ourselves to capture all the various moments that are unique to each type of event. We have also covered many Mehndi nights, Poojas, Sataaks, Vidhis, Pithis, Haldis, and many more!