Carmen did both our engagement photography and our wedding photography, and she is truly the best of the best. My husband is pretty photo shy and was anxious during both the engagement shoot and the various wedding photographs we had to take. Despite this, everything came our beautifully. Carmen is excellent at coaching and posing you so you can get beautiful, natural looking photos that you will love forever. I am so thankful to have worked with her and her team, and she helped put me and my husband at ease. When I’m feeling more confident, she will be my pick for boudoir photography for sure!

Carmen is truly THAT nice and THAT good

The first thing you learn about Carmen, is that Carmen loves love. She is over the moon about how you found each other and how wonderful it is that you are making this next step.

Initially, I thought she might be too nice. I have some obscene groomsmen. Could she hang with my boys while we got ready? Or would we feel like we had to act proper? That question got answered at the engagement photo session. Carmen can hang.

Engagement photos - In general it is a good idea to have an engagement photo session. Think of it as a practice session to build a relationship with your photographer. You don’t want to find out she says “now give me a smile superman” on your wedding day (Carmen doesn’t). We learned that Carmen is extremely patient and very good at describing to you what she is looking for in the shot. We also learned that Carmen has a fun side.

One of Carmen’s best traits is that she has amazing people skills. We decided to take our family photos before the ceremony. In general, the act of taking photos makes people nervous and tense. Now add in the stress of a countdown until the actual ceremony and you have a ticking time bomb. This is where Carmen excels. She took command of the 30 people milling around waiting for their turn. This meant she code switched from respectful, patient tone with the slow grandparents, to a “teacher voice” for dumb groomsmen goofing off, and to a baby voice to get the crying flower girls to smile. That was impressive.

Once the photos were ready, Carmen planed a beautiful reveal party at her studio. She provided wine, cheese, snack food and we watched a slide show of the top photos. We then spent a couple hours designing our wedding album. She took so many amazing photos! The whole time we traded stories about how magical our wedding night was. Not only were her photos amazing but the reveal experience was so much fun.

Carmen is a wonderful person through and through, to say the very least. I was traveling to Sacramento to photograph a wedding myself, but the traffic was so horrendous we missed the first hour of getting ready photos. The venue called Carmen last minute and she dropped everything to come save the day for us. She provided me her SD and CF cards without question and without asking for a single thing in return. I have never met such a wonderful, kind hearted, helpful person (especially helpful to a complete stranger) and she is an excellent photographer as well. It was a joy to work with her files and I am so glad our paths crossed, albeit in a less than ideal fashion. I cannot say enough glowing things about what she did for us and the immeasurable peace of mind she provided.