This bride- and groom-to-be will we married later this month in Volcano, CA. I can’t believe I’m shooting a wedding inside a volcano. I’m beyond excited. Look for a wedding post early in the new year.

We took some engagement photos at Villa Montalvo. I hope to photograph a Montalvo Arts Center wedding someday. The historic estate, at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, is positively picturesque.

In the photograph above, Michi’s father is about to see his beautiful daughter in her wedding dress for the first time.

But I owe you some explanation. Petaluma’s nestled in a valley about 40 minutes north of San Francisco. Next time you’re there, get off the freeway, find D street, and take it in the direction of the sunset. In March, April, and November, you’ll crest hills of green. You’ll see cyclists on tour, picnicking families, and picnicking black-and-white cows. You’ll be certain, if it’s your first time, that the Pacific ocean lurks in the next valley, and then maybe the next, or the next, just behind one of those dairies, maybe. And as if by magic, you’re suddenly descending to a cheese factory, a vibrant backdrop that I visited countless times as a child. It never occurred to me that weddings could be held there. But it was precisely for that reason a few weeks ago that I found myself hiding a tear behind my camera as Mr. Adams approached the tent where his daughter had just finished putting on her wedding dress. The sky promised rain in the most comforting of ways; perhaps to reassure the wedding guests that the greenest of grass would continue to grow at this particular venue; or as if the sea itself, just a couple of miles away, had a kind of dominion over the first few valleys from the coast.

This is only one of several photos I took of Michi with her dad that day. I have featured this one here because of the way he is beaming. It speaks of the youthful optimism that I have seen before on the faces of parents. At weddings, there is frequently a moment between parent and bride- or groom-to-be that shows a trusting lightness of being. It’s love in a glance. At this wedding, that moment happened under a soft golden sky, with Michi and one of her close bridesmaids in the foreground. I hope to be there to photograph it many more times in my career. Thanks for looking!

Penngrove is a very small place (population 2,500). It’s also my hometown. I’ve had my fingers crossed that someone would ask me to photograph a wedding or reception in Penngrove, and my dream came true one Saturday in October. Family and close friends watched from quilt-covered hay bales as Renee and Nick were married in a small ceremony in her grandfather’s verdant Cotati backyard. The bride and groom left for a ride in their vintage Volkswagen and I headed to the reception, held at the Penngrove Clubhouse.

If you’ve followed my blog for a long time, you’ll know that I tend to focus more on the moments and people than on the wedding details. But when I got to the Penngrove Social Firemen’s Clubhouse, where the reception was to be held, the decor took my breath away. Maybe it’s because I grew up coming to Italian dinners and social events here, and had never seen it so transformed. It was a photographer’s dream. Adorn Affair did a tremendous job, from the potluck-style dessert table to the polaroid portrait room.

I took the photograph above during a quick sunset escape to downtown Penngrove for some wedding portraits – we thought we were away from the wedding crowd until some friends of the bride and groom popped out of Mack’s Bar and Grill to say hello. There are some more photos in the slideshow below – please click through if you’d like to order a print, and thanks for stopping by! And thanks to Barb at Mockingbird Heights Salon for her beautiful work.

Joanna and Jeremy designed a beautiful San Francisco Bay Area wedding in my hometown, Petaluma, CA. Their October celebration coincided with gorgeous Sonoma County wedding weather – it ended up being a few days after we got some rain, and the temperature was perfect. Maybe it’s because I’m dating the groom’s sister, who also officiated, and therefore got to see months of preparations, but the most striking feeling I remember seeing from behind my camera that day was a comfortable, basking sense of relief: that the weather was brilliant; that the Buckeye Nursery location had been transformed into a sublime wine country estate; that family and friends were in attendance and looking their best. This is from Joanna and Jeremy’s first look, and I think the groom’s expression and the couple’s body language show how much of their love they put into everything they do. Thanks to Ramin Rahimian for being such an awesome second shooter.

I have never in my life seen anything as elegant as the way in which Marlo’s grandmother wrote her advice to the newlyweds at the guestbook table. There were three or four words, then a pause, at once for thought and to let the ink dry, then a few more words, another pause. This was at the heart of Palo Alto’s beautiful Twelve Oaks estate, at an outdoor Jewish wedding that the wonderful people over at Dream A Little Dream Events helped design. Brad Zweerink, my second photographer for the day, was awesome and helped me with other angles, especially during the first look, which was attended by family on the balcony overlooking the Twelve Oaks front garden.