On location family portrait

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Sometimes it is more fun to do an outdoor portrait session! If you are living in the Bay Area there are many great locations to choose from. We could start at the Legion of Honor with it’s great architecture and than move on to Baker’s Beach. If that is too San Francisco for you, tell me your favorite location and we will work there. By the way, it could even be your own backyard.
Do you have family in town over the holidays? Give them the gift of a great family portrait, they will appreciate it more than a new gadget (or sweater that they will promptly return).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fun Family Shots on 11/11/11

Fun kids photography by Gabriele Lange.

As a photographer I feel most appreciated when my “old” clients return to me year after year to document their growing families.

Family Portraits by San Francisco based photographer Gabriele Lange.

Amber was one of my brides  a couple of years ago. In the meanwhile she and her husband had two handsome boys. But like all moms she is the one who is constantly taking the family pictures and therefor hardly has any photos of herself with the kids. And as you know – the years go by very fast when the kids are so young.

Now is the time to create some photographs of the entire family for those calendars you might want to create and the holiday cards you are planning on sending out in a couple of weeks.
So book a session either at the studio, in your house or some outdoors location. I would be happy to advise you on what might best for your particular family.

Fall Family Portraits

Fall is the perfect time to do your next set of family portraits. The Bay Area offers a wide range of portrait locations including beautiful parks and beaches.

Yes, your children are already in the next grade level (entering Preschool, Kindergarten, College, you fill in the blank) and when was the last time you took a decent family photo of them?

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On September 11 this year I was invited back by my former bride and groom Jennie and Nick (wedding Oct 2005) to photograph their lovely young family. We went to a local park in Berkeley and took pictures under majestic redwood trees. The kids were adorable and cooperated really well. The slideshow is a small fraction of the images we took.

Call the studio to set up your portrait session. Portrait packages start at $450.

Video Live Chat with Emily Jensen Marenghi

Thanks to the wonderful world of the world wide web and all it’s new tools in social networking, I was able to locate one of my favorite past clients, Emily Jensen Marenghi. Emily and Matt got married at Savannah Chanel in Saratoga in September of 2001. I noticed that Emily had posted one of my wedding pictures on her facebook account and took that as a sign, that she still treasures those images.
Here is what she had to say:

“I love our wedding album! My husband and I treasure it every year on our wedding anniversary. We take it out and are delighted to relive the moment through your pictures.”

Below see some pages of Emily’s wedding album, photographed at Savanah Chanel in Saratoga, California.

Emily Marenghi Wedding Album, posted with vodpod

Life Chat with Emily Marenghi, posted with vodpod

Album Design by Gabriele Lange

Today I wanted to share the process of creating a beautiful, leatherbound album for my clients.
The images below are from a Bar Mitzvah at the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel.
The bookbinder I use for the handmade, leatherbound books is the upscale Leather Craftsmen.
After photographing your event we will have an editing session, either at my studio or your house and I will help choose the most desirable pictures that you will include in your album. We will pick an overall color scheme and layout, depending on how many images you wish to include. There are dozens of choices for a cover design. You can have an image inserted and even pick a metal cover treatment (see below).
These albums are an investment that will last you decades, so it is worthwhile to spend some time in picking the perfect design.

Leatherbound Bar Mitzvah album by Gabriele Lange

David's Bar Mitzvah at the SF Faimont Hotel

David's Bar Mitzvah at the SF Faimont Hotel

David's Bar Mitzvah at the SF Faimont Hotel

David's Bar Mitzvah at the SF Faimont Hotel

David's Bar Mitzvah at the SF Faimont Hotel

Leather Craftsmen designed wedding albumby Gabriele Lange

Gabriele Lange’s 2nd Wedding Podcast

I photographed this Indian Wedding at the Dunsmuir Historic Estate in Oakland, California.
The images are from the archive, they were produced a couple of years ago in the analogue age, that means there was film only! The square images were taken with a Hasselblad camera (also called medium format for the larger negative). I still use some medium format images for today’s portrait sessions and strongly believe that they have another, more professional quality that is hard to obtain with digital only capture.

In this podcast you will see typical elements of an elaborate Hindu wedding ritual. To learn more about Hindu wedding traditions you can follow this link.

Wedding Podcast 2, posted with vodpod

Gabriele Lange’s first Wedding Podcast

Gabriele Lange is a wedding and portrait photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This podcast features a wedding held in Gabriele’s own neighborhood, Noe Valley. Bride and groom choose Gabriele as their photographer because of her unobtrusive and editorial style. Posed family portraits are kept at a minimum, so the wedding couple can enjoy their day, rather than “work” with the photographer.
The Noe Valley Ministry is one of the very few venues in up and coming Noe Valley to hold a ceremony. Morey and Sabrina opted for a very low key event that was put together with the help of their many friends.

1st collector for Gabriele’s first Podcast
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Director Christiane Burkhard talks about ‘Tracing Aleida’

Christiane Burkhard is a well know documentary filmmaker based in Mexiko City. She made this award winning and illuminating movie about “disaparecidos”. Christiane and I have known each other since we were about 13 years old.

1st collector for Director talks about ‘Tracing Aleida’
Follow my videos on vodpod

This documentary won several international awards.

Henri Cartier-Bresson Retrospective in San Francisco

Henri Cartier-Bresson – the photographer of the decisive moment – is currently having a major retrospective at the SFMOMA. The show will be on display from October 30, 2010 until January 30, 2011.
I would encourage everyone to see this show. Cartier-Bresson is one of the giants of 20th century photography.

An excerpt from the introduction to the show from SFMOMA’s website.

An innovative artist, trailblazing photojournalist, and quintessential world traveler, Henri Cartier-Bresson ranks among the most accomplished and original figures in the history of photography. His inventive images of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of the medium, and his uncanny ability to capture life on the run made his work synonymous with “the decisive moment.” This major retrospective offers a fresh look at Cartier-Bresson’s entire career, revealing him as one of the great portraitists of the 20th century and one of its keenest observers of the global theater of human affairs.

Teaching Solar Printing Process

Since I am a photographer and mother of two elementary school age children I enjoy teaching children about photographic techniques. This week the photography club at the San Francisco Elementary School Alvarado is exploring hands on how to make sun prints, also called solar printing process.

1) Assemble some small flat objects that will fit on the sheet of photo-sensitive paper. Find things with an interesting shape and experiment with the composition before you put the light sensitive paper in the frame and put it out in the sun.

2) In a dimly lit room or in a well-shaded spot take out a piece of paper and quickly insert it into the paper frame. It will prevent your print from floating away during the time it needs to sit in the sunshine.

3) Place your kit, window up in a sunny spot for 1 to 3 minutes, or until the paper has turned almost to white. Make sure no one stands in your sunshine!

4) Remove your print and immediately rinse it gently under running tab water for about a minute. Don’t poke the paper with your fingers, as it will be soft and easily rip.

5) Viola! And just like that you created a unique print that could work as a framed piece of art or greeting card. The more you experiment with this the more predictable results you will achieve.

This is a great project for children ages 5 and up. They have to have the patience to wait and watch while the paper is being exposed. The more movement during the sun exposure the more blurry the outlines of your artwork.