We first met Doug at one of my cousins' weddings. He was energetic, hard-working, and, most importantly, incredibly patient with my large and demanding family. We met him the second time at another cousin's wedding. Again, he was an absolute ge...m. When it came time for my own engagement/wedding, I immediately thought of Doug. When queried, my cousins gave only the highest praise to their photographer (and another cousin who had elected to hired a different photographer expressed his regrets not having Doug photograph his big day). And looking through their photos, I was amazed how well he captured the two very different couples and allowed their personalities to shine in their photographs. I was sold. Luckily, Doug was available for my wedding day (and, surprisingly, amenable to yet another evening corralling my family).
From the beginning, Doug made us comfortable. He seemed to genuinely want to get to know us, what our visions for our wedding was, and how to best bring out the uniqueness of our relationship in our photos. He was extremely flexible, working with me to schedule (and reschedule numerous times) our engagement shoot (which had been derailed by weather) and dealt with our changing location requests (first Tahoe for fall colors, then Donner for snow capped peaks).
When it came time to our engagement shoot, Doug was an absolute joy to work with. My (now) husband and I are not picture people and we've never been too keen on PDA. Doug made us feel comfortable, gave us pointers on how to pose/what to do, and made us laugh while doing it. And I still cannot believe how incredibly gorgeous the photos came out. There was no bad angle, no poor lighting, no crazy wind chill that could keep Doug from taking a perfect picture.
Leading up to the wedding, Doug worked with me to develop a good timeline to make sure I had all the photos I wanted (again, vital with such a large family). I knew I was in good hands and it was nice to have one less thing to worry about leading up to the big day.
My wedding day was an incredibly beautiful, fun, and tear- and laughter-filled blur. And despite it being 104F (and an all-outdoor wedding!), Doug was an absolute professional. He was always energetic, constantly moving, changing camera lenses, trying different settings to really capture every aspect of our day. I recieved numerous compliments from my guests about how friendly Doug and his wife (his second shooter) were and many commented on how hard he worked.
When we received our photos from Doug 1 month later, they were nothing short of perfection. The colors, the soft lighting, the emotions he captured, it was absolutely breathtaking. I am so, so, so glad we had Doug as our photographer for our big day and I would absolutely recommend his services in a heartbeat.