DuendePhoto

wonderful, awesome, amazing, professional, flexible, thorough, artistic, creative, passionate, talented, thoughtful and all of the other adjectives in the world that make them the best photographers. we found brady and ken through yelp and met with them at their home studio. ​it was so nice to be able to meet with them and get to know them. we met with them on several occasions! with lots of great food and adult beverages. i think that because of all the time we spent together, that brady and ken were able to capture our best faces on the actual day. we booked a package that included an engagement shoot, which ended up lasting an entire day, but was a really fun time. my husband had looked up some shots he wanted to take around sf, and we were able to get some of those and even ones we didn't consider that turned out amazing. we also took some amazing photos at the palace of fine arts and with the bay bridge lights! we also loved that there was no hour cap for the wedding day, especially because we had a morning ceremony and a reception at night. so brady and ken were there with us from the wee hours of the morning until late at night! i loved that they were able to go with the flow since there were several surprises throughout the day. i recommend brady and ken to anyone who wants exceptional high quality photos captured and have lots of fun in the process. the level of attention to detail and thoughtfulness with the two of them exceeded all of my expectations.

ptured this amazing afternoon for us...Late golden sun shot was so dreamy...Their work is stunning...

ries, and I wanted to hire photographers that I could entrust to capture the love and feeling of our day. After extensive research and interviewing many photographers, I finally came across Ken and Brady's website. I was in awe of their work; there pictures are beautiful. I contacted Ken and Brady and, shortly thereafter, my fiance and I met them to discuss our wedding and photo options. Our meeting with them was lovely; I really love how Ken and Brady are incredibly professional while also making us feel like we have been friends all along. We talked about our engagement story, vision for our wedding, photo ideas we liked, etc. They also shared several albums of their previous work so we could get a closer look at their amazing talent. I really thought we would only be going for a brief meeting, but we had such a great time that we ended up having dinner with them that night. A recommendation I make to anyone looking for a photographer is to make sure you feel comfortable and can build a relationship with them as you will be spending a lot of time together. Ken and Brady made us feel like friends while also maintaining the utmost professionalism in their work- you just can't beat that. We scheduled our engagement shoot to take place the first week of March, but due to unfortunate weather, we had to reschedule a few times in March. Brady (who handles most of the communication) was so understanding and willing to move our shoot date around to ensure we would have our pictures taken on a beautiful day. I'm so impressed with how quickly she responds to emails and does her best to work with your needs and schedule. Our engagement shoot took place on an absolutely gorgeous day in April. Ken and Brady were so wonderful during our shoot- they truly went above and beyond to make sure we got the shots we wanted in San Francisco: the Palace of Fine Arts, the Embarcadero, and pictures at the beach with the Golden Gate bridge behind us. During our meeting, we told Ken and Brady that we really wanted shots at the Palace of Fine Arts, and on the day of our shoot they stayed well into the night to capture the most gorgeous shots of us under the palace dome. I was so impressed with their commitment to making sure we got those last shots. We also felt completely at ease with them throughout the day; they knew how to make us laugh and stay relaxed to get natural emotion in our photos. It was an all-day shoot, and we had an absolute blast. One thing I can tell you from my experience at the shoot is that a photographer's job is not easy- to be able to capture the emotion, the right angle, the lighting, all requires true talent and experience. Ken and Brady are absolute masters. When we got our engagement pictures back I was amazed, they are absolutely gorgeous. I give Ken & Brady 5 starts for their professionalism, commitment to quality work, raw talent, and willingness to go above and beyond to make your shoot an unforgettable one. We can't wait to have them shoot our wedding in August.

not only has a wealth of experience, creative eye, palatable personality and superior technical skills, but of equal importance knows Yosemite intimately. We feel very fortunate that we were able to find someone who met all of those criteria...the husband and wife team of Ken Mendoza and Brady Thomas of DuendePhoto (aka Yosemite Wedding Photographers). Ken and Brady were an absolute pleasure to work with, from our first meeting with them through the post-wedding photo review/ordering stage. They produced a gorgeous collection of color and black and white images of our wedding which we absolutely love and which our family and friends cannot stop raving about. And the great thing about having two photographers is that every precious moment was captured and often from different angles, a feat the solo photographer simply can't accomplish. On the service side of things, Ken and Brady were very responsive to emails and phone messages and they always went the extra mile to make us happy (I'll always have the mental image stuck in my head of Brady lying on her side in her nice clothes on that dusty, squirrel poop covered Ahwahnee Hotel patio on that brutally hot and humid June day taking a unique photo of our decorations). We were also very grateful to Brady for providing us with her excellent "Prep List For Brides", a document she created from her own lessons learned when she was married in Yosemite and which included such useful tips as "for summer brides, apply insect repellant liberally before you get dressed". Ken and Brady's pricing is on the higher end compared to the other photographers on the Yosemite wedding vendor list, but one thing we learned after viewing the online portfolios of several wedding photographers is that you definitely get what you pay for. If you insist on allocating a meager portion of your wedding budget on a photographer you're going to get crappy photos and you'll regret your decision for the rest of your life. We'd give 'em six stars if we could.

o fool her into thinking that a lifetime with me really wouldn't be that bad. Fortunately, the delightful Duende duo of Ken and Brady were on hand to beautifully capture every single moment (not to mention from every single angle) for eternity. This alone would've been worth five stars. But what really puts Ken and Brady over the top is their professionalism and desire to go above and beyond! I had first contacted Brady back in December to discuss this surprise proposal idea. We soon met in person, signed off on a contract, and then planned out every single detail of how they would hide, where I would drop to one knee, which direction I should face, what exact time the sun would be setting, what to do in the event of an emergency (like an idiot tourist suddenly blocking line of sight), etc. Leading up to the big proposal, I was understandably a trainwreck of nerves, but absolutely none of this was due to worrying about the photographers possibly dropping the ball. But then mother nature decided to make things interesting. Even during the driest winter that we've had over the last godzillion years, it decides to dump rain on my parade. Thankfully, Ken and Brady had me prepared ahead of time with an oversized translucent umbrella, and were both willing to brave the wrath of our one-day typhoon season in order to get the perfect shot. By sheer serendipity, the rain decided to stop just before we made our way onto the pier. By even sheerer serendipity, a schmuck like me got the most amazing person to say yes. As we were walking back towards Embarcadero as an engaged couple, Ken had a brilliant idea of posing us in front of some active F-Market trolleys. The results truly speak for themselves.

worth it. Also, his photos are not posed but realistic. He catches the real moments of the wedding, which is what I wanted and by that it makes the photos timeless. He's just an amazing person which makes him easy to work with and we felt as if he was a part of our family. AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING

collection of wedding photos. After meeting with Ken & Brady, our minds were at ease knowing that we were in good hands and our wedding photos were going to be amazing. They far exceeded our already very high expectations!!! It was important that we captured the traditional photos of the day but, especially wanted unique shots on our wedding day and during a Day After Photo Tour (made at the suggestion of K&B instead of doing engagement photos since we didn't want those done). Ken and Brady were far and above our favorite vendors from our wedding!!! They are true masters of their craft! They are so easy to work with, reliable (called when they said they would, made appointments to meet & were very flexible with our busy schedules) highly skilled, fun, relaxed and good-hearted people to boot. Family and friends have commented non-stop on the stunning photos they captured both on our wedding day and during our Day after Photo Tour (seriously...we showed a slide show of our photos at a 2nd wedding reception we had in Canada and there were audible oooo, ahhhhs, wows and gasps). We wanted to take photos at some of our favorite landmarks around San Francisco and we had such a blast getting back into our wedding day attire to do this. It made the wedding day less hectic (photos by the venue only that day) and the photos they captured are true pieces of art. I strongly recommend you do this! One thing I noticed, about every other photographer we looked at, was that they charged by the hour. K&B said their coverage was unlimited and relaxed. They certainly delivered on this and it made ALL the difference. They showed up early to capture pre-wedding preparations and they were the last two to leave the wedding reception making sure every possible shot was taken and captured to recreate this special day. K&B have a true passion for their work and it shows through in the stunning wedding portfolio we now enjoy. The package we purchased INCLUDED the digital rights to the thousands of photos they took!!! They even downloaded them to a hard drive and created a folder where they prepared & sized the photos so it was ready to go directly into a digital frame. There are countless things like this that they did for us (without us asking for them) that made working with them a true pleasure. They also had three different packages we could choose from and their payment set-up was very convenient. 1/3 to secure the date, 1/3 due one month prior to the wedding and the final 1/3 due 8 weeks after the wedding when our photos were ready and uploaded ready for viewing!!! Thank you K&B for making our wedding portfolio our dream come true :)

iful, artistic photos! They were flexible (when we had a change in venue) and do their homework with the lighting at the site and available settings to take the BEST picture for your wedding day. We were comfortable the entire time with both Brady and Ken and it was a joy to have them as a part of our wedding. We can't WAIT to see the photographs... I can't recommend them enough!

where Ken & Brady spent a good hour and a half with us showing us their albums and answering all of our many questions. Their images are stunning and their style, price points, and personalities were the perfect fit for us for our wedding. Brady was my point-of-contact and was great about answering emails right away and giving great advice about the day-of-timeline, and shot list. On the day of the wedding, Ken & Brady came earlier than when they said they were coming, stayed from when we were getting ready up until the time we left, and were great at getting all of the shots that I had requested. I felt bad too because we were on a very limited time schedule and I had a very long shot list. But Ken & Brady got us through it and we got all of the shots that I wanted. Ken also uses an iPad to show us the recent pictures he took and it's a fun way to see the pictures. It's also great when taking pictures of kids! Brady also came up with a really cute concept for our "First Look" shoot and I loved how they work so hard to pose us correctly to get that perfect shot. There are a ton of other wedding photographers our there, but I think that going with Duende Photo was a great choice. Our costs were still lower than other photographers and we ended up customizing our package with all day wedding photography services, a wedding album, and a day-after photo shoot. I absolutely loved working with Ken & Brady and I cannot wait to get our wedding photos!