Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly: the Cinestory team rocks! We engaged with them to take our engagement photos and our wedding day photos. They did not disappoint!
For the engagement session, we flew one of the photographers up to the Sa...n Francisco Bay Area where we live and he recommended a few great spots to take photos. We coordinated schedules with him directly and we booked his flight. Cinestory was very flexible with us and communicated dates well ahead of time, which allowed us to work out the flight details. He brought a healthy gear with him for the session and gave us advice on what kind of shots typically work best and don’t work best. If you as a couple have ideas on where you want to go and what you’d like your photos to look like (poses, angle, etc... ) feel free to share that with them and they will accommodate.
After the engagement session, the Cinestory team gave us the edited photos faster than expected. The pictures were excellent!
In preparing for the big day, we had a planning session with them a week before to make sure they knew the exact location, time, needs, wants, nice to haves, yada yada yada. On the day of, they arrived early (which was a big help because other vendors arrived late, causing me - the groom - to momentarily become a groomzilla). Anyway, they arrived early, were dressed appropriately, and began to work right away. After they canvassed the wedding venue site, they came back to us and proposed a few places suitable for the first look. We did a first, second, and third look for photos, angles, and the drone (the drone shots look A-M-A-Z-I-N-G).
The team was also great at making sure we enjoyed the moment, particularly during our couple-only pictures. As you will learn, wedding days are hectic and everyone wants to talk to the bride and groom leaving little to no alone time. The photographers were great at making sure we had space to take it all in by pulling us to the side here and there — this allowed them to take amazing shots and it gave us (the couple) time to enjoy our wedding day just the two of us.
The photographers also worked wonders with our families and friends. They were funny and kept us entertained while they took pictures. Additionally, one of them spoke Spanish, which was really helpful since many of our family members only speak Spanish.
All in all, we paid for the extra time and we had them for the entire day. I’m not sure how they were able to keep up with us from the very morning until after the sparkler exit. The pictures came out beautiful and we could not have asked for a better team to record our memories.
Side story: we had a very good feeling from Cinestory after our engagement session that we recommended them to our friend, who threw two weddings, yes, two! Cinestory did both of their weddings and they too, picky bunch, had nothing but amazing things to say about their photos, videos, and overall experience.
Highly recommend!