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WELCOME!
Hi there and welcome to my new blog! I’m Michael Corsentino; a destination wedding photographer based in San Francisco, California – the City by the Bay. Stylish, fun, creative, and relaxed images are what my work is all about. I produce beautiful images for fabulous couples getting married anywhere in the world.
This is the place to come to see my latest and greatest Corsentino Photographer shoots. It’s a photo journal of my life, my art, my business, and it’s where people can get to know me and I can get to know them through posts and comments. You’ll find awesome photography tips & tricks, compelling personal & educational projects, and news about the cool things going on in my life.
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Here you can meet my friends & family, learn about the places I travel, and read my creative rants. You’ll also find lots of useful resources for clients, potential clients, and other photographers.
Check out the drop down menus above for links to my wedding site, resource posts, and our online proof boutique for recent weddings and engagements (client galleries are password protected to keep the paparazzi out and let friends and family in!)
Blogs are all about building community. Join in, comment often and let me know what you’re thinking. Thanks for stopping by!
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| Happy Mother's Day! |
Personal | Sun, May 11, 2008 |
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Happy Mother's Day everyone!
I had a really nice call with my mom this morning and told her how much I love and appreciate her! My mom rocks. She's a totally amazing and talented person if I do say so myslef. She's always been my rock, dream supporter, best friend, and life teacher.
After the call with my mom, I took my other favorite lady Wendy out for a Mother's Day breakfast at her favorite neighborhood greasy spoon "Eddie's Cafe". It's a totally great little kitschy diner a few blocks from our flat. They have the best collection of eclectic coffee mugs you've ever seen. I'm hoping one day after closing they'll let me photograph all the mugs for a cool photo collage. I'll post it here!
Technically we really aren't parents! But Wendy is a great mom to my girl dog Louisiana and her boy cat Mr. Flash. So Happy Mother's Day Wendy - you deserve it!
During breakfast I spotted this totally freaky Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest, Mother's Day card! I love it. It was created by a local artist who gives Eddie's one of his cool holiday card collages every holiday. Here's a little Mother's Day history care of Wikipedia! |
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Thanks so much Jessie and Jake for sharing your amazing music on my blog. Much love guys!!!
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Hi Everyone! Time for trip down Memory Lane. This month's image is from a documentary project I completed in 1995 focusing on Alabama's Chains Gangs. I was intrigued that Alabama had just decided to reintroduce chain gangs and wanted to document it. It seemed like a fascinating subject and an opportunity to take a trip into a world I knew absolutely nothing about. So, I applied for press credentials and flew to Alabama. I spent two grueling weeks under the burning summer sun with prisoners from the Limestone Correctional Facility, in Huntsville, AL. Incredibly, I was given unrestricted access to the chain gang prisoners, guards, and prison grounds making it possible to create some remarkable images. During my trip I shot over 70 seventy rolls of b&w film!
A portfolio of these images was published in a now defunct magazine called Prison Life!!! There's a magazine for everything!! :-) My little project also got some broadcast media attention resulting in a few television and radio interviews! All in all, this was an incredible learning experience. I've been meaning to scan a collection of the Alabama Chain Gang images and post them here under the Projects Menu. I'll post about it when I get it done.
I've got so many documentary projects floating around in my head that I can't wait to get started. Keeping in touch with your art and what motivates you and why is so important as an artist. Personal work really helps you get back in touch with that part of yourself. It makes you ask yourself important questions, like why you became an image maker in the first place. For me, It's always been about story telling-- whether I'm shooting documentary work, photographing an environmental portrait, or capturing a client's once in a lifetime wedding.
Thanks for stopping by for another installment of "Image of The Month" and have a great May!
PS: It's my birthday this month. May 24th to be exact!! Hint, hint :-)
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| Zach's Senior Portrait Session |
Seniors | Wed, Apr 30, 2008 |
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I met Zach and his mom, DeAnna at Kessie & Jeremy's Wedding. After seeing Kessie & Jeremy's images, DeAnna asked me to come to Loomis, CA to photograph Zach's Senior Portraits. She explained that Zach was about to receive his letterman jacket from Del Oro High School's Golden Eagle Football Team!! DeAnna knows how I work and really wanted Zach to have those kind of personal images to capture him at this special time in his life. This is a big football family. I loved hearing their stories about cheering Zach on from the stands. Way to go, Zach!!
I encourage my clients to make their sessions as personal as possible. Everyone is unique and different and has their own interesting story. So why should they have images that look generic or cookie cutter? That's why my sessions are always different and unique-- just like the people I'm photographing. I'd rather what happens in my sessions be determined by the personalities of the people I'm photographing and not a tired list of scripted shots. This is one of those cases where one size definitely does not fit all. Doing it this way keeps it fresh and playful. That's when the true photo magic happens.
Big thanks to Dennis for making the trip up to Loomis with me and assisting on this shoot. Your energy and input are always invaluable.
I'm photographing DeAnna's sister Kristine's wedding in July, I can't wait. I'll have some awesome images from her and Joel's San Francisco engagement session in a few days.
Thanks DeAnna and Zach for trusting me to capture your Senior Portraits!!! I had a blast :-) |
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Due to technical difficulties at Blog Talk Radio my interview with event planner Margaret Salmond of Lexus Events has been rescheduled for Sunday June 8th. Bummer!!
I'll post a reminder as the date gets closer and I apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks for tuning in and please come back on June 8th. |
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| Rangefinder/Nikon Portrait Contest |
Studio News | Sun, Apr 27, 2008 |
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Hey Guys! Happy Sunday. It's 8 AM on Sunday morning and I'm a little frazzled from yesterday's Napa, CA. wedding. Last night I got in at about Midnight, downloaded my cards, did a quick review, and enjoyed a repeat of SNL. Christopher Walken is so frickin' funny. By time I went to bed it was 2 in the morning :-) I'm totally excited about my interview on Blog Talk Radio today at Noon, so please tune in if you get the chance. Phone in at (646) 200-4451 and ask me your burning questions.
Ok, so here's the deal with the contest. I'm not usually much of a photo contest guy, but this one sounds like fun. Rangefinder Magazine and Nikon are co-sponsoring The Rangefinder/Nikon Portrait Contest! First off, it's FREE to enter! Like that. The top prize is an awesome Nikon D3 Camera, Nikon's new flagship model. The winning image will also appear on the cover of Rangefinder Magazine. Pretty cool!
The things is, you can only choose 1 image to enter into the contest!!! That's so hard. I've got so many cool portraits that I'd like to enter. I can't decide which one to pick. How about 10 images? 5 images? 2 images? Ok, just 1. Help me decide which 1 image to enter into the contest. While you're at it, submit your work as well by clicking on the graphic above! Maybe you'll bring home a brand new Nikon D3.
I've posted some of all time favorite wedding portraits for you to choose from. Use the poll below to pick your favorite image. Remember, I can only enter one, so vote only for your absolute favorite. I've started with wedding portraits, in the next few days I'll post another poll and you can vote on my favorite engagement portraits.
When the results are in, I'll post them here along with everyone's favorite image. Happy voting!
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Yesterday I took a ride over to the Burlingame, CA. offices of Today's Bride Magazine and AboutWeddings.com. These are both fantastic resources for brides, so stop by their website and also be sure and pick up a copy of their magazine. I dropped by to give them a disc containing images from 5 awesome weddings. Some of which I'm hoping they'll choose for publication in the "Real Weddings" section of their upcoming summer print edition. Fingers crossed!
Since their offices were so close to San Francisco I figured I'd stop by in person and introduce myself while dropping off my disc. I made it to their offices with only minutes to spare before the cutoff for submission entries, tick tock! Thanks for being so nice Annie! I snapped this photo right outside their door. I'll keep you posted as soon as I hear anything :-) Wish me luck! |
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I've always loved Linda McCartney's photography and who she was as a person. Ok, ok, I admit it! I had a crush on Linda when I was growing up! How could I help it? She was after all the ultimate photo girl! Born into photographic royalty, the Eastman's (as in Eastman Kodak), she won the free film and processing lottery in a huge way. I used to daydream about how cool that would be!! I imagined that she had a gigantic refrigerator stuffed with every imaginable film stock available, all Kodak of course :-)
When I was a teenager, whiling away my days and nights developing and printing in my bedroom closet darkroom, her ethereal images, documentary style, and eye for the moment were an inspiration to me.
She was also married to the coolest guy on the planet at the time - Paul McCartney. A far cry from Heather Mills, I'm just sayin'! The Beatles are one of my all time favorite bands. Linda's intimate family portraits, and photographs of The Beatles and other rock icons used to keep me up at night wondering what it must be like to be in the middle of the meteoric Beatles whirlwind. To have that kind of access to music history in the making, wow!
Now, ten years after Linda lost her battle with breast cancer there's a new exhibit of her photographs at the James Hyman Gallery in London. It's so great to see her beautiful images again and to be reminded of what an amazing artist and person she was. I've included links below to Linda's exhibit and also a link for anyone who feels moved to make a donation to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in her memory.
Please be patient, it may take a minute or two for this CNN video to load.
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| "On the radio whoa oh oh" |
Studio News | Thu, Apr 24, 2008 |
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You know, the old Donna Summer's tune "On the radio whoa oh oh"? Anyway…my fifteen minutes of fame continues this Sunday at Noon PST with a call-in web radio interview by the awesome event planner Margaret Salmond of Lexus Events. Margaret will be interviewing me about the questions brides should be asking when choosing a wedding photographer. Great topic! I wrote about this recently, check it out here.
The best part is you can phone in and ask me questions during the interview!! I hope there's a 5 sec. time delay ;-) So I'm putting the call out to all my crazy photographer friends, awesome brides & grooms, super talented florists, DJ's, bands, event planners, and pizza delivery men, ok I'm getting carried away now. But seriously, help me rally the troops and make this a really memorable experience. This is your opportunity to ask me your burning wedding photography questions, find out what makes me tick, and more importantly see if I can string together a coherent sentence after rolling in at 2AM the night before from Saturday's Napa, CA wedding. If nothing else just call in and heckle me. So mark your calendars people for this Sunday at Noon PST. Be there or be square :-)
The Details:
This Sunday, April 27th at 12 PM PST
Listen to my interview here: Blog Talk Radio
The call in number is (646) 200-4451
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Got to give props my girl Donna for the title of this post, so here's her song "On The Radio" for ya'all to enjoy. Click the itunes link to check it  |
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Here are some sweet favs from Erin & JP's beautiful wedding last weekend at Trentadue Winery in Geyserville, CA. I had a great time photographing their wedding and was lucky enough to have both Dennis Urbiztondo and the lovely Wendy along to share in the fun and excitement. Dennis second shot for me and captured great images as usual. Wendy made some of her very first wedding images! She's got a great eye. I'm second shooting for Dennis this weekend in Napa, can't wait.
Erin & JP, their families, friends, and the bridal party were all so much fun to be around. I love my clients and I love being part of the biggest day of their lives! Did I mention the weather was also perfect. It couldn't have been a better day in every respect! Erin & JP, thanks for so much for trusting me to capture your once in a lifetime day! Much love, happiness, and success to you both.
JP holding the ring! |
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| Details: I love these cool place cards. Perfect for a vineyard wedding! |
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| JP, his father Guy, the Groomsmen, and Erin's father. |
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| JP and the gang! Dennis grabbed this awesome shot. |
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| A great portrait of JP! Handsome devil. Another winner from Dennis. |
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| Signature Portraits: The Groomsmen. Cool dudes! |
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| Details: Erin's beautiful dress. |
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| Details: Erin's dress had the most awesome embroidery and lacing. |
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| Erin's Mom and Bridesmaids help her with her dress. |
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| Signature Portraits: The Bridesmaids were so pretty! |
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| Erin and her Bridesmaids having fun. |
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| Erin was such a stunning bride. She is so pretty, look at those eyes!! |
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