Amanda Rae Photography Blog » photography

Holly & Nick {Wedding} McCormick Ranch Camarillo

Amanda — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:00:16 +0000

This past Saturday Holly and Nick were wed at McCormick Ranch in Camarillo, CA. We had never shot a wedding there before theirs and it’s now possibly one of our favorite wedding venues! There are so many different places to take pictures and the reception out on the lawn with the house in the background is so pretty. Holly looked absolutely amazing all day, and we were so happy to be a part of their wedding! And we were super excited to find that McCormick Ranch is 2.3 miles from our house! We could have taken our bikes there!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Meet {Michelle & Eric} Santa Barbara

Amanda — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:56:53 +0000

When we first met with Michelle and Erik to discuss their wedding, they already knew exactly where they wanted their engagement session: The Santa Barbara Courthouse and The Santa Barbara Mission. Done and done. I’ve actually never photographed at either location so I was very excited (I LOVE shooting at new locations!) So, Mike and I show up early, as always, to scope the area and as soon as we park at the courthouse we hear very loud music. And as we walk into the courtyard it looks like it is set up for a huge concert and they are doing the sound check. So I’m thinking great, this soundcheck is so loud we won’t be able to talk to them during their entire session! Luckily, they were just doing soundcheck for Easter Sunday service the following morning. By the time Michelle and Erik showed up they were done! But we did have to navigate around the huge setup they had going on without getting it in our pictures. I think we did a pretty good job.

On another note…Michelle gets happiest bride of the year award. I don’t officially hand out awards here at Amanda Rae Photography but if I did she would get that award. Just take a look at these pictures and you’ll see what I mean.

Check out THE SLIDESHOW!!!

Normally if Mike and I get similar shots I’ll just show mine But I noticed a couple of times during this session where we got completely different angles of the same moment and it’s so fun to see how we each interpret that moment! This is my view:

And this is how Mike saw it:

One more time…this is what I saw:

And this is what Mike saw:

That was fun…onto the regular programming…

So, after we were done at the Santa Barbara Courthouse we separated to walk to our own cars to head over to the Mission. As we walked down this side street to get to our car we saw this balloon tunnel. Just sitting there all by itself. We ran back and yelled for Michelle and Erik to come back to play in it a little.

We all played:

Now, The Santa Barbara Mission:

One more of my view/his view. This is mine:

Mike’s view:

These last few pictures were all Mike’s, but I particularly love this shot he got:

One last picture…the dog joined! So cute!

Check out THE SLIDESHOW!!!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Meet {Morgan & Matt} Ventura Pier Photography

Amanda — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:25:04 +0000

This past Saturday we had the wonderful pleasure of exploring the Ventura Pier with Morgan and Matt. This coming Saturday we are going to have the wonderful pleasure of photographing their wedding! That’s right. We shot their engagement session exactly one week before their big day.

When Morgan said that she wanted to do her engagement session at the Ventura Pier, I realized that I’ve never photographed there before! We found the most beautiful little swampy area just a little ways down from the pier. I’m sure it was only green and beautiful because of all the rain we’ve gotten recently.

Check out the SLIDESHOW too!

I want this necklace. Like seriously bad.

Don’t forget to check out the SLIDESHOW too!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Meet {Kristen & Greg}

Amanda — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:03:39 +0000

I am so excited about this session. First of all, Greg is the brother of one of my past grooms, Doug. It’s such an honor to be able to work with their family again! Secondly, this is one of my most favorite sessions ever. We had the most amazing sunlight the whole time and the locations we found were perfect!

Check out THE SLIDESHOW too!

The below are by far my two favorites from this session. So dreammyyyyyyy!

Don’t forget to check out the THE SLIDESHOW!!!!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Meet {Alejandro & Kelsey}

Amanda — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:29:08 +0000

You probably noticed in my promo video that there was an INCREDIBLY adorable couple that you’ve never seen before. Well, I was actually taking pictures during that session and I can finally show them all to you! Alejandro is my best friends little brother. I’ve literally known him almost his entire life! So crazy. I met Alejandro’s girlfriend during Erika’s wedding and was instantly smitten. She is the sweetest thing ever. I could have never imagined Alejandro finding someone more perfect for him! Thank you Alejandro and Kelsey for being the best models for my video!!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Maki & Craig {Wedding} Casa Del Mar

Amanda — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:33:44 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I headed down to Santa Monica to shoot a wedding with Jenny Liu at the Casa Del Mar. The Casa Del Mar is a really cool hotel and the ballroom is really light and airy and has a pathway right to the Santa Monica Beach.

Maki and Craig elected to have a “first look” where they saw each other before the ceremony. These first two shots are there first moments together on their wedding day.

We took some pictures in front of the Santa Monica Pier.

They had the cutest place cards. They were snowflake ornament/picture frames on a wire tree. They were so sweet…they had one for Jenny and me!

The centerpieces for the cocktail hour and reception were all potted plants and herbs. At the end of the night, they let everyone take them home! I love how eco-friendly it was…and it looked really nice.

They handed the mothers and grandmothers roses during the ceremony. It was a little emotional.

Spying on their guests during the cocktail hour:

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Meet {Giovanna & Robert}

Amanda — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:18:06 +0000

The weather tells me what to do. Living in Southern California we very rarely have bad weather days. While they are more frequent in the winter than any other time of year, they are still few and far between. Every year, my family takes a mini family vacation, and the weekend before Christmas we ventured down to San Diego . I was fully expecting it to be in the 50/60’s all weekend and was prepared to bundle up and bear the cold weather. Much to our delight it was blazing hot and beautiful! We went to Coronado Beach and Balboa Park and had a grand old time! Then on Sunday I shot a wedding and again it was a beautiful day, but got rather chilly into the evening. I completely expected the weather streak to keep on going and give me gorgeous weather for an engagement session on Monday. But alas, my weather luck ran dry. Monday was cold and overcast with showers expected later that night. I stood outside for quite sometime staring at the sky trying to decide what to do. Normally, overcast weather can be fantastic for producing images. The big fluffy clouds blocking the sun create a softbox effect and eliminates any yucky shadows. But this overcast was very dreary and ominous. I finally decided to listen to the weather and do the smart thing and tell my clients (before they go getting too gussied up!) that it just probably wasn’t going to be the best day for a session and it would be in everyone’s best interest to wait until the sun is ready to shine again. The truth is, given any weather predicament we probably could have made it work and maybe even come up with a creative solution to the weather but sometimes you just need to follow your heart and I’m so glad I did.

We ended up having their session on Wednesday morning and it was a little cold, but the sun came out to play and it was beautiful. I normally DO NOT do sessions in the morning because I am not a morning person at all, but Giovanna and Robert were in town from Arizona and were heading home on Wednesday. It was a nice change of pace to try out shooting in the morning, but after this I will be reverting back to my afternoon only shooting schedule.

I know I’ve already written way too much and should just get to the pictures already, but I wanted to share a fun fact about this session…Giovanna is friends with a friend of mine, Heather, and Heather purchased this engagement session as an engagement present to them! I thought it was such a great present!

So Giovanna, Robert, and I headed down to the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA). We had such a great time!

Check out the slideshow too!!

How cute is this? Giovanna pointed down at the light poles and said “look…A for Amanda!”

Merry Christmas 2009

Amanda — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:54:54 +0000

Christmas in Ventura. Mike’s parents and my parents both live in Ventura. Some holidays we split the day between both families, some holidays we celebrate on separate days so we can spend a full day with each family. This year we split Christmas between both families. We started the day at my parent’s house. My mom was busy taking pictures with her new 50mm 1.4 lens so I took the opportunity to try out the video on my camera. Now I am NOT a videographer and after this experiment I am positive it is an avenue I will never venture down! This video of clips from the day is about 5 minutes. I think it’s really fun to re-live little bursts of the day. I wish the quality was a little better, though.

‘09 Christmas from Amanda Bordonaro on Vimeo.

My sisters, my nieces, and I all wore boots and leggings/skinny jeans on Christmas so we had to get a shot. Before you scroll down can you guess which one is me??

All the girls:

Then we headed over to Mike’s parent’s house for the second half of the day.

So, that’s the wrap-up of our holidays! Next up…the New Year!

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Burlap and linen and lace…OH MY!

Amanda — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:21:33 +0000

Wrapping Christmas presents has always been one of my favorite things. When I was a little girl I would help my mom wrap all the Christmas presents…even the ones that were for me! Yup, you read that right. I would wrap my own Christmas presents. After I was done wrapping everyone else’s gifts I was still hungry for more, so my mom would put my gifts in non-descript boxes so the wrapping party didn’t have to end. I swear I never peaked..I love being surprised too much! To this day I love wrapping Christmas presents. Here’s a look at last years gifts. This year I got a lot of inspiration from Summer of Grey Likes Weddings who was featured over at Style Me Pretty and photographed by my friend Jenny Liu.

I was *this close* to buying a really cute sweater knit wine bottle holder from Etsy for $25. Summer also showed a great tutorial for making your own out of an old sweater! I saved $25 and I recycled! So let’s start with showing how cute that turned out. Oh and the dramatic lighting on this first shot is due to lack of available natural light before I had to wrap this beauty up!

I’m not sure if I’ve ever shown a full length picture of my cement “product” table that my dad made…you can see it below on the left. I love it so much!

So, as I was wrapping the adult, sophisticated gifts, Mike helped me out by wrapping the little kids gifts. He thought he did a pretty good job and suggested that we let you guys decide who did a better job. What do you think?

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I have some more pictures from Christmas day that I want to post tomorrow.

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*

Clif Bars and Album Deliveries

Amanda — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:53:15 +0000

Today, I was at home and I was expecting a bride/friend to come by to pick up her engagement album. I heard the doorbell ring and I ran down 37 flights of stairs to find no one there. Then I realized there was a box. And I thought it was my birthday present from Mike which I’ve anxiously been awaiting. When I picked it up, I knew it couldn’t possibly be that because it was far too light, but that was the only thing I was expecting so my curiosity instantly grew. I opened the mysterious package to find a box of Clif Bars! If you know me, you know that I eat one Chocolate Mint Clif bar every single day. And my closest friends know that if I don’t eat one, I get REALLY cranky. So considering that I eat 365 Clif Bars every year and tell pretty much everyone (and the Internet) about it, I’ve been trying to get their attention so they’ll sponsor me or something. So when I opened the package to find a box of Clif Bars I thought I finally got their attention!! But then I found the packaging slip and it turns out it was from one of my bride/friend’s as an early birthday present! I seriously was laughing so hard. In my house. Alone. So sweet!!!

iPhone picture as proof:

I think I’ve shown enough albums to you guys but I haven’t shown the album packaged up all cute! I really like packaging. And I really like packaging things up cute. A lot of times when I go to Anthropologie I will tell them that what I’m purchasing is a gift so I can get whatever super cute gift packaging they have! Here’s the package that Ali came to pick up today:

And the tidbits necessary to create:

*Contact me* *View my portfolio*