Award-Winning Portrait and Wedding Photography by Matt Haines.
Favorite Ventura County Wedding Locations (Portraits and Engagements too):
Ventura
Serra Cross Park (Grant Park)
Ojai
Camarillo
Hartley Botanica/Somis
Simi Valley
Santa Paula
Arroyo Verde Park
Favorite Orange County Wedding Locations (Portraits and Engagements too):
Favorite Santa Barbara County Wedding Locations (Portraits, Engagements too):
Santa Barbara
Figueroa Mountain
Carpinteria
Favorite Los Angeles County Wedding Locations (Portraits and Engagements too):
Santa Barbara, CA 93101 • (805) 659-1398
Los Angeles, CA 90210 • (310) 897-7934
Wedding Day Tips for Brides:
Hey planning a wedding can be an intimidating experience! Here are a list of tips every bride should know for her wedding day. Click here for wedding day tips for brides.Santa Barbara Wedding Photography:
Santa Barbara is one of the best wedding locations in the world. It has abundant sunshine, mild temperatures, beaches, mountains, world-class shopping and entertainment, but is far enough away from Los Angeles that you don't feel like you're in a big city. One of my favorite wedding venues is the Santa Barbara Women's Club (Rockwood), located near the Santa Barbara Mission.The historic Santa Barbara downtown area has many old buildings, great shopping, a wonderful historic courthouse and plenty of parks. Within a few minutes drive, there are fields and open spaces, cliffs and beaches. Here's an engagment session that took advantage of both downtown Santa Barbara and also a beautiful meadow.
And of course any conversation about Santa Barbara weddings wouldn't be complete without the beaches. Check out this engagement session shot near the Biltmore Hotel in Montecito, just down the street from Santa Barbara.
If you're looking for Santa Barbara wedding photography, you've come to the right place! I'm the best choice to photograph your wedding in Santa Barbara.
Ventura, California Wedding Photography:
Ventura is about a half hour south of Santa Barbara, and is a wedding venue "local secret" compared to Santa Barbara. It is a beautiful town of beaches and mountains, and is ideal for your wedding location.Other cities in Ventura County have some wonderful wedding locations and wedding venues as well. In fact the city of Camarillo has four country clubs within a few miles of each other! There is Las Posas Country Club, Sterling Hills Golf Course and Wedgewood Banquet Center, as well as the Saticoy County Club and Spanish Hills County Club.
I'm local to Ventura, so I'm your obvious choice for Ventura County wedding photography. Here's a quick example, taken at the (locally) famous Serra Park Cross, formerly known as the Grant Park Cross. It overlooks downtown Ventura and you have a 270° panoramic view of the ocean and mountains.
Los Angeles Wedding Photography:
Finding the right wedding photographer can be especially difficult in Los Angeles. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of wedding photographers in Los Angeles County. In such a huge, spread-out metropolis, how do you go about finding the right photographer? There is no reason to limit your search to photographers just in the immediate area of your ceremony. If your wedding is in Beverly Hills, you don't necessarily need a Beverly Hills wedding photographer. If your wedding is in Sherman Oaks, do you need a Sherman Oaks wedding photographer? Of course not! It's ok to consider wedding photographers from all over the Los Angeles area.
Tips for Picking the Best Wedding Photographer:
The key to finding the best wedding photographer in Los Angeles is to form a sort of funnel in your search process: you start with a large number of candidates, and through several steps you eliminate most of them, eventually finding the best wedding photographer for you.
First make a list of as many wedding photographers as you can in the Los Angeles area (or a list of Orange County wedding photographers, or whatever area you're looking in). Make a list of fifty, one hundred, however many you can stand! Visit each wedding photographer's website. The first step is to eliminate anyone whose first few images aren't spectacular. Let's face it, if the first images aren't good, then the photographer probably isn't very good (or doesn't know a good image from a bad one). You want a good photographer who knows how to edit his or her own work.
Next comes pricing. [click here to read the full article on finding the best wedding photographer.]
The Best Photographer in Ventura County:
I am proud to say that I have been voted the "Best Photographer in Ventura County" four times! The readers of the Ventura County Star and VC Reporter newspapers both voted me "best" twice in each newspaper.
Ventura County Family Portrait Photographer:
Family portrait photography is how I got my start, and it is still an extremely important to me. I love working with children and with families. All my family portrait sessions are "on location", and of course beach family portrait sessions are a popular favorite in Ventura County! But parks are great too. Some of my favorite parks for portraits are Arroyo Verde and Foster Park in Ventura, Camarillo Ranch in Camarillo, and Corriganville Park in Simi Valley. Oh and don't forget Cheeseboro Canyon and Peter Strauss Ranch in Agoura Hills (but if you're a photographer, don't forget your permit from the National Park Service!). And I'm often asked to make family portraits in clients' back yards.