Many of our San Francisco City Hall clients ask us to take them to the Palace of Fine Arts after their wedding for additional pictures. It is definitely the most popular destination of our clients who have their nuptials in San Francisco and especially at City Hall. We enjoy taking brides and grooms to some of the less obvious places at this iconic location. The one challenge at The Palace is to find areas free of tourists. Fortunately, over the years, we have discovered some great places to take our recently married couples that are less populated. We walk around to the back of Rotunda and find great backgrounds with beautiful architecture. More importantly, we have learned about some of the better angles to take pictures from which helps avoid background strangers.
The image above was taken in the Rotunda with an off-camera flash. This can be a tricky picture to capture effectively because it requires a super wide angle lens to show the entire dome, but also is heavily back lighted which causes other potential problems. The severe back lighting can sometimes cause a darkening of the subject, so it can be helpful to put a little light on the couple. In this particular photo, we used off-camera flash for a more natural look and not a washed out look. Helpful Hint: If you can see that a flash was used in a wedding photo then it was not used correctly and was probably too bright. Off-camera lighting helps with this and can be hard to detect if used properly. The larger the light source, the better the result.
The Palace of Fine Arts was built in 1915 for the Panama Pacific International fair and was intended as a temporary building along with many other buildings in the same vicinity in the Marina District. When the Exposition ended, all of the other buildings were torn down except the Palace. It has been used for various purposes mostly involving art for many years. However, since the building was built to only be up for one year, it was starting to fall apart. Cheap and light weight materials were used for these reasons. Eventually, the decision was made to basically tear it down and rebuild it, which occurred between 1964 and 1974. Stronger and more long lasting materials were used in the reconstruction and some of the art work and statues were kept and redone. Steel reinforcements replaced the original wood and plaster from the old building making it more permanent. Now the building attracts tourists from all over the world and also serves as a great wedding venue. For us, it is a wonderful place to bring our clients after their San Francisco city hall wedding. On any given Saturday in the summer, it is not unusual to see at least 6 newlywed couples wandering the grounds with their wedding photographers. Parking can be difficult on the weekends, but not too bad during the week.
The Palace of Fine Arts also can be rented out and used as a wedding venue for your San Francisco wedding. Similar to what they do at San Francisco City Hall, they rope off the exterior of the Rotunda to give you some privacy and set up chairs for your guests. This helps prevent tourists from walking right through your ceremony during the middle of it. It is also possible to have your wedding in other places at the Palace by obtaining a permit from the city. This is much less expensive but you don't get an area roped off nor do they set up chairs. For more information regarding Palace of Fine Arts Weddings click the link.
City Hall Bride with north facing window in San Francisco
