As photographers, we feel that our powers stop at what is actually there, what exists in our clients and their celebrations, totally independent of us. If the wedding day is filled with real love and emotion, we simply anticipate those moments, catch, and disclose them with clarity and honesty. We’ve found this to be particularly true of clients themselves when we ask them to be vulnerable for us, to allow us to reveal what is great between them.

We’ve been lucky to find tons of love and personality in all of our clients, but Erica and Mark still stand out for their confidence and willingness to be vulnerable in front of us. Couples who hire us always have some degree of swag, but Erica and Mark take it to another level; when we reached into them to find something to show the world, we found tons of heart, style, and the will to flex it.

We loved our hangout with them because it felt like a partnership. We went back and forth with them about we had for a scene, and they would without fail, put a delicious icing on that vision; small details in posture, the placement of a hand or subtle furling of a brow that was all their own took what we had in mind and made it better. We came to understand them as a dichotomy of easy-going but incredibly fierce, and loved that they were gracious enough to ask us what touchstones we might have inspired the mood of our work. The question caught us off guard, but after some thought, and considering that we prefer to show our clients at an elevated, powerful confident version of themselves, we had only one answer.

In the moment, we had to say that RuPaul’s Drag Race probably has an outsized influence on what we try to get out of our clients. Obviously, we can’t bring the [wonderfully] crazy [and fashion fast-forward] drag styles 1:1 to our client sessions, nor do we expect clients to sashay or serve lewks and face like a drag queen. After all, it takes a special performer and years of preparation and practice to pull that stuff off. What we DO feel is fair to ask for them to feel themselves a bit and project that while we work with them — Erica and Mark did this naturally.

Admittedly, it was probably an unusual answer, but they totally got it. Rupaul came up towards the end of our time at Filoli Gardens, and transitioning to our second locale, in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, we got nothing but fire from them still. Reinforcing our feeling that cool travels, they were just as great and fit right in with the industrial setting of this part of their session as they did with the elegant environs earlier in the day.

We already couldn’t wait to work with them on their wedding day, and after this session, we are even more excited!