Milestone birthdays, surprise parties, restaurant dinners, club buyouts, kids' parties. Shot candid, shot flattering, and shot in venues that are way too dark for a phone.
Here's what happens at every New York birthday. The venue is dark, phones panic, flash fires, and by Sunday you've got 200 orange blurry frames and exactly zero photos of you that you'd actually print.
Dark rooms are a lighting problem, not a phone problem. We shoot f/1.4 primes and bounce light off a ceiling or a wall so the room keeps its mood and the faces stay clean. That's the entire difference, and it's why the photos look expensive without the night feeling staged.
We also shoot the parts people forget to ask for: the hug at the door, your mom watching you blow out candles, the friend group at 1am who has clearly stopped caring about their hair. Those are the ones you keep.
30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 21st. The ones with a speech, a room full of people who flew in, and a photo your family will frame.
We arrive early, stay hidden, and shoot the reveal from a scouted position. That reaction frame is the whole gallery.
Intimate, low light, 12 to 40 people. Two hours is usually plenty and the photos look like a magazine spread instead of a group text.
Dance floor, bottle service, DJ booth, the whole night. We know how to shoot moving bodies in colored light without turning everyone green.
Shot at kid height, fast, and short. Cake, chaos, and the parents watching, which is the photo the parents secretly want.
Golden hour, then the light drops fast. We plan the group shots around the sun so you are not scrambling at 8pm.
The first 20 minutes are when people are still fresh, the venue is still clean and the light is still under control. Starting at peak chaos costs you the best frames of the night.
Send a list of who has to be in a photo together. We will get those done in one pass at the natural lull instead of interrupting the night five separate times.
Cake at 11pm means half the room is outside and everyone looks tired. Cake before the dance floor opens photographs better and gets more people in frame.
Milestone and birthday photography starts at $400 for two hours with one photographer. Longer celebrations, additional photographers and video are quoted around the event timeline and deliverables.
Yes, and that is most New York birthdays. We shoot fast prime lenses and bounce off-camera light instead of blasting direct flash, so the venue still looks moody in the photos instead of washed out.
Yes. Kids' parties run shorter and faster, usually the two-hour block, and we shoot at kid height instead of standing over them, which is why those galleries feel different.
Of course. Tell us who needs to be in them and we will corral those groups at the one moment everybody is actually in the room, usually right before food. Then we go back to shooting candids.
Edited selects within 48 hours, so the birthday post goes up while everyone still cares. Full edited gallery inside 14 days.
Yes. We arrive early, stay out of sight, and shoot the reveal from a position we scout with you in advance. The reveal reaction is the whole gallery, it is worth planning properly.
Date, venue and how many people. Flat quote back, usually the same day.