About Us

1000 Words Photography is husband and wife team Tom & Leona (Lee) Burke based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. We are primarily wedding photographers, but do offer all kinds of other photography as well. We've been working together since 1996 and have photographed hundreds of couples weddings. We don't think you can define our style as anything specific, we use a combination of styles to create what we hope is a uniqe perspective. To see a greater representation of our photography be sure to check out the galleries on our website.
Our personalities are loose and playful, we love photographing weddings and really want our clients to have a great time on one of the biggest days of their lives. We work very hard to come up with images that will make you say "I was there and I don't remember it being like that". Wedding photography is different than most other services at a wedding because for the images to look awesome, there needs to be a good working relationship between us and the couple. We're there all day with you so there needs to be a level of comfort and trust. Over the months leading up to a wedding we typically have developed a close relationship with our couples. We still stay in touch with most of our couples and are through the different stages of life (the wedding, children, homes, job changes..). When we book a client many times we are gaining lifelong friends and that is a pretty cool thing.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Crow Canyon Country Club Wedding  

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This wedding is of Jennifer & Nick, whose engagement session we did back in August. The day started with us going to Jennifer's parents house for getting ready. When we got there, there were very few people at the house and Jennifer was getting her makeup done. It was very calm and there was no pressure. Lee and I scoped out areas that we wanted to take some shots and talked with Jen's parents while we waited for things to ramp up. Little by little bridesmaids started showing up and everyone started to get excited. Anne from Flowers By Anne showed up with the bouquet and it was beautiful......gorgeous actually. Anne is our favorite florist. She does such an excellent job and from what brides tell me is very affordable in comparison to others.
Once the makeup was done it was time to get ready and the pace of things really picked up. There was a lot of running back and forth across the house to get everything Jen neeeded to get ready....but nothing too crazy. Once in her dress we had some time with just Jen and her parents. She is one of the nicest, coolest and strikingly beautiful people we have every had the pleasure to work with. Once we were done at the house we headded to the church to hook up with Nick and his crew. The guys were all there and ready. Nick was in his dress blue's and was sharp as a tack. I didn't pick up on it when we did the engagement session, but Nick is funny as hell. He was so loose and joking around with the groomsmen. Almost all of them serve in one branch of the military, and it was great that they came from all over to be there for Nick.
The ceremony went off without a hitch. We did the formals directly after the ceremony.....that was a little chaotic....but nothing too crazy.
One of the nice things about being a Northern California wedding photographer is the weather. This wedding took place in mid-November and the weather was beautiful. We got to Crow Canyon before the wedding party did and waited for them to arrive. We waited and waited.....I think the limo driver might have taken the scenic route........anyway they got there about a half an hour after we did, so we were not going to have a lot of time before the reception was to start. When they arrived we got right to work, we had a plan had to execute quickly. Johnny from Amos Productions was the videographer and he stayed right with us (stayed out of the way and was helpful). Crow Canyon has a nice lake in the middle of the fairways and we knew if we placed Jen & Nick in just the right place we would have a perfect mirror reflection of them in the water. Lee set them up and Johnny and I ran to the other side of the lake for the shot. There were golfers coming up the fairway so we had to get the shot and get the hell out of there. When we got to our spot the mirror reflection was there and Johnny said to me, "That is Awesome". Got the shot and we all ran up the hill to a safer spot. We went through the rest of the sequences and played around a little with the wedding party and then delivered everyone to the reception.
Chris from Denon & Doyle was the master of ceremonies and did a great job of creating a high energy evening. Jen's dad is one of the nicest, funniest, gentle, brilliant and insightful men I've ever met. He gave bar none the best father toasts we've ever heard. After he was done Lee said, "I want him to be my dad". It was the most thoughtful toasts of all time. After all the toasts and traditional dances the party was on..........and these people came to party. This was our last event of the year and it was awesome. 1000 Words Photography is honored to have been such a nice couple and family to capture their biggest day. We really hope you enjoy the images we've posted.
We've got a lot of events to blog, and will be getting caught up shortly.
Peace,
T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

San Francisco Wedding  

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This was a great wedding to work. Jenna & Issac were such a great couple, and so much fun to be around. Jenna got ready at the Mark Hopkins hotel and took a cable car from there to Shakespeare Gardens in Golden Gate Park..........uhhhh and it was frikin freezing....I mean really, really cold. Jenna & the bridesmaids rode the cable car and had to be outside for something like an hour before the ceremony.....they were literally shivering because of the cold. But they totally dealt with it for the sake of the pictures. Shakespeare Gardens is right outside the California Academy of Sciences and is a great place for a ceremony. This was a special wedding to me personally because years ago I used to work with Jenna's mom and I knew a lot of the guests. The reception was at The Exploratorium just outside the Palace of Fine Arts. This is a totally out of the box place for a reception. If you have never been there it is a large building down by the Marina in San Francisco where there are all kinds of scientific displays. It is very interactive and a great place to appreciate science. Most Bay Area school children wind up going there for a field trip at some point in their school careers. Aside from the great displays and complete uniqueness the Exploratorium is a beautiful place for a reception. We've talked about the Palace of Fine Arts on our blog before, but we came across a really great opportunity....just minutes before headding for home. The Palace was fully lit up inside the dome and outside and we had a full moon that happened to be just to the right of the Palace from our vantage point. I love the picture of Jenna & Issac outside the Palace.....let us know if you like this shot too. We hope you enjoy the images we've shared.






Peace,






T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

Monday, September 7, 2009

San Francisco Engagement Session  

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Here's another engagement session at the Palace of Fine Arts/Crissy Field. Valeria & Jared are getting married in November so we went to the city and had a great time with them. This time of year you are rolling the dice wheather or not the Golden Gate Bridge will actually be visable....uhhh last Sunday.....not so much. San Francisco is only about 30 minutes from where we live, but it seems further. We always love being in San Francisco, it seems no matter what the weather is doing it has so much to offer, and has such great energy.




Okay, not a lot to say on this post.....but we hope you like the pictures.




Peace,




T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Morcam Rose Gardens, Oakland CA:Engagement Session  

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The Morcam Rose Gardens in Oakland is a hidden jewel of and is a great place to take a couple for an engagement session. As the name indicates there are lots and lots of rose bushes of all varieties. There are these large starcases (several hundred feet long) that funnel down to the gardens. They are really dramatic and fun to work with. There is a fountain that is tiered and has like seven different pools to flow into. The upper area has more roses more steps is another great area to shoot. The thing about the Morcom Rose Gardens is that for the tremendous beauty that it is blessed with, there is almost never a lot of people there. I think we saw like 5 or 6 people the whole time we were there....and most of them were running up and down the huge staircases. We first came across this location about 5 years ago when we actually photographed a wedding there. It turned out to be a fantastic wedding venue and I could be wrong, but I think it only costs $300 or $400 to rent the site from the City of Oakland.

This couple Jennifer and Nick were awesome to work with. They live in San Diego and are getting married at Crow Canyon Country Club in Danville later this year. Jennifer is stunningly beautiful and Nick is a really good looking guy....all I had to do was push the button on the camera......pretty much :) . We hope you like the teasers from this session.
Peace,
T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Fort Point San Francisco Engagement Session  

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Here is an engagement session from a new location to us. I know it sounds stupid as much as we shoot at the Palace of Fine Arts and Crissy Field and Fort Point is just down the road a bit and has a lot to work with. Jenna & Isaac recommended this location and we are really glad. The bridge is ginormous from this location, there is good beach access, the ability to get away from the rest of the tourists, Presidio buildings, and a really cool old military structure too. Jenna & Isaac were great to work with and have some real good genuine chemistry together. We didn't have to give too much instruction to them and they were playing around and making each other laugh...which is great for us as photographers. We really hope you like the pictures we posted here. You can see the rest at our website http://www.10000words.com/ .

by 1000 Words Photography

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Santa Cruz Wedding  

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This is a wedding for a couple whose engagement session we did just a few weeks ago, Sarah & Jason. Their wedding venue was the Sequoia Retreat Center in Santa Cruz. The wedding took place on the same weekend as the Gilroy Garlic Festival , so just like last year we got stuck in bumper to bumper gridlock for over an hour starting in Los Gatos. Fortunately we always giv e ourselves plenty of time just in case, so we wound up being only 15 minutes late...but a lot of people were late. This is a jewel of a place tucked away in the hills. The facility has several different cabins, which many of the wedding party stayed at the night before and the night of the wedding. This makes for a much more relaxed event as people don't have to worry about traveling to get home after the wedding.




The ceremony was held at a really nice grassy area at the end of facility. It is really beautiful as the grassy area is surrounded by giant redwoods. Just off the grassy area are trails that gave us some great opportunities. I really like the shot on this post of Sarah in the the wooded area...what do you think? It was great seeing Sarah's brother Brian and wife Elysia whose wedding we photographed in 2007.




The reception was held on a deck at the other end of the facility. It was a nice mild evening and very comfortable. All in all it was a beautiful wedding and we consider us lucky to have been chosed to capture the images.




Peace,




T&L

Posted in by 1000 Words Photography

Sunday, August 2, 2009

San Francisco Engagement Session  

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San Francisco is always the top choice for a couple's engagement session. There are so many beautiful places to go from The Palace of Fine Arts, Fort Point, Crissy Field, Golden Gate Park, The Legion of Honor, Baker Beach and so many more. We do a lot of engagement session in San Francisco for couples who come in to town with the sole purpose of having the city as their backdrop. Couples who are a lot of times getting married out of state will hire us just to photograph them in San Francisco. It can be a little chaotic sometimes, because there is always something going on in the city (a triathalon, a marathon, a parade, a demonstration). There have been times where we have planned with our couple to meet and there be absolutely no access to any of the places described above. In those times we've had to check off to another date. So it is always best to see if there is anything going on before putting it on the calendar.

This couple Lauren & Rob are getting married in Salt Lake City and wanted a San Francisco backdrop. We recommended The Palace of Fine Arts to them for a couple reasons. First it has stunning architecture built with the idea of a Roman ruin. It was built in 1915 for Panama-Pacific International Exposition and is awesome to see. The columns and arches give a wedding photographer a lot to work with. It also provides shelter from the wind.....nothing ruins an engagement session more that a bride to be's hair getting jacked by the wind. The second reason for suggesting The Palace of Fine Arts is that right across the street is Crissy Field, which has a great beach and a fabulous view of the Golden Gate Bridge (this day it was mostly fogged in). Lots of couples love to have the bridge in the background and the view doesn't get much better. Typically when we photograph at these locations we'll take the couple for a little stroll and run them through a bunch of sequences and it generally takes about an hour. If you check through our engagement gallery on our website you'll see lots of instances of The Palace of Fine Arts. For this post we'll share a few of our favorites from a couple weeks ago....we hope you enjoy them.





Peace,





T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Clayton Engagement Session  

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Here are some shots from an engagement session we did last week. Really cool couple that were referred to us from past clients (thank you Rick & Kristine). Meghan & Bradley are getting married in September at her folks home on the Concord/Clayton border. The session gave me a chance to check out the home and get some ideas. We went from the parents home down the backroads of Clayton to the Wood Ranch, which is one of our favorite wedding venues. We got to see Lori & Steve who are such nice people. They let Meghan & Bradley bring their horses over to their property for the session. It was fun having the horses there, but you never know how they are going to react....for the most part they were easy to work with. I couldn't get over how beautiful Meghan's horse is...truely a magnificent creature. We went around the property and shot for about an hour and came up with some pretty cool shots (we hope you think so too!).

by 1000 Words Photography

Friday, July 24, 2009

Lake Tahoe Wedding  

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First, I want to thank one of my past brides for helping us out with the format for our blog. Bridge....you're awesome. We'll probably be making some other changes to the blog, making it more visually pleasing and functional.
Now to the wedding....every now and then we get to turn a wedding into a mini vacation. This was one of those cases. We headded up Friday late afternoon so that we wouldn't have to worry about being late to the wedding on Saturday. We stayed at Mont Bleau casino on the strip and were pleasantly surprised how nice the rooms were....and way less per night than Harah's or Harveys. In the evening we took to the casino floor and Lee sat herself down at the roulette wheel, she had never really played before, but she got HOT hitting her numbers over and over again....sooo much fun.
Saturday was the wedding in Tahoe City about an hour away. Such a beautiful drive and great weather. The wedding was at a riduculously beautiful estate right on the lake. The caretaker of the property estimated that the estate may be worth $50 million...wow. We hadn't met the couple Natascha & Victorio until that day. We had photographed one of Natascha's coworkers weddings and chose us just based on the pictures we had taken for her coworker. So we meet Natascha first, and what a really nice, fun and cool person she was. We hit it off right away and started doing the getting ready shots. After a while Victorio and the groomsmen showed up......again....super cool person and a lot of fun to talk to.
The ceremony & reception had a Native American theme from decorations to the music. That was a lot of fun and was kind of refreshing for us. It was a really beautiful ceremony rich with Native American tradition. After we finished photographing the formals we got to work with Natascha & Victorio and had a lot of fun. The reception was super nice and there was a lot of laughter being shared. It was an absolute pleasure to have gotten to photograph their wedding and are grateful for the opportunity. We hope you like the teaser pictures posted in this post.
Peace,
T&L

by 1000 Words Photography

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