Napa Valley Film Festival Best of Photos by Sacramento Event Photographer

Over the past few years, I've developed a newfound passion for photographing film and music festivals. However, my first taste of this exciting world came during my time at XSiGHT when the studio was transitioning from wedding photography to commercial endeavors. One of our earliest major projects involved capturing marketing material (both photos and videos) for the Napa Valley Film Festival. As the lead photographer, I was responsible for covering the Movie Mogul experience and other prominent events. It was quite a challenge as I had to process the images overnight to ensure prompt delivery the next morning. In subsequent years, we even experimented with sharing images in real time for instant social media updates.

Having been a wedding photographer for around 15 years at that point, I found it relatively easy to capture the candid moments. However, what made this project particularly exciting was that it provided a bit more structure and urgency in terms of meeting their specific requirements within tight timeframes. Not to mention dealing with less than ideal lighting conditions when photographing people. It was during this period that I decided to switch to mirrorless cameras, which offered better noise control for capturing high quality images in low light settings.

The first year was a real learning experience, not just in terms of photography, but also in figuring out where I could and couldn't go, how much interaction was appropriate with the guests of honor and being mindful of all the activity happening behind the scenes. Fearon May Events was our contact person who brought us into this project. Having known her from the wedding industry, it was reassuring to have someone familiar to rely on as we navigated through unfamiliar territory.

We were fortunate enough to be part of NVFF from 2016-2019 and it's something I'm excited to do again under my own brand. I hope you enjoy this collection showcasing some of my favorite images from those years.