Batts Photography

Okay, this is a waaaay overdue 5-​star Unilocal review for Joel and Annaliesa — my wedding was in May 2010. But this is the first Unilocal review I have ever posted, so that’s gotta count to let you know that I think they are fantastic that it finally mobilized me into posting a Unilocal review, right?
I think they fill a very special niche with brides: affordable pricing for beautiful photographs and professional service. My husband and I felt it was absolutely important to have a photographer who is great to work with because you spend hours with them on your special day. We didn’t want an overbearing and mean photographer, like we’ve seen in other weddings. When we first met Joel and Annaliesa, we felt immediately at ease with them. They are a husband-​and-​wife team, where Joel is the photographer and Annaliesa assists and takes care of the ‘staging’ and making sure the composition looks good (i.e. moving the veil the right way so it photographs well, etc).
We had an engagement photo session with them, which was a fun and productive couple of hours. One of the best investments we made with them is to get the signature photo mat, with one of our engagement photos framed on it, and to have our guests sign on the black background with a silver pen. This came out really beautifully, and we have that photoframe hanging on our living room wall to this today. During the wedding day, Joel and Annaliesa were very unobstrusive and, in fact, they helped to make it even better. They were cool under pressure and they never stressed us out (very important for us).
I echo what the other reviewers say about them: we had a budget, and most of the photographers that have a 5-​star rating expected to be paid 3x-​5x of our photo budget. So when I saw Batts photography on Unilocal and how highly they were rated, and also that they were awarded one of the best photographers in The Knot magazine 2009 (I still have that magazine), we jumped on the opportunity to book them. Make sure to check their website out to see if it fits your own esthetic. The hyper-​expensive photographers are all about the photojournalistic/​artsy or posed shots — definitely not what my husband and I had in mind.
I have to say: even now, I look back at our wedding photos and they always bring a smile to my face and a joy to my heart. I know — cheesy, but absolutely true. Somehow Joel was able to capture the happiness of that day and translated it into photography. Thank you, Joel and Annaliesa! Highly recommended!

We had Joel photograph our wedding and are so glad we did! It is very difficult to find a decent photographer for an affordable price and we were very happy to find Joel and Analiessa. We were not able to find another photographer that would even compare to what they offered. We got 10 hours of photography, prints of all pictures, a DVD and CD all included in the price of the package. On wedding day they showed up early, took great pictures, and really listened to the kind of pictures we wanted. We weren’t big on having a bunch of formal wedding pictures and he did a great job of capturing everything going on and getting pictures of almost everyone that attended. I would recommend them to anyone planning a wedding, there is no reason to spend thousands of dollars on a photographer when you can hire Batts and get great photos.

I would actually give them a 4.5 star, but I rounded up. Joel and Annaliesa were great at our wedding! With so many different photographers and most of them with outrageous prices, we met with Joel and Annaliesa and were completely sold. Their photos were exactly what we wanted… a lot of photographers these days do photos with couples who pose like they want to be models in magazines. We’re not like that, we wanted photos of ourselves and with our families exactly how we are. They’re a sweet couple who don’t actually live in the South Bay, but are from the Norther California region. Annaliesa was so wonderful on the day of the wedding and even ran into the reception hall to get some club soda when we found out someone had stepped on my train.
They have super affordable wedding packages. They took our engagement photos and we got digital copies of all our photos included in our package, which was a fraction of the price of other photographers. Our album turned out absolutely beautiful and they had it ready for us once we sent them the layout we wanted. The reason I would only give a 4.5 instead of a 5 is because a few of our formal photos were a little bit crooked. Other than that, I would definitely go with Batts if you want quality, affordable photos for your wedding day.

Joel and Annaliesa did our engagement pictures and wedding photographs. Both sets of pictures turned out great and they were very helpful and friendly through the planning process. They did a great job a dealing with my crazy family and it didn’t seem to phase them. I especially loved how they truly captured the personalities of everyone in the wedding. I recommend them to any bride looking for a photographer.