AV Photography is the business child of Andrew Van Gundy, a Sonoma County Wedding Photographer. Andrew was raised in Santa Barbara, CA, a destination wedding mecca of its own, and took to photography in high school. His avid hobby began morphing into a profession almost by accident when tight friends on even tighter budgets began asking him to photograph their weddings as a wedding gift to them. What he didn’t expect in the process was for the phone to start ringing. But it did, and has continued to ring for the last seven years.
Though he’s completely self-taught and self-inspired, Andrew’s work carries with it an obvious skill for finding favorable and flattering light: the building block of photography. With the Santa Ynez wine country in his own backyard and Santa Barbara, CA on the map as one of the largest destination wedding sites in the country, AV Photo rooted deep and sprouted quickly.
When a high percentage of his destination wedding assignments found him landed in the Sonoma wine country, he and his family moved to Santa Rosa, preferring the redwoods and rolling hills to the palm trees and beach-side work that is so common in Southern California.
Andrew likes to say that photography is all about an experience to him: the feelings, emotions, memories, or inspiration you get when looking at a well-documented moment in time; and aims to bring his brides to tears even in their first bridal consultation. “I don’t care what photograph I hand you when the day is done, if it makes you laugh or cry, I’ve done my job.”
This element of creating emotive, storytelling images is what has styled AV Photo images from the beginning and set him apart from many other skilled contemporaries.
Though Sonoma county is home to AV Photography, Andrew is still available for destination wedding assignments worldwide. He provides full-coverage weddings to all of his brides, and typically becomes good friends with most of his wedding couples. To view some more of Andrew’s photography photography or to inquire whether he is available for your wedding date, check out his Professional Photographer Page on the Guide, or visit his Sonoma Destination Wedding Photographer site online.
