Who is Cassandra, Mendocino Wedding Photographer

Choosing a photographer is such an important decision as he or she is right there with you, intimately capturing the memory of your beautiful wedding day.   Your photographer should be someone who's work you love but also someone who's company you enjoy and get on with like a friend.

So this is me and what matter most to me in the world....

...and my loving, best friend and husband Milo, of course.  Someone had to hold the camera.

It was a wild adventure that finally led me to Mendocino.  After studying fine-art photography at Humboldt State University and San Francisco State University,  I began my professional life in San Francisco working as a fine-art and commercial photographer.  I assisted and did the custom darkroom printing for some of the biggest names in american photography.  Images that I printed hang in museums and galleries around the world.  This is how I developed my ability to create technically perfect images in both exposure and composition.  After burning out on the darkroom (one can only spend so much time alone in a small dark space breathing caustic chemicals) I embarked on a career in graphic design.  After working in presentation design with fortune 100 companies world wide I found my way into Hollywood designing movie posters for the top studios.  Working in graphics required that I become a master with manipulating photographs on the computer.  Retouching, airbrushing, stylizing, you name it- I can do it.  From there I adventured on to high end advertising in New York working with various clients such as Jaguar, 7up, US Army, Burger King.  After a couple of years working 70 hours a week, my first daughter was conceived.  I knew I wanted to be a very involved parent and that advertising, although very glamorous, wasn't where my talents were best utilized.  And so CYoung Photography was born.  

I am now able to marry all my professional and artistic experience into digital photography.  My final photographs are to the quality of magazine ready, so that they are as perfect as your memory of your wedding will be.

So why Mendocino?  Quite honestly, of all the places I have traveled and lived, Mendocino is the most beautiful.  I am so lucky to be able to raise my family in a place that allows nature to coexist, a village to escape commercialism, and children to be children for as long as possible.  It is a place that fosters love, kindness, and individuality.