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RECENT WORK & photography tips
Cielo Farms: A Stunning Tuscan-Inspired Wedding Venue Hidden in the Hills of Malibu, California There’s a moment on the drive up Mulholland Highway when the landscape shifts in a way that feels abrupt and complete. The coastal highway energy falls away behind you, the road narrows and winds into the Santa Monica Mountains, and the […]
The Colony Estate: A Grand California Mansion Wedding Venue Between Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Malibu There are venues you visit because someone recommended them, and then there are venues you encounter and immediately understand — in your bones, before you have even finished walking the grounds — that this is the kind of place […]
Bodega Los Alamos: One of the Best Wine Country’s Micro Wedding Venue I have been driving through Los Alamos for longer than I can remember — it sits right along the route between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, and for years it was the kind of town you blinked through rather than stopped in. […]
Villa and Vine: The European Courtyard That Makes It One of the Best Micro Wedding Venues in Santa Barbara I was on my way to a venue tour when I first came across Villa and Vine. A colleague had mentioned it in passing as we were discussing the evolution of Santa Barbara’s wedding venue landscape, […]
Santa Barbara Inn: Oceanfront Elegance and One of the Best Micro Wedding Venues in Santa Barbara There is a moment that happens at every wedding I photograph at an oceanfront venue — a particular stillness that descends in the hour before the ceremony, when the Pacific is doing what it does best and the light […]
Santa Barbara Historical Museum: A Historic and Romantic Choice Among the Best Micro Wedding Venues in Santa Barbara There is a particular quality of light that falls through the pergola of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum‘s main courtyard in the late afternoon — warm and slightly diffused, catching the edges of the adobe walls and […]
Olive Grove Estate: One of the Best Micro Wedding Venues in Santa Barbara for Ocean Views and Intimate Celebrations The first time I drove up to Olive Grove Estate, I pulled over for a moment before I even reached the gate. I have been photographing weddings for over seventeen years — I have traveled to […]
The Best Micro Wedding Venues in Santa Barbara: Five Unforgettable Spots for Your Intimate Celebration There is something about Santa Barbara that stays with you long after you leave. The light here is different — warm and golden in a way that photographs seem to understand intuitively, as though the city itself knows it is […]
LET'S capture
TOGETHER
Something Beautiful
Every wedding tells a story. My job is to find the most beautiful way to tell yours. Through the candid moments that happen when no one is looking to the details you spent months choosing and the in-between frames that end up meaning the most. Art and emotion, together in every image.
BEHIND THE LENS
ABOUT Courtney
Photography found me before I found it. I grew up watching my grandfather frame a shot, learning without realizing I was learning. When my youngest was born in 2009, I picked up a camera to capture my own kids — and somewhere between the first roll and the hundredth wedding, it became the thing I couldn't imagine not doing.
What keeps me going after 17 years is the same thing that started it all: a genuine love for people and an obsession with preserving the moments that matter. I still travel the world every year to learn from the best photographers working today. Not because I have to. Because I can't imagine stopping.
© courtney bowlden photography 2026
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