Dani + Jason // Petaluma Engagement Session

While we're not out of the (Covid) woods just yet, 2021 has yielded so much hope, and my calendar is starting to fill up with amazing client meetings and promising possibilities of what this year could hold. What I DO know is that I have the most amazing list of clients who have been 'ride or die' with me, and just holding Zoom meetings to chat wedding details is filling my cup more than anyone could ever know right now.

I chatted with Dani and Jason a few weeks back about their Fall wedding, and it was an undeniable, instant connection and we quickly moved forward with scheduling this engagement session. They were graciously flexible and left the creative reins to me for this, so I landed on this beloved Petaluma location that boasts these Sound Of Music hills and also provided all.the.social.distancing.space (funny thing I MUST consider these days when location scouting).

We had a blast during this session and I was quickly reminded that I love meeting new couples, and learning more about them during these sessions. It's such a great opportunity for couples to feel comfortable around a camera, and also comfortable around me (and my bad jokes?). I always leave feeling creatively re-centered and full of gratitude that couples find me, and then choose me as their photographer, and Jason and Dani single-handedly restored my 'bah humbug' feelings about a 2020 forced year off of photography.

Stephanie + TJ // Sausalito Engagement

Without even doing it intentionally, I am kind of always location scouting for future photography sessions. I'm sure it's a common, unspoken habit among wedding photographers, and I've come to think of it as sort of an art when pairing new clients with locations that I think will best speak to them, and who they are as a couple.

With all of that being said, I have been HOARDING this location in my mind for a long time now, and I have been waiting for the perfect couple to use it. As soon as Stephanie and TJ said they preferred that I take the creative reigns with this engagement session, I knew I had their full trust, and this really gave me the permission to shoot exactly how I wanted to, and at the location I had been daydreaming about for months and months. Beyond their total trust-fall into my vision for this, I also really loved and appreciated how they wanted to look and feel like themselves in these photos, and opted to wear what they normally would on any given day. This added a layer of casualness to this session that worked so incredibly well for our urban setting (and made it that much easier to scale a few walls/rocks when the situation called for it). :)

This was one of my favorite engagement sessions to date, and I have these two brave humans to thank for it. Both showed up with a total willingness to support my ideas, and it made for such a flawless working relationship-turned-instant-friendship by the time we wrapped this session. Cheers to these two on their engagement, let the BIG DAY countdown begin!