Ann & Alex’s engagement session blew my mind to UTTER and COMPLETE smithereens. As astoundingly talented artists, they’ve recently created their own publication and frequently put on amazing little events {like this one} showcasing art & music in the community. They are no doubt one of the most creative couples we’ve worked with and their homegrown & intimate session completely embodied their relationship and who they are. It was like a perfect sneak peek into their lives and since it was so them, it was innately & wonderfully unique.

I like to think of their session as broken down into 3 parts of complete awesomeness:

1) An intimate summer backyard dinner with explosions of texture & color
2) A walk through their neighborhood to a cute community garden
3) Fun with projector patterns on a wall…

I’m crossing my fingers that you make it to the end of this post, because all 3 are totally amazing and inspirational!

But starting with the first part….

Ann & Alex recently moved to the west side, to a cute home that they share with friends and have dubbed the “Culver Den”. I was so excited when they suggested doing their session there since I LOVE photographing people at home – I feel like there’s such an intimate side of them you can capture and I love the cozy organic vibe the backdrop provides. When I arrived at the Culver Den, Ann & Alex had created a sweet outdoor dinner, complete with the most colorful & well-thought out details – flowers & feathers in vases, a cup of vibrant vegetables, garnished glasses of strawberry lemonade, a found vintage chandelier. And thus, my mind was blown.

Love the paint on Alex’s hands – he said even after scrubbing it wouldn’t all come off!

Next, they wanted to take me on a little walk through their new neighborhood to a community garden down the street. Ann told me that the houses in their neighborhood showcased the most interesting plants and flowers, and she was in no way kidding. We saw some of the craziest, most gigantic, most beautiful flowers I’ve seen in our walk. When we got to the garden, Alex pulled out an impromptu necklace he had made for Ann from a lovely painted wooden block he was using in one of his art projects. It was so sweet!

For this part of the session, Ann also slipped on the cutest head piece, which she had handcrafted herself (she has a line of them called Amisa). And so, my camera clicked away & my mind continued to be blown.

Lastly, we headed back to the house since they wanted to try out one more thing. Alex had recently illustrated an animation of different patterns and he wanted to try some photos using the projection as a backdrop. Um, YES.

MIND = BLOWN.

Ann & Alex, thank you so much for inviting me to take a sneak peek into your lives! Can’t wait until the wedding!!

When Alwyn & Alvin contacted me about an engagement session, they immediately started a fun dialogue about props. They really wanted the session to be vibrant and dynamic, colorful and sweet, and to most of all, show their personalities. We tossed around a few ideas and in one email, Alwyn suggested water balloons and a bat. Upon reading her suggestion, I did a little happy dance in my seat, and then started brainstorming other ways we could incorporate exploding balloons of awesomeness. On the morning before the session, I bought a sweet pink umbrella from Target (how I got out of Target without buying 571 other things is entirely beyond me), and as you’ll see below, it made for some fun photos {before it met its end at the hands of one especially overzealous water balloon}.

Alwyn & Alvin were SUCH troopers, not minding one bit that they were basically drenched by the end of the session – in fact they happily forged ahead into the second half of the session, where we skipped over to Chinatown for a romantic night shoot. Stay tuned!

Meghan and Jason live in Denver, Colorado. Since they booked me over email (after finding me via Green Wedding Shoes, one of my most favorite wedding blogs!), we didn’t get to meet until their engagement session last month. I was so ecstatic to find that we hit it off immediately – they are abundantly kind & laidback, fun & stylish (they did afterall meet while working at Urban Outfitters) and I could not be more excited for their wedding this fall at the Sonnenalp Resort in the snow-capped mountains of Vail, Colorado! From what they described, its going to be an amazing day filled with tons of great details – including all the guys in the wedding (read: including the dads!) sporting Vans.

Abbot Kinney, hands-down the cutest little street on the west side, felt like the perfect place to photograph such a hip & happy couple. At the end of the session, we headed down to the sea – we didn’t include the beach in our original plans, but in the end they expressed wanting to carry those beachy memories of LA back to Colorado with them :)

P.S. Meghan is an incredible fashion photographer & you can check out her work here. Her photography background resulted in a those fun moments where I would start describing a certain pose/shot, our photog brains magically connected, and Meghan knew exactly what I was talking about :) Her photography is stunning, but she clearly knows how to work it on the other side of the camera as well!

I had been itching for an opportunity to use these fantastic fabric flowers in a shoot, and loved that Meghan & Jason were so awesomely game for incorporating them :) They were created by the amazing Kim Sanders of Art with Nature Design for the Utterly Engaged Design Challenge we worked on together. She came up with the dreamiest tablescape and to my great joy, gifted these handemade beauties to me at the end!

Abbot Kinney never fails to deliver my favorite things – amazing color & gorgeous light…