Kat & Ryan’s session consisted of a wonderful morning stroll along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I loved the casual urban vibe of it all and the little color-filled spots we found along the way. And — although this may sound wacky to say for such a cloudy day — I am utterly head over heels for the light in all of these. So soft and smooth and pretty, and allowing us to shoot in every direction our hearts desired! It started sprinkling right at the end of the session, but Kat & Ryan persevered in the name of good photos saying, “let’s keep shooting a little more”, because they are LE AWESOME.

Completely beside myself with excitement for their wedding at Inn of the Seventh Ray (read: one of my favorite venues IN THE HISTORY OF VENUES) this fall!

Meenah & Shaobo live in Norcal and booked me after a meeting on Skype, so I was super excited to meet them in person for the first time at their engagement session! For their session, they suggested a sweet seaside beach picnic, complete with lots of pops of color and fun beachy activities. I’ve seen picnic engagement sessions before but never on a beach – I love the summery casual feel the sand & the sea lent to this session!

They drove down to LA with a car full of colorful candies (confetti-inspired shots galore!), bubbles, sodas, and two of the loveliest fabric kites I had ever seen, handcrafted beautifully by Meenah. They didn’t quite fly, but with the general selection of Batman/pirate/the Hulk-themed kites out there, this was an excellent decision of form over function :)

I loved this fun summertime session & am SO excited for their beautiful vineyard wedding this fall!

Part of what makes my job so insanely awesome is getting to experience stories in the making and then saving those stories in my camera. The other part is getting to hear stories from way before I ever even came along. One of my favorites is the “how we met” story – over the phone or email or a hot cup of coffee, I have heard tons of hopelessly romantic & wonderful versions. Christin & Andrew’s story, however, might have reached a whole new level of romantic, I believe my exact words when she told it to me were, “it’s like out of a movie!”

They met on a plane from DC to LA – Andrew, who was sitting a row or two behind Christin, sent her a sweet message thanks to Virgin America’s high-tech futuristic seat-to-seat messaging system. They spent the remainder of the flight talking, which turned into numerous trips cross-country, and now, an engagement. Christin wanted to tie their romantic beginnings into the session and we eventually came up with the idea of paper airplanes. We folded a couple larger ones and tons of teensy colorful ones (out of origami, which is my crafting nemesis – I’m positive all those nose-diving airplanes were mine).

Christin & Andrew – we had such a fun afternoon with you! Thank you for allowing us to share a bit of your story :)

P.S. This session was featured on the ever-lovely & inspirational Ever Ours blog! Thank you Lydia!

On the right they’re making “infinity hearts” – a cute symbol of their own creation!