Arnel and Mindy in the park

This was the sunny, chilly Sunday afternoon when I discovered that there are 2 entrances to the Golden Gate Park Botanical garden, and that when one meets clients for a shoot that one should be aware of this fact.

Also I parallel parked along a very busy street and was very proud of myself even though it took me a while. 

This was my first time meeting Arnel and Mindy, but they were instantly hilarious and adorable and so so fun. We adventured through the park, and found awesome things like the Shakespeare garden and pretty light.

I won't be able to shoot their wedding because I'll be in Burma, but I'm so happy for them! 

Kyle and Sara: A Falltime Engagement Session

In my second year of college, I was just back from a semester in Israel, where I had found a new love in photography of people and places and the adventures of life. Settling back in to college life was bumpy and exciting; full of new friends and a new schedule. Amid all those things I stuck with taking pictures, and Sara was one of the first to ever ask me to take pictures of her.

We worked in the college cafeteria together and with her wonderful sense of fun and her tendency to pronounce everything "Romantica," we had fun and I did (incidentally) a falltime photoshoot with her.

When I left college we didn't keep in touch much other than facebook, but Sara is now engaged to the awesome Kyle, and she e-mailed me to find out it there would be any way that I could do their engagement pictures.

Sara is from Ecuador, but Kyle's family lives about an hour from my Aunt's house where I was at Thanksgiving, and so we met up for the shoot, and Sara had brought a truck full of props, outfit options, 2 friends for assistants, and a head full of ideas. 

It was a fun shoot in a beautiful park, and I really love the emotion between the two of them and how it came across in the photos!

Engagement previews

The busyness of the end of a year is swirling all around me, in the last 2 weeks I have shot things for class, 6 families, 2 engagement shoots, and some random things for school. My life is extremely crowded with people that I love, with past-times that I enjoy, with math tests that I don't enjoy quite so much, preparing for a trip to Burma/Myanmar at the end of the month, preparing for a move to the other side of the country in a couple months, and the overwhelming theme of the mercy and grace of Jesus that flows through all these things and gives a reason for living. 

I'll have some shoots to blog soon, I'm still in the thick of editing, but enjoy these previews from Kyle and Sara's shoot and Arnel and Mindy's.

Those people that are related to me...

This Thanksgiving my family and I made the trek over to my cousins' house and I had a very busy few days editing a wedding, shooting my family, carving the turkey, making the green bean casserole, shooting an engagement session with a lovely couple that is coming soon, shooting my eldest cousin's senior pictures, and shooting my cousins. 

That's what holidays together lead to, right? Shooting your relatives? 

If you aren't a photographer I don't recommend that course of action of course...it's not very good for your permanent record. 

Of course I love them, and they are all quite photogenic!

In other news I opened the first day of my advent calendar today and it has chocolate in it. WIN. 

Oh, did you want to see pictures? Okay...here you go.