I’m so excited to share this engagement session with you guys today! A couple of weeks ago I got to shoot with Stephanie and Caleb in a private section of San Juan Capistrano and ending up at one of my favorite beaches in Dana Point! These two are so amazing together and so in love! It couldn’t have been easier to shoot with this beautiful couple! I’m so excited for their wedding this fall! ENJOY!

I absolutely love the point when I get to design my couples’ wedding albums! I think part of it is because I get to use my graphic design background a little bit again. But it’s also so fun to go back and relive the wedding day again. I imagine it’s even more fun for the couple since it’s their wedding! I recently delivered Dana and Jesse’s wedding album and they were so kind to have me over for dinner so we could catch up and hang out. They were SO excited and it was amazing for me to see them go through the different parts of their wedding while they were looking through the album. I think they must have flipped though it almost five times while I was there! Definitely the reaction that I love to get! I’m so happy for this couple and so happy with how much they are enjoying their album!

For Dana and Jesse’s album, I did a 44 page, 12×12 leather bound book that came in this wonderful protective box:

Great, thick pages all lay flat no matter how far into the book you are:

The super thin gap between pages allows me to create full 2-page spread images without any real limitation:

The back of the album now has my stamp of approval!:

If you’d like to see the entire album design from Dana and Jesse’s gorgeous San Clemente wedding, click below to start the slideshow:

I’m so excited to be posting these images right now! I got to shoot Katie’s sister’s wedding a couple of years ago so I was stoked when she asked me to shoot hers! These two are getting married later next month at a new venue Hamilton Oaks Winery. I can’t wait! For their engagement session we spent the day shooting in a private, working farm! It was so fun to get to have this place to ourselves…well it was just us and some cows. Katie and Beau were laughing at me the whole time because as we were shooting, I was doing my best to dodge all the cow patties. Yeah. Haha! Ok enough of that…here are the pictures! ENJOY!

You might remember Chelsea and David from their engagement session that we did at the firehouse where David works. They’ve been Pinterest celebrities ever since haha, so many repines! A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of shooting their wedding at the Calamigos Ranch in Malibu Canyon. It was a fairytale wedding for sure! From Chelsea’s hair and dress, to the ceremony site below a gigantic tree (I’m bad with plants and trees so I don’t know what kind ha!), and especially down at the private dock where I shot their portraits. It was such a perfect day and a really fun wedding! Thanks so much to 221 by Viv for making the day run so smoothly. And the AMAZING flowers were all done by Chelsea’s mom from The Pink Daffodil! Great job! Time for the pictures. ENJOY!

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get to travel to Tucson, Arizona to shoot Kelsey and Kyle’s gorgeous wedding at the Westin La Paloma Resort! It always really special when a couple goes through the extra effort to fly me out to their destination to shoot for them. I feel so blessed to have couples that trust me enough to do that. Being in Arizona, and outside of my usual surroundings, was such an inspiration and it was just so fun to shoot something totally different. I can’t say that I’ve ever gotten to take pictures of a couple with a cactus in the background! I loved it! Big thanks to Kelsey and Kyle for having me out there for their big day! ENJOY!

As a groom’s gift, Kelsey delivered an album of a boudoir shoot that she had done previously for him:

His reaction is priceless! Ha!:

Feathers in the bouquet?! Rad!:

Sometimes this happens. Actually, this happens a lot! Haha:

Yesssss!:

These two sure are cute together:

Yum!:

Kyle’s dad was a dancing machine!:

Get ready for a whole bunch of baby goodness! You might remember Jennifer’s maternity session about a month ago…well the twins are here and they are beautiful and so sweet! I never really do newborn sessions and twins is a whole different story…I was a little nervous. But it was honestly so much fun! Brooklyn and Bryn were SO sweet and in the middle of taking pictures would get to eat and then nap…ahhh what a life! I don’t know how their parents do it, with all the diaper changes and lack of sleep but I’m sure when they see their little faces it’s all worth it! I’m so thankful to this family for having me shoot for them again and again! I can’t wait for the next session with them all! ENJOY!

We all love sharing and viewing each other’s pictures on Instagram every day. I will admit that I’m totally addicted to that dang app! Well thanks to Instagram, Jami found my work and contacted me about shooting her wedding! Pretty cool! When it came to picking a location for Jami and Nick’s engagement session, I asked them if they’d be up for something a little different and we made the long drive up to Big Bear Lake for their pictures. I had no idea where we were were going to go but once we were there, I loved everything! These two were instantly comfortable in front of the camera and I loved running around the small mountain town with them, joking around and hunting for some really good spots to shoot…oh and it doesn’t hurt that they’re freaking gorgeous! I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out and am SO excited for their wedding! ENJOY!

Ok this post might be a little bit more for the photographers, or for my future couples that wonder why I ask to steal your rings in the middle of the reception. I woke up this morning wanting to talk about ring shots. I don’t know why, but I really love doing them! Maybe it’s just a break from taking pics of the drunkies on the dance floor or maybe it’s a chance to do something creative and to push myself to try and think of something new. Either way, I have a lot of fun doing it! The major thing that I do with my ring shots, is that I use an iPad as my light source. I’ll pull up a clean white image on my screen and make it as bright as I can and for some reason it produces really beautiful, clean light. I’ll often try and go to an area of the reception where there is little, to no, ambient light so that the iPad is my only source of light. Here are some pics from the last couple of years:

This first shot was in front of a fire pit outside where there was almost zero light other than the fire…put the iPad in front and here’s what came out:

Similar deal here. Zero ambient light outside. This one is using two iPads, set up like a teepee with the rings inside. Has a very commercial feel to it. On a side note, the wedding was at a spot next to some tennis courts so that’s where the tennis ball came from:

These next two were literally shot on top of the blank iPad screen:

I’m always looking for something kind of random to make people think “WTF” is that?! Stuff with glitter or reflective surfaces work great with a very shallow depth of field:

For these two, I set the rings on top of some LED lights that the DJ had set up in the reception area. Loved the colorful effect:

I just love having a little bit of ambient light in the background from a candle or something so it become a really abstract shape in the back:

The groom was a firefighter and his helmet had all of this perfect wear and tear to it! You should have seen the guests puzzled looks when I was setting up the shot haha:

I think it’s safe to say, that I really love food! So these were a lot of fun to do. The ice cream sandwich melted pretty quick so I had to get two of them…and I didn’t want them to go to waste so I “had” to eat them both. Darn. :

Flowers from the guest table, shot in complete darkness and lit by an iPad. These things produce incredible light!

No iPad for this one. It was ridiculously hard to balance the rings on the forks. They would fall down every time I’d go to click the shutter. But I LOVE the detail that the couple put into their wedding cake forks and thought it was a perfect ring shot for them:

These next two were from a wedding I shot in Nashville last year. Again, shot with the iPad…the first one was inside of a piano in a dark dark room:

I also really love to use negative space. Finding places with colored walls and reflective surfaces produces a wonderful effect:

Or you can just stick the rings in giant block of ice:

I shot these two with the iPad off to the side a little bit and it think it adds a little more drama to the image:

And this might just be my very favorite ring shot so far! They had these great Domo cake pops made and I couldn’t resist!

Was this helpful to you? If so, please share! If there’s something else you’re interested in learning…feel free to leave a comment below! THANKS!