If you visited the blog earlier this week to see Abby & Robert’s San Francisco City Hall engagement session, you likely knew that this next blog post was coming! I’m so excited to share part two of their epic SF engagement shoot! And if you missed it, be sure to head back because it’s a stunner and tells the full story of this sweet couple that I will be photographing for their big day next June!

Before I get to the photos (I know, I know), can we just talk about for a minute how refreshing and game changing it can be to have clients who trust you 100%!?! When planning Robert and Abby’s session, we came up with a long list of stops we wanted to hit to truly capture the “best of” San Francisco. As a general rule, I usually only shoot engagement sessions at sunrise or sunset to ensure the most flattering light, but we clearly had to make some exceptions to this rule to fit everything in! This meant shooting in harsh, mid-day light and still finding a way to make it all look beautiful. For the second half of their engagement session, we started off at at Rodeo (Ro-day-o? Ro-dee-o? Who knows…) Beach in Marin Headlands. We originally wanted to go to Hawk Hill, but some road closures made that impossible.  When we arrived at the beach, the sun was OUT; it was creating such a harsh reflection on the water below that everything behind them was completely washed out. But these two? They never doubted me for a second. Sure, I may have had to explore a bit longer than I’m used to, but I never felt pressure or nervousness from them which put me completely at ease. We finally found the perfect spot that gave us both coverage from the bright sun and a gorgeous backdrop with a lot of natural texture from the rocky beach. We even took a short hike up into the marshy green hills and found the most dreamy tall grasses!

From there, we took a short drive to Sutro Baths. The Baths ended up being much smaller than they appeared in photos, but, to our surprise, were nearly empty. We waited for the sun to drop just out of the frame before wrapping up our session at this iconic site on the west coast.

Abby and Robert, I cannot thank you both enough for bringing me out to San Francisco and allowing me to spend the entire day photographing you! It was such a joy to explore the city with you and made me even more excited, if possible, for next June so we can do the same across DC!