For those of you who know me, you know I LOVE Southern California and Hawaii. I’ve dreamed of moving to one of the two places for about four years now. The first time I visited California was back in 2014 with my friend Hannah. It was the first time I had really traveled anywhere on my own and it was definitely the start of my travel bug. I fell in love specifically with San Diego’s warm weather, beautiful beaches, and laid back coastal towns. I was lucky enough to get to go back a second time for Laura and Bradley’s engagement session in 2016 which only furthered my love for the area. And because two times is never enough and I was coming up on another two years since I’d been, I had a lot of flight alerts on. Back in December, I found $160 round trip flights to San Diego and immediately texted my other friend Hannah (who I recently went to Hawaii with) to see if she’d be up for a last minute trip out.

Hannah said yes, I got in touch with my photographer friend Joelle about staying with her, she said yes, and we booked our flights! More stories coming in a later post regarding the trip itself and all the fun we had (+ classic travel mishaps) but I had to first share our shoot that we did at Sunset Cliffs our last evening there! We found Amanda and Daniel through a wedding creatives group on Facebook because Amanda is also a photographer and we knew we had to photograph them the minute we saw a picture of the two of them together.

San Diego had some very strange weather last week while we were there and as we were driving from Joelle’s house to the shoot, it began to get incredibly foggy, to the point where we couldn’t see the ocean or anything too far in front of us. At first, I panicked because it looked like it was going to rain but Joelle reassured us it was probably just the marine layer from the ocean. The closer we got to Sunset Cliffs (ironic because it’s ALWAYS sunny in CA and this day it was anything but sunny), the more I realized it was going to be an EPIC foggy shoot. It looked like a scene from the Pacific Northwest and it was stunning. And then Amanda and Daniel arrived and it only got better. This sweet couple was an absolute blast to photograph and we loved our time with them!! They made our job beyond easy by being so playful and fun! We walked all around this gorgeous park overlooking the cliffs and the ocean and even though we didn’t get to capture the turquoise waters and ocean waves, it was so different and that made it special!! Amanda and Daniel, thanks for putting up with all three of us photographing you and being the cutest couple ever!! Hope you love a few of my favorites from our shoot!!

San Diego Portrait Photographer | Portrait Photography San Diego