This engagement session was an absolute dream! In June, I flew out to California to photograph Esmeralda and José’s engagement session. Since I was going to be there for a whole weekend, we decided to do two different sessions. We went to Carpinteria Beach the first night (you might remember that blog post), and then the next day we took a road trip into the mountains and into the very heart of Sequoia National Park.

As excited as I was for the chance to visit Sequoia and photograph these two beautiful humans here, I was sure that I would love the beach part of their engagement session better but honestly, I might be in love with these photos more. It is so hard for me to choose!

We had the most glorious light and these remind me of something straight out of a fairytale. It felt like we were in an enchanted forest. The one thing that wasn’t magical was the thousands (and yes I mean thousands) of mosquitos that were constantly attacking us despite our copious amounts of bug spray. If you notice any sparkles in the light in any of these photos, those are the mosquitos…not fairy dust.

But despite the mosquitoes, we carried on and I think it was 100% worth it! We timed the day to reach our location about 2 hours before the sunset. This meant that by the time we were driving out of Sequoia National Park, the sun was setting behind the mountains and we made several pit stops along the winding roads as we descended the mountains for some of my favorite shots of the entire weekend. Make sure to read all the way to the bottom to see those!

Xoxo,

Mary Kate