Kristen and Ian and I had sooo much fun during their Sonoma Coast engagement session!! When Kristen first reached out to book it with me last fall, she told me they would love to do their session in the redwoods or at the coast. Either was fine, and did I have any recommendations for them? Umm heck YES I did!
Normally you wouldn’t be able to fit those locations into the same session because of distance between the two (it’s pretty rare to find redwoods *right* next to the coast, they’re usually inland a ways), but because I had this hidden gem of a spot ready in the wings we were able to make both spots happen for their 90 minute session! I calculated the distance between the two as being 13 minutes of driving and 15 minutes of walking. Doable!
I first hiked this trail in the fall — it’s VERY off the beaten track and few people know about it, which is the exact kind of place I love to offer my couples for their session or wedding. I’d been hoping and hoping I could talk a couple into hiking up there (not terribly far or hard, maybe a quarter mile of a climb) and so you can imagine my stoke when these two said yes! I just looovedd the “aisle” of ferns and cool moss-covered tree at the very end and was dying to photograph someone there.
After frolicking in the redwoods for a bit, we hustled back to the car to head to the coast to make it in time for sunset. And WOWWW were we met with a freaking WALL of icy windchill. We literally had 12 minutes until sunset and I’m sure I can speak for these two when I say I’m glad we weren’t out there any longer because it was fricken cold as heckkkk. It was Type 2 fun for sure (which I had to explain to them 😂) but still worth it because the sunset was STUNNING! These two were such goofballs and down for anything, including trooping through the windstorm — their session was all around a blast!
I hope you enjoyed scrolling through this Sonoma coast engagement session!! If you want some more redwood session action, head over to this engagement session I shot last August down the street from my house (literally 48 hours before we were evacuated from wildfire, insane). Or if you’re wanting to scope some other coastal shots, you can find more of those here!
