We got to spend the long Memorial Day weekend in Northern California. My son Josh’s new fiancée Katie and her family live in that area and Josh has been there a little over three months. Since Katie and Josh are newly engaged Katie’s sister Shannon and I thought we’d do a weekend long engagement shoot while I was there. Shannon is a great photographer, be sure and check out her blog. I’ll be sure to update this post when she has some of her shots blogged.

UPDATE: Shannon’s shots are on her blog now. Be sure to check them out.

We basically took photos at three main locations over two days. I’ll post them in order so be sure to look through all the shots. I’ve got so many favorites that it’s hard to choose which ones to post and which ones that I like the best. At the end of the post I’ll link to the full gallery of final edits.

Sunday evening we started off in the “Vacaville Hills” . A beautiful area about a 30 minute drive from Katie’s home town. I was trying out some new ways to control my flash remotely and had some issues. So most of these are natural light, no flash. This is a little different for me but it was good to try something different.

So let’s start with some shots in the Vacaville Hills.

Not sure about everyone else, but this is one of my favorites from this set.

A little backlighting and a blown out Sun. A different effect for me.

I’m not sure what Josh said but Katie thought it was funny.

A little glimpse of the hills. A beautiful setting.

Full disclosure, I added the blue sky in this one. Feel free to comment and let me know if it looks natural.

Something funny again!

I have many more from this location that I like but I’ll end the Vacaville shots with this one. Be sure to visit the link at the end of the post to the full gallery.

The next stop on the tour was on Monday in San Francisco. We planned on going to Baker Beach and getting some beach shots with the Golden Gate in the background. By the time we made it to the beach the fog had rolled in and the bridge was totally covered up. While we didn’t get any beach shots there were some other cool locations that were kind of out of the way that made the trip worthwhile.

We went to a place called Fort Mason. There was lots areas there to photograph. We found this old tunnel that looks like train tracks used to got into it. It was covered by this interesting looking door and we got quite a few good shots there.

For those of you who don’t know Katie’s family, she has a twin sister, Jessica. We thought it would be fun to play that up a little bit.

We found a nice area that we thought kind of looked like a secret garden. It was right in the middle of activity all around but looked so secluded.

They’re just off in their own little world.

Well we did manage to get one shot with the Golden Gate in the background. This is from a trail in Fort Mason.

Ok, it’s a cliché shot but I like it.

From their we made our way to Ghirardelli Square.

The last stop for us was the Palace of Fine Arts. It was closed for renovation but we still managed to get some great shots from across the pond.

Here’s another one that I manipulated the sky a little. Just to make it look like it did when we were there.

One the way home we stopped in the Napa area. Beautiful setting. We stopped at Brix the restaurant that Jessica works at and got some great shots. These may be my favorites of the three areas we shot in.

I’ll end this long post with one of my favorites of the weekend. Feel free to comment and let me know which are your favorites.

To view the full gallery of Katie and Josh’s engagement edits visit this link. I had a blast shooting them both and working with Katie’s sister Shannon. I can’t wait to see what she captures. Please come back as I’ll update the post to Shannon’s link after she posts.