Seven hours. Six locations. Three dresses and multiple hair and makeup changes along the way (courtesy of the ultra-talented Fiona of Urban Beauty Loft!). With stops for portraits beginning in San Francisco all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley and Sausalito, this incredible California pre-wedding session with Joyce and Norman was nothing short of epic.

When I first saw Joyce’s email sitting in my inbox, I was genuinely curious what such a long portrait session would end up looking like. I had never had so much time dedicated to just shooting a single couple before! All these questions completely vanished the second I hopped on the phone with Joyce. Her enthusiasm was SO encouraging. Both Joyce and Norman are such a fun-loving and HILARIOUS couple to be around. I loved being around their two personalities as we spent the day adventuring all up and down the Bay Area together. While the two of them reside in Hong Kong (!!), they both have nothing but the best memories of San Francisco from Norman’s time in school here. When it came time to take their engagement portraits, they knew right away that they wanted to combine the pictures with a return trip to one of their favorite cities!

One of my favorite parts of working with Joyce was her total creativity and trust. It’s easy for a longer portrait session to feel daunting when it comes to organizing travel logistics and timing, but Joyce was SO cheerful throughout the entire process, and had so many fun suggestions for each of the locations we visited! I’m particularly in love with the double exposure images we took during our prewedding session time together. Double exposures on film are something I had wanted to try out for the longest time, but I hadn’t found a client that was willing to give the process a try until Joyce and Norman came along! The idea was entirely Joyce’s idea and I’m SO HAPPY with the way these turned out. They are without a doubt some of my favorite images I’ve ever taken.

I have all the happiest memories from this day and I hope you all love these images as much as I do! Congratulations again to Joyce and Norman on the rest of their lives together!