I love running around San Francisco taking pictures. And I love shooting engagement sessions. When you combine the two and add in a pair of close personal friends, well, that’s hard to beat.

Dawn & Zach’s San Francisco engagement session started at City Hall, where they’ll be getting married soon. That gave us an opportunity to scout the location before the wedding, and also an opportunity to make some great portraits inside the famous building. Then it was on to the Palace of Fine Arts, Chrissy Field and the Conservatory of Flowers. On our way back to the car after shooting outside the Conservatory of Flowers, I saw a small stand of trees on the edge of Golden Gate Park and took a second to check it out. It turned out to be my favorite location of the day, producing the picture you see at the top of this blog post.

Before Zach proposed, he and I had conversations about ways to surprise Dawn with a unique proposal. Zach, thankfully, didn’t listen to any of my dumb ideas, and instead wrote Dawn a song and found an amazing spot overlooking Ocean Beach. That was our next stop, where Zach played her the song again, and they opened a bottle of champagne, just like during the real proposal.

Our final shot was a formal portrait in their apartment. We made a nice picture of them smiling, but Dawn also had the idea of emphasizing the “formal” in formal portraiture — that funny photo is the last one in the gallery below.