San Diego California, Sunset Cliffs | Amanda + Daniel - Hannah Smith Photography | Southern California natural light, wedding and lifestyle portrait photographer

Whenever I travel somewhere new I strive to make my two favorite things collide: travel portraits & new friends. I set a goal to book at least 1 or 2 portrait sessions while I’m away because ohhhh I just loveee spending time with couples and exploring new views together. It gets my creative juices flowing and always leaves me feeling inspired..not to mention 99.9% (who am I kidding 100%, I’m just trying to type dramatic here) of my travel sessions end up being some of my most treasured portfolio work! If shooting in new places or cities leaves you feeling intimidated, let me just be the voice of reason and encourage you to TAKE THE LEAP. you will never regret it friend!

I traveled to California in the beginning of January for a week with my friend Meredith (catch up on all our insta adventures HERE) and we set up a shoot for our last evening in town. The whole week we were in San Diego we had some strange weather going on and as we were driving to Sunset Cliffs for our shoot, it went from straight SUNSHINE to this epic FOG and we had no idea what to expect for our session. I wouldn’t say we were *panicking*, but we were asking our sweet friend Joelle a billion questions about the weather and she gently reassured us that it probably had to do with the marine layer from the ocean and all would be fine. We had hoped for the best and thought it would turn out GOOD, but had no clue it would end up being this epic. When we arrived for our session we went into the state of constant “Jaw-drop” <— totally a thing. The fog had created this Pacific Northwest scene in the midst of sunny San Diego and it really made these portraits so unique. We totally hit the jackpot of strange weather.

Upon arriving, we met up with Amanda & Daniel (the sweetest humans, might I add!) and got right to shooting. Our popular phrase of the night was “this feels like cheating!” because as photographers, you usually walk your clients through posing for a good while and sometimes have to work a little bit harder to produce true genuine portraits that reflect your clients, however, that was NOT the story for these champs! They were so playful and fun and their love for each flowed so naturally that our job was truly a piece of cake! #thephotographersdream

Daniel & Amanda it was such a joy getting to work with you and photograph your infectious love for each other. These portraits will be forever favorites.