The best weekend exploring the coast with these cuties for their destination engagement session!! They love to travel together and wanted to explore somewhere new for their engagement photos, so they booked a two day adventure session with me. They’re getting married at a stunning downtown venue in Chicago next summer, but wanted these engagement photos to show off their love for the outdoors and travel… The best of both worlds!

In the months leading up to the session, I researched all sorts of locations the coast and made a shared “My Maps” with Google Maps of our tentative itinerary. I flew out two days early to spend time exploring each of the locations, visiting them during our photo hours to see how light light hit each spot, gathering inspiration, and I found additional locations along the way.

Day one of our photos came around, we carpooled out to each spot and I got to play tour guide as this was their first time on the coast! We started out exploring my favorite mini hike, Elk Flats Trail. After that we went south to shoot in the grassy sand dunes at Nehalem Bay State Park. As the sun went further down, we made a pit stop at Hug Point, then of course we had to spend sunset at Cannon Beach in front of Haystack Rock…. and we were blessed with the most magical sunset to end the night off!

We shot the next morning and afternoon for day two. Mid morning we began with a stop at Arcadia Beach, then we went back to Hug Point as the tide was much lower so we could see more spots. Next up, we wanted to shoot within the pretty forests as the sun got higher, so we walked down Short Sand Trail, a beautiful little nature walk along a creek that leads to the beautiful Short Sand Beach in Oswald West State Park. We shot on the beach with high sun, then took a different route back up to the highway for more variety. Necarney Creek Trail was the way we took up, a beautiful trail I found while scouting that had a smaller creek that was easier for us to get photos in, and it was surrounded by giant trees

These two were such a joy to photograph, it truly was an honor to document their love and this exciting time in their lives!

Click here to inquire about your destination engagement photos!

Click here to inquire about your wedding photography!