What a delight California is in December. Crisp air and somehow a lingering yellow tree.

For Jason and Michelle’s engagement session, we went back to where it began for them, on the campus of UC Berkeley. Whilst everyone roaming the campus was fixated on the looming fall quarter finals, we enjoyed a relaxed stroll through their old stomping grounds.

Growing up in northern Marin (Novato, for those curious) the thing I’ve learned about photographing in the Marin Headlands is that I’ll never know what to expect when I get there. Over the years, I’ve accumulated some knowledge on how to assess conditions and even if I’m right when I arrive, it may be a completely different story in 10 minutes.

This was sort of the case with Alan and Thu’s engagement session in the Marin Headlands. Upon arriving a bit before sunrise, it was a pretty densely overcast and foggy, especially up at the higher elevations of Hawk Hill. As we got started, the sky cleared up a bit but a dense bank of clouds lingered along the horizon blocked the rising sun. But then mother nature decided to hook us up with some incredible light through a stunning sunrise display. For the rest of the morning we intermittently swapped foggy overlooks with warm sunlit scenes and sunny skies with grey backdrops but that’s part of the charm of the San Francisco Bay and the coastal fog, is it not?

Sunrise, an underrated time of the day. Personally, it’s probably my favorite time of the day and being able to have Emmeline and Jeff join me for an engagement session in Berkeley Hills made it all the better.

We roamed the hills of Tilden Regional Park then headed to the Berkley Rose Garden and enjoyed the morning light basking across the garden beds and topped it off with a a stroll and a concrete slide adventure just across the way in Codornices Park.