This was such a wonderful surprise proposal! A lot of proposal clients come to me without a fully formed plan, and that’s totally fine, because I am happy to help them figure out the details. Brandon initially picked a date and time for his proposal about a month out. But as we started chatting, it…
I am so grateful to my dear friend Cassie for creating these studio portraits of us in the last couple months of my pregnancy. We stacked the day with portraits in the morning and my baby shower in the afternoon. All such wonderful markers of a very fleeting time! Photographs by Cassie Valente.Hair…
What a treat it was to go back to Tokyo in April after having just been there in January. Alex went for work, so it was a bit of a last-minute trip that we hadn’t originally planned on. I invited myself along, and while he worked long hours every day, I had lots of time…
We were lucky enough to visit Tokyo not once but twice this year, and we were doubly lucky to catch the tail end of cherry blossom season on the second trip. Since it was a work trip for Alex and we weren’t able to book things until the last minute, we got very lucky (again)…
Second Thanksgiving has been an annual tradition with the Yaus since 2011. It happens the Saturday after Thanksgiving, with a full new Thanksgiving feast (not leftovers– that’s for Sunday) and an ever-expanding group of friends and their little ones in attendance. For me it has become a signpost, marking the years with a trek down…
We did it! Almost a year after we started, we finally completed the Crosstown Trail. Our friend Cindy joined Alex and me for this fifth and final leg of the hike, walking from Park Presidio in The Richmond, passing by Baker Beach, and ending at Sutro Baths. First, we met at Breadbelly in the Richmond…
Irene and Martin have been the most wonderful couple to work with, through a pandemic and various postponements and pivots. In the end, I got to photograph them for a lovely maternity session along the California Coast. We assembled the images into this linen photo book, complete with gold foil debossing on its cover. Beautiful!…
The Crosstown Trail is a wonderful volunteer-assembled walking/biking trail that extends from the southeast to the northwest corners of San Francisco. They recently just celebrated the 5-year anniversary of the trail and added a “Double Cross Trail” to complete the X from the southwest to northeast corners of the city. It took us and the…
The Crosstown Trail is a wonderful volunteer-assembled walking/biking trail that extends from the southeast to the northwest corners of San Francisco. They recently just celebrated the 5-year anniversary of the trail and added a “Double Cross Trail” to complete the X from the southwest to northeast corners of the city. We had been talking about…
For Alex’s birthday, I booked us a surprise staycation, complete with a blindfolded car ride to see if he could still figure out where we were going. Well, spoiler alert: he is very good at this game and could indeed figure out where we were. However, being blindfolded on Hwy 1 is a prime method…
One of Alex’s many strengths in life is planning ahead and snagging much-sought-after reservations. Back in the fall, he already planned for this spring camping trip to Pinnacles National Park, reserving a campsite as soon as it became available. Pinnacles is only an hour from San Jose, and yet it’s pretty underappreciated as far as…
Happy 100th Birthday to this wonderful great-grandma! What an honor to photograph four generations of the Kong family in this fun little redwood grove session. Grandmother and grandson. A special bond. One hundred years old, and still so spry! Love. This popped bubble scene was so perfectly lit, it almost looks ai generated, but…