courtney & dan | engagement | bay area photographer

This has to be one of my all time favorite engagement shoots…ever. Most people already know that I’m a huge horse lover, as I grew up vaulting on them, show jumping with them, sleeping in the stall beside them and lots of shoveling up after them, so this was an engagement shoot after my own heart. I immediately fell in love with this couple and this ranch and I honestly could have kept photographing them for days. We started out where Courtney and Dan first met, at a country bar called The Wrangler out in Elk Grove California. We then took the scenic roads that led to Perham Ranch where Dan keeps his other love, his horse ‘Whiskey girl’ and where he also proposed to Courtney. This property could not have been a more perfect backdrop for conveying Courtney and Dan’s shared love of the laid back ranch lifestyle, full of fun and horses and natural beauty in every direction. I’ve never had such a hard time editing down images, because these two looked so good, so relaxed and and so in love in every single shot, right down to the last American Gothic inspired shot of this excessively long blog post. Of course I am now even more crazy excited to photograph their wedding at the River Highlands Ranch late in the summer.