My good friend Tim was supposed to move to Paris last spring. Instead, he ended up in Israel, falling in love with Erin. Now they’re engaged, and planning a very informal wedding in the mountains. Isn’t life a funny old thing?

Tim and Erin spent some time in Santa Cruz recently, and while they were here, I took some engagement pictures of them at the beach. My sister Joye was there to direct and wield colorful translucent scarves. And yes, Tim and Erin were wearing their birthday suits for part of the shoot. Let it be known: if you want nude engagement photos, we are totally willing to help you out with that. We know the perfect beach for it, too.

Here are a few I really liked.

The Red Bats did an engagement shoot several weeks ago with Kimma and Keith at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz. Since I’m a total cheeseball, I get very excited about engagement shoots, and this one was especially sweet and loving. Kimma and Keith have been together for eight years. Before the shoot, they told us about some of the hard times they’ve faced together, and how they’ve become closer than ever because they are so committed to making the relationship work. They’ve got chemistry AND compatibility. It was inspiring just to be around them.

We tried to capture some of their love story in photos, which turned out to be quite easy with these two. Every gesture shows how devoted they are to each other, and how much they simply enjoy one another’s company.

We’ll be photographing their wedding next August, and that day will be filled with friends and family, so I’m happy that we got to capture a more private side of their relationship before then. And also happy to have gotten them to ourselves for a few hours, because these two are really, really fun.

Thanks, Kimma and Keith! We hope your engagement year is blissful. You deserve it.

We’re happy to announce that our next wedding will take place at Green Oaks Creek Farm somewhere off in the boonies off of Highway One. By “boonies”, I mean that dirt roads are involved. This is a change of venue from the first location, which involved goats, but we can always imagine the goats. Imaginary goats make everything better. In fact, they’re probably better than real goats, now that I think about it.

Anyway, we’re really looking forward to this collaboration…Sara and Matt are really fun and laid back, and this is going to be a nicely non-traditional wedding.

We can’t wait!

(And neither can the goats).