When I asked Dan and Hillary about location, they knew immediately that they wanted a forest engagement session! The other big thing they wanted was for their pup to be included in the frame. There are a ton of gorgeous open space preserves in the area, but a lot of them don’t allow dogs. I’ve done a couple sessions at Windy Hill now, and they do allow dogs, so we decided to go there! Their pup was so sweet and so calm, he just wanted to be near Dan and Hillary the entire time, so we actually had to tie him to a post just outside of the frame to get a few shots of just Dan and Hillary, haha!

Windy Hill made the perfect backdrop for their session, with all the gorgeous trees and the beautiful golden light filtering through the leaves. There’s a part of the forest in Windy Hill that is called the Lost Trail and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The trail is pretty much enclosed by the trees and it looks like it is straight out of a fairytale forest. It’s a bit of a hike from the parking lot, however, so we stuck closer by where it was still just beautiful.

Dan and Hillary have quite the story! They met in the Midwest, moved to Florida together for an amazing opportunity for Hillary to study turtles and then moved to the west coast and the Bay Area so that Dan could pursue a job in the tech center of the world. They love it here, but you can tell that they are rooted in the Midwest, where they are returning to have their wedding! It was such a pleasure meeting the two of them and their sweet pup for their beautiful forest engagement session.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like Jill and Shamil’s Windy Hill Engagement and Nick and Catherine’s Baker Beach Engagement with their dog Belle.

Contact me or email me at alice@aliceche.com to book your own forest engagement session!

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Alice Che is a San Francisco Wedding Photographer based in the Bay Area specializing in wedding, engagement, couple and boudoir photography. Serving the South Bay, Peninsula, and East Bay: San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Carlos, Burlingame, Los Altos, Milpitas, Union City, Fremont, Berkeley, El Cerrito and surrounding areas.