Working with a relative stranger to capture your relationship and your intimacy can take a bit of getting used to for a lot of people and having a certain level of comfort is crucial if you want to achieve a relaxed and comfortable feeling in your images. This is one of the reasons I suggest having an engagement session in the lead up to your wedding, with your photographer. But if you're like Fanny & Markus and you are close friends with a talented photographer - in this case AIMI DUONG - then you've really lucked out as you can see in these gorgeous - and very relaxed and natural - images.

Aimi tells us about their friendship, "Fanny & Markus are some of my dearest friends, in fact - I'll have the honour of officiating their wedding next summer because I was the lucky one who got to play matchmaker with these two. Fanny is a San Francisco Native who visited me a few years back when I was studying abroad in Bangkok, Thailand & Markus, a Swiss German was a classmate and neighbour of mine during my time there in Asia. When Fanny paid me a visit that was meant to be a brief couple weeks - that turned into a couple months after meeting Markus. They were googly eyed for each other at first glance but Fanny had no intentions of dating at that time since she took a break to travel extensively for about a year. So, Markus offered to be her travel companion - strictly platonic; which quickly turned into one of the sweetest love stories I know of. Together they traveled through a lot of Asia for a few months and their first dates included long bus rides through Burma, camping alongside the great wall of china and island hopping in the Philippines. Fast forward 6 years later and two years of being long distance after each of them went home to work and finish their studies; they now reside in Switzerland and will be getting married here in California next year with some of their dearest friends. For their Engagement session, I suggested BIG SUR because... well, it's absolutely beautiful but also because these two love the great outdoors so during their recent visit we spent the day along the Big Sur River and in the redwoods for their Engagement session."