West Hollywood Engagement Session | Rebecca & Devon

Rebecca and Devon live in West Hollywood, mere blocks from Candise and Griff, whose West Hollywood engagement session I photographed back in late 2010. Rebecca and Devon had booked us before our recent move down to San Diego and we had virtually met on Skype. Skype is definitely better than a phone call when it comes to connecting with people, so I knew we were going to get along well with these two. If there was any concern with our personalities meshing it was definitely put to rest when I texted Devon saying that we were “inbound mustang” as we reached Miramar on our northbound route from San Diego to meet them and he replied back- “you’re vector zero-nine-zero for bogey.” It takes special people to reach this level of Top Gun geekery pre-session. After lunch our plan was to head to the Hollywood Bowl, and then on to Griffith Observatory for the second part of the session. Since I had previously photographed part of a session in the Hollywood Bowl I knew there was a good chance we’d be able to get in and out with out raising any alarms with security guards. Knowing that Los Angeles can be a little tricky with all of the movie industry stuff I was prepared to get in and out of the Bowl fast. Ironically I was less concerned with the observatory having read their rules on photography and finding them to be geared towards commercial shoots (which I don’t consider engagements to fall under). When we arrived at the observatory we were shut down before we even got a shot in by an art and love hating security guard showed who told us to vacate the area. Never mind that family portrait session going on a few steps away from where we were… So with half of our planned locations compromised we were in a rush to find something awesome before we ran out of light. We stumbled upon the Hollyhock House, a nearby historical home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I’m not sure if there are any rules against photography outside the house in the park area, but we managed to avoid getting ejected out of that location. We ended up taking a few photos in the neighborhood where Rebecca and Devon live, but I think we may end up doing a part two session to make up for the time we lost with the observatory fiasco. Despite our mild run in with the pseudo-law, we did have a great time hanging out with these two and are looking forward to them visiting us in San Diego!

- Josh