Malibu Engagement Photography | Kristel & Linden

Starting Engagement Photos at El Matador State Beach

Kristel and Linden chose El Matador State Beach for their Malibu engagement photography session location. It’s a beautiful beach (though often crowded) for engagement photos, with towering rock cliffs. We started with some fun photos on the top of a big rock.

Taking a Stroll along the Beach

We then had our beautiful couple take a stroll down the scenic beachfront for some El Matador State Beach engagement photos.

Some couples are cool with getting wet during an engagement photo session at the beach, but just let us know. We are notorious for getting our couples wet during a session to get some fun and awesome photos.

After Sunset Malibu Engagement Photography

The sunset often doesn’t line up with El Matador State Beach, so we like to stay a little longer after the sunset to get engagement photos taken in darker lighting. It lets us do things like this next image, where we “drag” the shutter to let the water turn into thin wisps.

This is where is becomes important having a wedding and engagement photographer that can deal with many different lighting situations. We’ve seen many photographers not come ready or equipped for lighting a shoot.

Our Take on Malibu Engagement Photos

There are a selection of beaches to choose in the Malibu region for engagement photography, but it comes with some caveats. Malibu beaches are often used for movie productions, and are notorious for having residents that don’t like any outsiders using their beaches. Permits are required for any photography, but is only randomly enforced. It’s important to have an engagement photographer that understands the limitations of a location and keeps their clients informed (since permits fees can vary by hundreds of dollars). Here is another engagement photo that we took at El Matador State Beach.

Here is their wedding photography at a large mansion in South Orange County, where you can also see at the end where we lit them beautifully at a pool during the blue hour (after sunset).