Personal: Wedding Photographer Goes to Arizona/Utah
Early last November I had the opportunity to fly down to Arizona to do some family photos for the Fischers. To say it was awesome would be an understatement. Not only was it so great to see them, but catching up with them and talking with them was another huge highlight of my trip. That said, before that photo shoot ever took place my incredible wife Crystal and I flew down a couple days early to explore the area a little more. These photos are part of what I got from that adventure.
My hope here is to share photos with you based on the day, and give you a little intro to each day so you can have some context to what you’re seeing. While I photograph many weddings, families and engagements, this is also something I absolutely love doing. Being out in nature, seeing the incredible things that God has made, stepping in awe at his creation and taking on the challenge of capturing even a glimpse of it all is something I truly enjoy. So in these photos you’ll see a mix of pure landscape photos, landscape photos with my wife or I in them, and some more portrait stuff of our adventures.
So the first day - we flew down to Phoenix on Thursday evening and immediately drove north to the Grand Canyon. This was an ok original plan, but with our plane landing about 3 hours late, we had multiple problems. One was that it was going to be around 1am when we arrived at the Grand Canyon, two was it had just snowed and we were planning on tenting in the 20 degree weather, and four was that while we brought a Jet Boil and everything we needed to eat on the go, we didn’t have fuel yet. Needless to say, Crystal wasn’t super excited about camping in our tent in that kind of weather, but we did it, and while getting into our sleeping bags was quite cold, the 4 hours of sleep we got that night were great.
Why four hours of sleep? Because we wanted to wake up early to get to the canyon for sunrise. This meant waking back up in the 16 to 20 degree weather and finding the best place to photograph one of the most iconic places on earth. While I didn’t have a lot of time, i’m very happy with the locations we found. And I love the pre-sunrise light that we got as it gave us a very soft but directional light across the canyon.
I would love to say that after sunrise we were able to head back to our camp and sleep, but we couldn’t, as we were going to Antelope Canyon later that day, and the only way you can do that is through a guided tour. So after watching sunrise, we drove north to Page Arizona where we got to see one of the Antelope Canyons, which are incredible and enchanting. After that tour we drove about 20 minutes the wrong direction to see the iconic horseshoe bend - both Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe are on Native American Land, and are not part of any national park. So unfortunately we had to pay to enter those. After Horse Shoe Bend we traveled north, only stopping to take some sunset pictures as we headed to Zion National Park - which many consider one of the most beautiful national parks in the world. I’ll pick up the story when we get there.
That night we would arrive at Zion National Park late at night (again) and set up camp. We got really lucky with our camp sites (all of them in the National Parks) but we also got super lucky because we won’t he Angel’s Landing day-before lottery. This meant that we had two passes to do the famous (infamous?) hike in Zion, also considered one of the most dangerous hikes in the world. In addition to that, we got lucky enough that we got the morning ticket, meaning we would have great light for the full hike. So for our one full day in Zion we hiked Angels Landing in the morning, then went to rent pants and water shoes for the Narrows and hiked about 4 miles out on that hike as well, making for almost 16 miles of hiking that day. By the time we got back, we had just enough time to get me to the spot I wanted for sunset photos in the park. After which we had to break camp and then go setup our tent in another spot - which was not awesome. Angels Landing is probably my favorite hike of all time, at the moment.
On our final day, we woke up before sunrise again to head to another hike on our way out of Zion. We got to see the sun it the rocks yet again and take in the view with a steaming hot cup of tea. It was a super cold morning, but it was worth it. After taking pictures of sunrise, we drove about 3 hours out of our way to go to Monument Valley, which I figured would never be “on the way” so it was kind of a spot I really wanted to see. Crystal was a little* underwhelmed by the whole thing. That said, i’m pumped by the photos we got, even though it was in the middle of the day. From there we drove south, going through Sedona Arizona to take some quick sunset photos of the incredible landscape there and get some food before getting to our hotel in Phoenix that night. And thus ends our trip, but I sure hope you love the photos! I know I loved every minute of the adventure.
