Engagement sessions have gotten this reputation of being staged, posed, maybe even kind of awkward. But they don’t have to be! Enter the adventure session. Adventure sessions allow you to incorporate the beauty of an epic location and activities that feel like the two of you with the more traditional couples portraits. You can hike, snowboard, drink whiskey- whatever it is that makes you go “this is us”. This also helps you feel less nervous and intimidated going into the session! Lili and Rylan really wanted to make sure who they are as a couple shone through so they included hiking, bare feet, and water in their session because those were all things that meant a lot to them.

I was traveling to Sedona because I had always wanted to take a solo trip, just me and the dogs. Sedona looked incredible and was within driving distance. Lili had seen a post I made on social media about traveling to the area and reached out about engagement photos. The first message Lili ever sent me left a huge smile on my face. She told me that she and her fiance had been going to skip engagement photos entirely because they hadn’t been able to find anyone’s work they connected with. We talked about their love of mountain biking, water, the moon and stars, and the famous Sedona energy vortexes.

When we met up on the day of Lili kept mentioning how nervous they were and that they were going to be awkward (spoiler alert: they were not awkward at all). When we reached our first location and got set up, I asked Lili and Rylan just to face each other and hold hands. I let my cameras hang and I asked them to just be with each other for a second, focus on the emotions they had the first day they got engaged, listen to the sound of the water rushing nearby. There is no reason to jump into an engagement session and immediately stick a camera in a couple’s face; of course that would be intimidating and awkward! By taking less than 2 minutes at the beginning of the session to refocus on why they were there, Lili and Rylan were able to get rid of some of those nerves and just have fun being together. They chose to do 3 different outfits which was so fun! We ended their session with some super romantic blue hour photos including lanterns and fairy lights.