As I have said I like to keep my blog very wedding-centric, but this needs to be posted. The first week & a half of June, my friend Owen and I took a trip to the Southwest. We started in Vegas, rented a convertible, and drove. 700 miles in 9 days. First stop was the Grand Canyon, followed by Page, Arizona, then to Zion National Park and then back to Vegas. The trip was seriously unbelievable. We hiked something like 40 miles, camped out, risked our lives for insane views more than once, and took a ton of photos. I'm going to go into more detail further down the post about specific locations, if you feel like skipping those parts and just looking at photos, feel free. So, here are some of my favorite photos, and believe me, there are a TON more. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make a coffee table book from these. So, folks, do yourself a favor, take a week or two, grab a friend & take a road trip.
As I said, first stop was the Grand Canyon, as well as some photos along the way. One of those things you just have to see at least once in your life.
From there We drove a couple hours to Page Arizona, and the Lake Powell area. A couple things I needed to see were the slot Canyons in Page, and Horseshoe Bend just outside of town.
I wanted to include the following behind the scenes photo. This is where I had my tripod set up. You see it's only a few inches from the edge, just over that edge is 1000 ft straight down. One of the scariest photos I have ever taken... well it was, till I got to Zion
Next we drove a few more hours to Zion National Park, which is the most impressive place I have ever been in my life. I could see myself making a yearly pilgrimage to there... it's that amazing. The photos do not do it justice.
The following set is from when we hiked to a place called Angel's Landing. It's that peak at the left of the photo. It is considered one of the 7 craziest hikes on the planet. 6 people have died attempting this hike in the last 10 years. There are parts where the trail is only a few feet wide and it's a 1480 ft drop straight down on either side (that's higher than the Empire State Building for reference) . And there are no fences. There are some chains you can hold onto, but they are on the non-certain death side of the trail. I included a couple iphone photos from this hike, because I was not going to stop to take my camera out of my backpack at those spots.
This is the view from the top. Totally worth it.
I'm not much for "selfies" but I thought this spot deserved one
Here's one of the iphone photos on our way down. Gives you an idea of what the trail was like
And I couldn't resist a victory photo at the end next to the warning sign.
After Angel's Landing, we had to go check out a place called The Narrows. You basically just hike through the Virgin River between the canyon walls. A good portion of this hike you are hiking thigh deep IN the river.
So that was Zion, hopefully I can make it back soon. On the way back to Vegas, we stopped at Valley of Fire state park. we didn't spend much time there because it was 107 degrees and we were tired.
So that was the trip. Again, I highly recommend you get out and do something like this too. Hope you enjoyed. Back to weddings for the next post.
Ever have one of those days where the planets seem to align and everything just seems to work out perfectly? Well that was Tim & Keri-Ann's wedding. Right down to the light that we had during portraits after their reception. The only hiccup was when I took 5 minutes too long taking photos before the ceremony and the venue sent park rangers to go look for us (we were right where I said we'd be and took exactly as long as I said we would) I drove away from this wedding with a huge smile on my face.
There isn't much I can say about Alex & John's wedding that isn't completely obvious in their photos, so I'll keep it short and to the point. Amazing people, amazing locations, amazing wedding. That's all you need to know.
I've said it before, and I will say it again, my clients totally have a knack for picking out amazing wedding locations. Kaitlyn & Anand upped the ante by getting married at the Eric Carle Museum in Amhurst, MA. You're definitely familiar with Eric Carle, he wrote and illustrated "The Hungry Caterpillar", but I digress. Luckily for me, their wedding lived up to their venue, a gathering of people from literally all over the world came together to celebrate with them. Weddings like this make my job very easy, and also a ton of fun.
