Have I mentioned that I love traveling for sessions? Well, I do and I’ll keep saying how much I love it. 🙂 I think it was about two to three years ago that I made it a goal of mine to travel for sessions more. Nothing specific, I mean I didn’t care if it was to 1.5 hours to St. Louis or a 24 hour flight to New Zealand. Having the opportunity to travel for photography is pretty awesome because it allows us to see so much more of what’s out there. Plus, if I have the ability to go out and see new places, why wouldn’t I do this? I’ve said from day one that I never want to get in a rut of doing the same pose, same location, same lighting, same everything because that’s the quick way to becoming a dinosaur. I love having new situations constantly challenging me to do better. So when I talked with Kenzie and Kaleb about their engagement session, they wanted to have it in St. Louis. Typically this means downtown; the arch, cardinal’s stadium, etc. I was prepared for this and had some ideas lined out. However, we were going to start at a park about 30 minutes from downtown. Cool enough with me, I do love getting some vegetation in the pictures whenever possible.
I had no idea the type of park I was coming to though, this was so much better than I could have ever expected. We make our way down a path and behold, not just a single old barn, but rather a community of old buildings; houses, barns, sheds, old roads and fences. Seriously, it was an outdoor photography studio provided by the city of St. Louis! This place was absolutely amazing. Like I said when you think of St. Louis engagement pictures, you picture a lot of architecture, not the rustic/farm vibe. After a few locations at this park and about 30 minutes we all agreed that there really wasn’t a need to go downtown St. Louis. We had everything we could ever desire in this little park. Not just barns and old houses, we had trees, paths and fields of grass. Now, I realize upon reading this blog, you may be thinking that this sounds like what we have locally, and this is true. We do have barns, fields, old houses, paths, etc locally, but how many locations have all of these options? And how many locations would allow anyone to photograph there? This was absolutely perfect!
Kenzie and Kaleb were such a thrill to work with. Watching these two through my lens was a joy as I could tell that this is a couple that loves to laugh together and have fun. It was the overall vibe of the session and it definitely excites me as a photographer for when their wedding day comes because I know if it’s anything close to what the engagement session was like, it’ll be a pretty fun day for sure!
