Best of 2017 // Adventure Sessions // Western US Adventure Wedding + Elopement Photographer // Engagements, Anniversaries, couples in love!

We absolutely love doing this annual round-up! It's so fun to go back through the year, pick out some of our best work, and put together all the random stats. This year, we decided to do three installments: Weddings + Elopements, Adventure Sessions, and Our Personal Adventures. This is the second one! See our Best of 2017 Weddings + Elopements Round-Up Here. Our 2016 Round Ups can be found here: 2016 Weddings, Sessions, Couples in Love and 2016 In Review (Personal Adventures)

» AT A GLANCE

20 Weddings // 16 Elopements // 51 Adventure Sessions

» ON THE JOB

9 States // 7 National Parks // 5 State Parks

» ADVENTURE SESSIONS AS SEEN ON

Junebug Weddings (X2) // Outside magazine // Rangefinder mag // Lookslikefilm (X2) (X3)

» ADVENTURE SESSION AWARDS (AS DETERMINED BY US)

Best Weather: 40+ mph winds in the Utah desert // Most Memorable: Married 36 Years // Best Surprise: Mid-Session Proposal // Most Playful: Vanlife in Yosemite // Most Refreshing: Lake Powell Adventure // Best New Friends: Bri + Keith + the dogs // Most Epic and Scary: Acro Yoga on a Cliff // Coldest Session: Snow on Lake Tahoe // Coolest Setting: Antelope Canyon // MVP Dog: Jack

When I was adding up numbers for our year-in-review blog posts (here's our weddings + elopements one if you missed it), everything seemed pretty normal until I added up the amount of adventure sessions we shot. 51. FIFTY ONE. No wonder we're so tired!!! Goodness gracious, it was an amazing year. We have adventured with so many amazing couples, made so many silly jokes, cracked beers, and danced in the wilderness so many times! I am so thankful for every engagement session, anniversary session, or just-because session that we got to do. Taking photos of couples in love - especially in the places they love - will never get old. From the Utah desert to the rainforests of Washington and everywhere in between, we had a blast with every person that stepped in front of our cameras.

When we first hit the road, we were really focused on booking weddings knowing that adventure sessions would come naturally. For most photographers, a majority of their sessions are engagements with their upcoming wedding couples or the occasional anniversary with a past couple. It's actually pretty different for us! While we do get the privilege of doing engagements for some of our wedding couples, we actually end up doing a lot of destination engagement sessions for couples that have or will have a different wedding photographer. The thing is, not every couple wants to or can elope somewhere crazy epic and forgo all the big wedding festivities, so a lot of our session couples are people having a more traditional wedding back home, but traveling out to the wilderness for an adventure session with us before hand!

If you're engaged and like the look of our photos and the adventure behind what we do, but you know you want a bigger wedding that includes most of your community, doing a destination engagement session with us is a great option! You'll be able to be your full selves, and get engagement photos that really showcase your personality, without having to give up the traditional wedding day you might want. Another rad option that a few of our couples have done is booking a post-wedding adventure session. If you're road tripping through the western US (or anywhere else in the world -- we have our passports ready!) for your honeymoon and want to do some epic wedding portraits together, pack your wedding clothes and we can go on an adventure!

All that being said, we still have a lot of our wedding couples that choose to do an adventure session separate from their wedding day. Doing an engagement session with us before your wedding or elopement day is a great way to get comfortable with us, get to know how we work, and for us to get to know how you two interact. Wedding days are almost always more relaxed and easy-going when our couple has already done a photo session with us! We've also had a few couples choose to do a day-after session when they know their wedding day might have a packed timeline or a lot of guests, which means less time for portraits. For example, Jena + Kyler got married in one of the most gorgeous settings ever but still decided to do a day-after session at Mount Rainier National Park with us because they wanted epic wedding photos on the mountain. Knowing we had a session the next day meant we could stress less about wedding-day portraits with them and even though we still did quite a few, they got a lot of time with their guests and never felt like they were missing out on the party!

We absolutely love adventure sessions and hope 2018 will be filled with more of the same goodness we had in 2017! If you're considering an adventure session, let's get in touch and make something awesome happen. We give 2 hours for each session, which allows for a lot of fun, exploring, and of course, a lot of really amazing photos!

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The Hearnes Adventure Photography is run by Abbi and Callen Hearne, a husband & wife wedding photography team with an emphasis on adventure. They live on the road as full-time nomads in their big white van, allowing them to serve a large portion of the western US including California, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. They believe love is the greatest adventure and strive to create photos that are epic, romantic, true, and timeless.

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