the hearnes best of 2025 » elopements, micro weddings, & adventure photography

weddings and elopementselopementsintimate weddingsclientsweddings
Written By Abbi Hearne

Best of 2025 // Elopements + Adventure Sessions // Utah & Alaska LOCAL Adventure Wedding Photographers

Looking at the list of links above, it’s truly wild for me to reflect on what has now been over a decade of this business. When I bought my first DSLR camera for $200 the week before moving into my college freshman dorm, I never could have imagined how much that choice would change my entire life. I’d always been interested in taking photos, always the friend with a camera at camps and sleepovers growing up, but I never believed I had what it took to really create a career from it. I remember modeling for a local photographer’s workshop my senior year (in exchange for free senior photos) and being amazed this woman’s real job was photography. In college, after I’d mastered my DLSR and 50mm lens by taking a million portraits of my dog Charlie, I’d jumped at the opportunity to intern as a photography assistant for a friend. I second shot multiple weddings with her throughout college and began to see sparks of a wild dream; what if I could turn this into my own career? It still felt so far off, like I was somehow late to an oversaturated market, like I didn’t have what it would take to build a real business out of this. But in my senior year of college, I booked a wedding through a referral from this friend, and I decided I’d go for it and give it one solid year of effort. If I couldn’t make photography work, I’d apply for a teaching job as originally planned (and greatly dreaded, when I learned through student teaching that it was absolutely not the career for me).

I don’t have to tell you everything for you to guess how that year of giving it a shot went, photographing that first wedding in June 2015 just two weeks after my college graduation. As the story goes, I recruited my new husband Callen to second shoot the wedding with me. A year later (2016), we’d taken multiple roadtrips out west and fallen in love with photographing landscapes and documenting our budding adventurous life creatively with photos and videos. A year after that (2017), we’d left everything we knew and hit the road full time, specializing in adventure photo sessions, intimate weddings, and elopements all over the western US. You can refer to the links above to catch up from there :)

Here we are, now solidly in 2026 (yea, I’m a few months behind reflecting on 2025) with an entire life we’ve built all because of that camera I bought with a significant chunk of my savings at the time. We live in Moab and Alaska, with a precious four year old daughter we adore, an adorable dog that was most definitely sent to us by our precious Charlie, and a business we’re infinitely proud of and still as excited about as we were in 2015.

Reflecting on 2025 feels intimidating, which is probably why I have delayed opening up this blog post to write. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the overwhelming feeling of dread, panic, and rage that has lurked this year as a US citizen, filling our newsfeeds with endless bad, jarring, horrifying news. I’ve cried countless tears witnessing injustice daily. I truly don’t want this blog post to send me, or you, into that spiral we all know too well, but I also can’t reflect on the year without mentioning this ever-present undercurrent.

As a family, we had a mostly beautiful and peaceful year. Our daughter is becoming more of her own person every day and it’s an absolute delight to witness. We’ve each found ourselves again within parenthood, most notably with Abbi (me!) taking up trail running and Callen becoming consistent in the climbing gym among other adventures with friends. We’re loving Moab and Alaska, finding a stride with the dual-life situation, and beginning to dream of more traveling again now that we’re out of the baby stage. We celebrated ten years of marriage at the end of 2024 and spoiled ourselves with a bucket list trip to Antarctica in early 2025. It was incredible and unfortunately, all it did was make us want to go back again and again!!

As a business, 2025 was an incredible year. Since having our daughter, we’ve been extremely intentional with our bookings with the goal of pouring loads of energy into each couple we work with, giving a high-quality experience to a handful of clients instead of spreading ourselves thin with lots of clients where our work could slip through the cracks. We’ve become passionate about building experiences, going well beyond photos, for each couple we work with. None of our elopements are copy-paste, they’re truly each unique with every detail planned with the clients’ specific story and desires in mind. We’ve loved narrowing our work into our local communities so we’re working with familiar vendors we know we can trust (and vice-versa) and so we can approach the day with utmost comfort and experience in the place. When we’re working somewhere we know as intimately as Utah or Alaska, we have an almost second-nature feeling to the experience which allows for more creativity, confidence, and photos that go well beyond just capturing the moment.

As always, this collection of photos is a labor of love, a selection of favorites from every couple we’ve worked with this year. It is an up-to-date portfolio, a reflection of our work this year and a manifestation of our goals for what to create in the coming year. I hope you’re able to take your time and really enjoy it!

From Instagram :: January 20, 2025

Antarctica!!! to celebrate ten years of marriage. Of course we had to go big 🥰🧊🐧

Words are escaping me…where do I even begin? This trip has been a long time coming; over a decade of keeping it on the highest shelf of my wildest dreams, years of scheming, months of planning “just in case” that all came down to one email a couple of weeks ago about a great deal & a trip booked 5 days before we departed. It was chaotic, expensive, and truly the most involved mission we’ve ever done (so many flights & 4+ days round trip of the Drake Passage in the worst conditions some of our crew had ever seen 😵‍💫), but it was the trip of a lifetime and something we’ll never ever forget.

I have so much more to share, I haven’t even begun to edit my “real camera” photos, but for now as we wait in airports & catch many flights back to our kids, I just wanted to let you all know that there’s an incredible continent down there that exceeded my high high expectations (coming from someone who *lives* part time in Alaska); the penguins are as adorable as you can imagine, the whales played around us for hours, the icebergs are bigger than my house, the mountains are genuinely impossible to fathom even when they’re right next to you, and the varied shades of white/grey/blue seemed to introduce an entirely new color scheme to my brain. I’ve never seen anything like it…in every way it felt like we went to another planet.

At the same time, the Drake Passage was so terrible, I’m not sure I’d ever go down there again 😅 I’m infinitely grateful for this trip and can’t believe we really did it. We went to Antarctica!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭 I love you @callenhearne, I love our life, and I love that I feel confident the next ten years will be even better than the last. It’s a high bar, but I know we’ll exceed it. We always do 🩵

From Instagram :: February 5, 2025

About 30 minutes from our house is the entrance to Arches National Park, home to the highest concentration of natural arches anywhere in the world. There is truly nowhere on earth that compares to Arches and nothing can prepare you for the feeling of standing underneath these massive, natural sculptures.

The park is a wonderland of narrow canyons, desert towers, sandy washes, and of course, sandstone arches! As locals, we know the best times to go into the park to avoid crowds, where to go for incredible photos (many just a short hike from the car - perfect for sunrise portraits), and quiet places to find solitude in this (understandably) popular area.

We absolutely love when we can incorporate a visit to Arches into our couples’ elopement day. Not only is it incredibly iconic to the Moab area, but this place truly sets the scene for a desert adventure, immediately making you feel small and showing off the best of this landscape. Plus, as photographers, we can’t help but be obsessed with all the natural frames! Perfect for #HearnesTinyCouples photos 🤍

From Instagram :: December 22, 2025

You can pretty much always catch me making a case for “bad weather” on elopement days. The majority of the time it makes for way more interesting photos and an incredibly memorable experience (in the best sense). Weather has a way of bringing your guard down and reminding you of the things that really matter. In the desert, rain can bring rare sights like flash waterfalls and saturated colors. Nearly all of my favorite sunsets have followed stormy days and most of my favorite photos were taken when the forecast felt a little shifty.

That being said there are weather scenarios we don’t compromise on, like lightning in exposed areas, extreme wind, relentless downpour, limited visibility for aviation, or flash flooding in certain places. One reason we don’t book elopements on back to back dates anymore is we want to stay flexible and available to change things last minute as needed. There have been time we’ve moved everything up a day to avoid storms, times we’ve rescheduled a heli flight for a week later when high winds canceled plans, and so on. We can’t control the weather, but you can trust us to give you the best experience no matter what Mother Nature has in store for you 💛

From Instagram :: September 13, 2025

“We don’t even need to see any photos, at this point the experience alone was completely worth everything.” - Robert & Elyse at the end of their elopement day 😭

This was the sweetest way to wrap up our elopement season here in Alaska, back at one of our favorite places on earth, showing these two just how cold icebergs really are when you touch them 🧊 and just how amazing the world really is when you have a helicopter at your service 🚁

We started their elopement days before, with a last-minute date change to avoid an incoming storm. Thankfully working with local vendors means everyone understands how touchy Alaskan weather is, so we moved everything a day earlier and were met with the most beautiful patchy sun & clouds, moody skies all day and not a drop of rain until the very end. After a sweet first look shared on the beach outside of their cabin, we headed to the airport to send Callen and the gear out, and then fly out to join him. I wish I could show you video & audio of the moment we crested the ridge, @marathonhelicopters cued up the perfect music on the headsets, and the icebergs came into view. Everyone was truly awestruck! Then, we landed and got to call @theiceberginn our base camp for the day, spending hours watching the icebergs, sharing their vows ceremony on the beach, enjoying delicious cake & champagne (chilled thanks to a little “cooler” I built on the shore with glacier ice), and of course, paddling among the blue giants. When our heli came to pick us up, we made one last stop on a ridge before returning back to earth and ending the day on the same black rock beach where we started, a full-circle moment reminding us everything has changed 💫

There is something so incredibly special about showing people these places and experiences we love so much. Watching them fall in love with this landscape in real time was a gift I’ll never forget. For some of us, this feeling gets into our bones and it never leaves.

Oh and yes, I squealed when I saw the drone photo of this heart shaped iceberg. We couldn’t see the shape from the water, so it felt like an extra special surprise!! 🩵 #HearnesTinyCouples

From Instagram :: April 2, 2025

It’s hard to remember a time when Alaska wasn’t part of our lives and our work.

When we drove to Alaska for the first time in 2018, we were really just seeking more adventure after feeling like we’d seen most of the west. My mom had spent a summer in Alaska in the 70s and her stack of film photos inspired me, and after visiting Patagonia earlier that year we had developed a deep love of glaciers & a dream of driving the Pan-Am Highway. I’d shared some blog posts about our upcoming trip and connected with a couple that was getting married in Denali that summer. By the time we were shooting their wedding, we’d made the drive and fallen completely in love with the Alaskan landscape, the endless summer day light, and the seemingly infinite adventure to be found in this state. I remember tears forming in the helicopter as we flew over the glacier, and I’ll never forget the experience of stepping onto the ice for the first time.

We felt so “at home” immediately but little did we know that over the next few years, we’d drive up to Alaska every summer and eventually have our own little cabin here. Now, flying in helicopters and trekking on glaciers is our usual work commute, but it hasn’t become any less awe-inspiring and invigorating.

This landscape is part of us now, but anytime I find videos from that first summer I’m reminded what it felt like when we first met Alaska, and how easily it was love at first sight 🧊🏔️

Have you been to Alaska yet? It has a way of sticking with you. I’ve still never heard anyone say they don’t need to go back, after experiencing it once ☺️🤍

2026 GOALS:

Over the years, we’ve noticed our goals are always quite similar, with the same “blanket terms” and a few small adjustments. I love to look back over them at the end of each year and see how we did, as well as consider how we can improve and do even better in the new year. I love reading through these at the end of each year and reflecting on how we did with our goals, and dreaming of ways we can work toward them in the coming year.

Bookings » 2025 felt amazing and I feel like I’m cheating on this goal with this timing, because 2026 is already in a really great place as far as bookings go. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, our goal these days is quality over quantity. We want a handful of bookings we can really pour our all into. In addition to elopements, I’ve begin a passion project with senior dog sessions and the demand is beyond what I can keep up with! Every time I’ve opened dates, they book nearly immediately. It’s been such a special, meaningful project and has also felt like a really beautiful balanced additional income that doesn’t require managing childcare or take the time and energy that a full elopement does. It’s been a great supplement as we’ve stepped back from the quantity of elopements we’d booked in years’ past.

Play More » Always our goal because not only does it feel like the purpose of life (not even exaggerating here) but it' also translates into the quality of our work! We create meaningful experiences for our couples often by having had these experiences ourselves. The places we recommend are almost always a personal adventure first. We feel comfortable in the world of aviation, kayaking, climbing, hiking, canyoneering, jeeping, boating, and so on because that is how we spend our free time.

Have A Positive Impact » This year more than ever, our focus has been on clear advocacy, standing up for the causes we feel most aligned with, and doing whatever we can to ensure our couples feel safe and supported. We are adamant about supporting safe spaces for our couples. We also care deeply for the land and are active supporters of non-profits that benefit the local and global wildernesses we rely on for our job, as well as the people who have dedicated their lives to steward this land. Lately, this means donating to organizations like Friends of Arches and Canyonlands, Access Fund, Outdoor Alliance, among others, as well as attending protests when possible and making our values clear on our platforms.

Be a Better Wife, Mom, Daughter, Friend, Human » Every year, this goal has been such a good check-point for me to look back and see what I’ve done well this year and what I could do better. I am really excited to say I truly believe this is my best year yet in this realm. With our current work-life balance, we’ve both been able to take time to focus on our daughter and really spend a lot of our days with her. We’ve also been able to make time for friends, and even friend trips. This coming year, I am hoping to prioritize more time for us to spend together (not counting work!) and to really enjoy each other again now that we’re not in the trenches of early parenthood.

Keep Growing, Learning, and Improving » My hope is that every year, I look through these photos in this blog post and feel proud of our growth. That every year, I feel our couples are even more cared for, and feel even more value from their experience with us. We absolutely love this job and are so thankful (and amazed) by this past year. Next year we will aim to work smarter and make our clients even happier than ever. I never want to think I know it all and I'll never stop growing and improving. One of my favorite pieces of advice I received when I was a skydiver was to learn something new with every single jump. I believe in applying that to all that I do, so in 2026 I hope to continue learning something new with every adventure session and wedding!

Lead Our Industry In A Positive Direction » I’ve realized this year how big of an impact we have on the photography industry. In the past few years, we’ve poured a lot into the industry in the realm of sustainability, caring for the places we’re shooting in, and giving back to the communities where we work. This year, I hope to maintain that influence, and I’m dreaming of adding another detail that I’ve felt passionate about lately. I want to show photographers that our work is better when our life is better — that working all the time is not the goal. Hustle culture is so damaging, and while I know working hard and often comes with launching any business, it doesn’t have to remain that way once you reach a sustainable income and create consistent, effective systems for yourself. I want to inspire people to play, adventure, and get after the life they desire.

Maintain The Right Priorities » This one sums up most of what I’ve said above. I’m no longer worried about being the “best,” having the most followers, or seeming like we’re at the top of the industry. I’m interested in living a beautiful life, working with couples that I connect to as people, and creating work that I’m proud of.

If you made it to the bottom of this, you're an angel. Please comment on this post so I can thank you!! There is no way we could do what we're doing without the support of our online community. Every follow, comment, like, share, and late night spent browsing the website means the world to us — it literally gets us to where we are now (what a time to be alive!). We are so appreciative of you ❤️

Abbi Hearne http://www.thehearnes.com
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