Got to take my sweet friends Jordan and Sawyer's engagement photos at the Belle Ridge "Spacious skies campground" in Cookeville, TN. I will also be capturing J & S's wedding day this upcoming August. Their engagement session was so creatively freeing for me. Because I was able to have the space to create and test out some fun poses/prompts I really wanted to try.
Their session is actually what inspired me to extend my engagement sessions with my couples to 90 minutes instead of just the standard 60 minutes. The more time I get to have with my couples, the more time there is to establish the trust that goes into getting photos done, and the more creative we get to be!
Spacious Skies Campground in Cookeville TN, has an assortment of different beautiful locations to get photographs at. We started the session at the gazebo overlooking Monterey/ Belle Ridge mountains. We started shooting here about 60 minutes before sundown to ensure we would get that golden hour peaking through the mountain ridges.
The day we did their engagement session it had just snowed the night before, leaving some patches of snow behind and a chilly breeze. It was the beginning of November in the mountains... needless to say we were freezing! But that didn't stop us from getting more pictures. They quickly changed into sweaters and jeans and toughed it out.
I prompted Jordan and Sawyer to listen to music with headphones, pretend I wasn't there, like they were just enjoying each others presence and laying in the crunchy leaves.
I wanted to get some storytelling shots of them writing love letters to each other and then making paper airplanes out of them (no there was no littering involved) I'm thoroughly obsessed with the way these came out.
What makes my job so much fun is getting to tell a story behind my camera. I wanted these to feel authentic and as natural as possible, and it's safe to say that we accomplished that as a team. If you're looking for a diverse, beautiful, mountain location for your engagement session. I would definitely check out The Belle Ridge// Spacious Skies campground.
