There’s this weird phenomenon that happens when you become an adult, where suddenly you just don’t get professional portraits done anymore (except for the odd LinkedIn photo but we don’t count those.) Even as a photographer I can look back on every year of my life before highschool and then suddenly - BAM - I graduate and who knows what the heck happened to me between highschool and now?
I get it, getting portraits done is kind of a weird thing. Even as someone who literally takes photos of people as a job, it’s strange for me to actively want to be in front of a camera, unless I’m with another family member or significant other, and these are all things that Thao and I had talked about during our sessions together. At the time, I was still working mainly as a Wilderness guide in the Sierras, but she reached out to me at a great time when I wasn’t running a trip, and was available to come out and do a portrait session in the Marin headlands. She specifically asked for some “moody” shots so we got out to the headlands for sunrise and crossed out fingers we’d get some fog. We had a lot of fun together and she admitted that she’d love to do another session somewhere in Yosemite for a sunset session, which I was sooooo excited about. I wanted to group these two different sessions together just to show off HOW AWESOME adventure portraits could be, and how a location and time of day can seriously dictate the mood of your photos.