Red Mountain Couple Photos | Caity & Kevin

Another day, another moment in awe of the desert and its unique beauty—

I’m convinced there’s just nothing like Arizona, and I fall in love with this state more and more each day. How grateful am I to have discovered this beautiful location in Phoenix’s East Valley that features just about everything this little corner of the desert is known for— red rocks, cacti, brush, and very, very golden sunsets. I knew it would be perfect for those quintessential desert couple photos with the iconic Red Mountain as the backdrop.

I love this location because we have the opportunity to choose our foreground, too! This open backroad, which seems to align perfectly with Red Mountain (also known as Mount McDowell), and the setting sun, creates a beautiful symmetry, and sets the vibe for a couple session with lots of movement and fun. Off this backroad are trails (real, legal trails where we’ll be able to explore the adjacent Tonto National Forest land while leaving no trace!) that weave through cacti and desert brush for a more natural looking desert setting as well! I was so excited to photograph a couple here upon discovering it, and, fortunately, open road couple photos were exactly what Caity and Kevin were envisioning.

We set off for Red Mountain on a beautiful afternoon and reached our spot just in time for golden hour to begin. Caity and Kevin trusted us fully with their photos (they’ve been photographed so many times during their relationship and marriage!!), and let us try out some different artistic approaches we don’t always take when we work with new couples.

If you’ve been following along with our work for a while, you are well aware we have an affinity for open backroads as photo locations. There is just something about the symmetry 🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼 an open road provides for all kinds of cool perspectives to ~ spice up ~ a typical couple session! This backroad is the best, because it is perfectly aligned with Red Mountain, and so we played around with a lot of different types of gear to capture Caity and Kevin’s marriage in its current era 🤩.

We’re so lucky Tonto NF allows photographers to fly drones, and we were very excited to throw ours up to capture the road, the terrain, and of course, our wildly in love couple! I am in such awe of what we were able to capture— some of these wider angles just feel like art pieces, with Caity and Kevin as the focal point. We also pulled out some funky lens filters to soften the sunlight illuminating everything, and I love the vintage looking colors we created during this part of the session! Every little filament of light is so golden here in Phoenix, and I love the way this light photographs.

We rounded out the session with our giant zoom lens, in an attempt to capture more compressed images, making Red Mountain look huge. I love the effect pulling out a longer lens has on photos, and I am in awe of the size of the mountain in the photos we took with our 70-200mm (you can find these at the end!). Because the lens is longer, higher shutter speeds still photograph with some ~ natural ~ motion blur, and by this point in the session, Caity and Kevin felt so comfortable in front of our camera, so we were running around in the road and capturing some fun photos too! I made an immediate note to work on more bicep curls during the week, so I can spend more time taking photos with this big ol lens on the weekends 💪🏼. This baby is thicccccccc.

And so, here is another couple session that makes me so grateful to get to photograph love here in Phoenix full time. I’m grateful for the friends we get to make through this career, and the places we get to go to capture these relationships! Please enjoy Caity and Kevin’s Red Mountain couple photos~

Hey y’all! We’re Katie & Joseph, a husband & wife team, and Phoenix wedding photographers.

We are big fans of documenting wedding days in an unposed, raw, genuine, and honest way that allows our couples to maximize their experience on their day while also receiving a gallery full of stunning images that communicate how it felt to be there.

Though we’re based in Phoenix, we’ll travel anywhere (like our second home of SLO!) for a good love story (and dance party). We invite you to follow the links below to learn more about us and our services, and to get in contact with us!

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