St. George Couples Photos | Joara + Michael

I love these couples photos of my newlywed friends near St. George, Utah!

Michael and Joara got married in a tiny ceremony (#covid) in July and have since stayed in awesome places around the US. They lived in a treehouse in South Carolina for a month, then went to Palm Springs and Utah with other short trips sprinkled in between. In Utah, they stayed in an awesome Airbnb in Apple Valley (which apparently is a somewhat new town) about 45 minutes from St. George and Zion National Park. 

These two are some of our besties, so I had to make them my guinea pigs for to test out new posing prompts and other various things I’ve been wanting to try.

I don’t know if it’s my style guide or if everyone I ever photograph is just super stylish and good at coordinating outfits (pretty sure it’s the latter, although I like to think my guide is super helpful), but I LOVE this combination of clothes. It jives with the environment around them but doesn’t make them blend in too much.

I brought my 35mm film camera along! The next set of photos (1 collage) was shot on Kodak Portra 400.

┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ parties are fun to photograph! My laptop keyboard autocorrects the word “d a n c e” and it takes shorter for me to spell it out than to try to fix it. You’re welcome.

So a little not-so-secret—I rarely shoot above a 2.0 aperture, but I had been wanting to get this starburst shot. So this may be my first non-family/bridal-party photo shot above 2.0 in a very long time :). Also I love the photo next to it. I love these two so much!!

I think twilight is my new favorite time to photograph people. The cotton candy skies!!

The next day, we went to Fort Zion! It’s a cute little trading post that we realized was also a petting zoo/farm thingy. We wore masks the whole time but when we were far enough from others, I had them unmask for a second! The llamas got wild.

Afterward, we rode e-bikes through Zion! I highly recommend doing this—we rode through the park to the entrance of the Narrows hike. For almost the whole time, we were on service roads/roads closed to the public, so it wasn’t scary. I hadn’t ridden a bike since college, so that was fun! Also, the bike rental company provided helmets, which we also wore the whole time except for one picture below. Thinking back to college, I can’t believe I didn’t wear a helmet every single time I got on my bike… past me was risky.

The next two collages are film!

This double exposure is like a movie poster!?

I would definitely bike through Zion again! One day Austin and I will go back and do the Narrows hike, and maybe if I’m brave enough, Angel’s Landing.

On the way back to Michael and Joara’s Airbnb, we stopped off at the side of the road—twilight!!! The weather was so perfect in mid-November!

One of my goals for 2020 was to try astrophotography. I can now check that off my list! None of these are perfect, but I’m excited to have gotten the chance to try it out. I had watched videos and read several articles before doing this, and Utah ended up being a great dark place to try. Thanks M & J for standing in the freezing darkness to help me learn!!! I tried both with and without artificial light on their faces just to see what it would look like.

You two are the best and the CUTEST COUPLE!!! I’m so happy we got to see each other!!! I can’t wait to see you again!! This was another meetup in 2020 that gave me life. Definitely a highlight of the year to see friends <3!

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