Desert Canyon, Mountain Lake, and a Rainstorm | Andrea + Deion's Oregon Engagement
Sometimes you photograph a couple and you just know. You know from the way they move together, from the way she laughs, from the way he looks at her, that you are going to be in their lives for a long time.
That is exactly how it felt with Andrea and Deion.
They chose Smith Rock State Park for their engagement session, and I drove out to Bend with them on a day that had other plans. The desert sky was doing something dramatic, clouds moving in over the red rock spires and the canyon dropping away behind them in shades of rust and sage. The storm made everything moodier and more cinematic than any clear-sky day could have. Andrea in her emerald dress against those towering rock walls, Deion pulling her close on a weathered fence rail with the Crooked River far below: those frames came together in a way that still feels like a small miracle.
On the drive back to Portland, I had an idea. We were passing through the Mount Hood corridor, and I asked if they wanted to make a stop at Trillium Lake. It was spontaneous and it was the right call.
The rain had been building all afternoon, and by the time we reached the lake it had fully arrived. We did not care. Andrea and Deion waded out into the water in the downpour and I followed them in with my camera. The image of the two of them standing on a submerged rock, kissing in the rain, the mist swallowing the treeline behind them, is one of my favorite photographs I have ever made. It is the kind of frame that only happens when you stop trying to control the conditions and let the day be what it is.
My Canon took the full force of that rainstorm. It did not work for the next two days. But it dried out, because Canons are stubborn like that, and I like to think it knew it had made something worth the sacrifice.
That engagement session was the beginning of a relationship I now count among the most meaningful of my career. Since that day at Smith Rock, I have been there for their wedding at Red Barn Villa, their first maternity session at Cooper Mountain, their family session in Clackamas County, and a second maternity session out in Napa Valley. We live in different states now. It does not matter. I will be there for their third, and I expect I will be there for whatever comes after that too. This is what I love most about this work. It is not just a session. It is the start of something.
