Arizona Bride & Groom + a little rant.

An ode to Arizona. As some of you know, I grew up in Michigan surrounded by water and cornfields, and you can’t forget the quite literal billions of mosquitoes along with the muggy humid summer air. The desert has always been so interesting to me and it’s probably because it’s about as opposite from Michigan as you could get. This past month I got to travel to Mesa, Arizona to photograph a few beautiful bridal sessions and omg when I tell you I was dreaming about that weekend for a solid 2 weeks after, I’m not joking. Arizona might just have my heart.

The photos above were taken just outside of the Lost Dutchman state park; not to be confused with the Flying Dutchman like I kept calling it lol I even tried to GPS “Flying Dutchman state park” and google was like ummm….what? IYKYK. To be fair this was an early wakeup call, we started the session at sunrise so 6am-ish and that was way too early for my brain to even think about anything other than coffee.

Why start a session at 6am you ask? Well…people. Simply it’s all just an effort to avoid the crowds, and it worked! Not many people just wake up before the sun and think hmmm maybe I’ll go wander around the desert this morning and see what’s going on. Okay maybe a few people but whatever. We ended up getting some really pretty photos and these really cool sun flairs in some of them. I’m obsessed!

I found a really great florist on Instagram ( this is how us millennials make friends) and reached out to see if she would be up for designing some cool floral pieces for us to shoot with and she said yes! Like just look at how much talent is shown in these floral arrangements! I could never.

Sooo yep, it’s safe to say I will be saving my pennies for the rest of my working life so I can retire in my 50s (dream big, I know) then the plan is to GTFO of Utah and buy a cute little desert home in AZ surrounded by saguaro cactus and maybe a few small farm animals if I can convince my husband that we NEED them.

Follow me on Insta if you wanna see more of my work and watch my travel stories in almost real time. instagram.com/shannonferrellphotography