You can feel when a session’s about to go unreasonably well. Sophie texted, “We’ll just wander and see what happens,” and I grabbed my gear like it was a fire drill. Spontaneous, emotionally available people in love? My kryptonite.

Cut to a two hour drive, three playlists, and one latte later— me pulling up to a place that feels like coming home. Except it wasn’t the place. It was them. 

Sophie and Jake have that easy-to-love, instantly-at-home, this-is-exactly-where-we-were-meant-to-be kind of energy. Two people who couldn’t imagine building their forever anywhere other than her grandparents’ land. Who hear ‘storytelling engagement photos in Minnesota’ and immediately picture the wilds near her aunt’s lake cabin, where they grew up fishing and making up stories about the moon.

Sophie and Jake aren’t ‘photo’ people. They’re nostalgia people. Pass-it-down people. Farmland-and-family-roots people. My kind of people.

Sophie asked for storytelling vibes. As if I could give them anything else.

Light, Props, Nostalgia In Action

Fun fact: I’m always looking for props to play with. Even funner (let me live, okay?) fact: they’re almost never the ones you’re thinking of. I’m the photographer who thinks a good tree and a winding dirt road make for far more better props for storytelling engagement photos than champagne flutes ever will (beer cans and sparklers, on the other hand…). 

And listen— if you are matching-signs-and-a-blanket-type down to your cottage-core hearts, live your truth. As long as the light lets loose on you in such a way–and you feel even looser–I’m all in. 

Sophie and Jake? They’d turn a picnic table into a kissing booth, if you gave them half the chance. What can I say? Spotting a pocket of light giving full-send cinema out in the wild makes me generous. Seeing Sophie dancing on the table, lit up by sun rays and Jake’s gaze? Life-giving. Chef’s. Kiss. Period.

And just when I thought I’d died and entered nostalgia-lovers heaven, Jake pulls a giggling Sophie into him against a tree, and suddenly I’m chasing that faded-but-vibey old-film feel like it owes me rent. 

They didn’t need bells, whistles, or crystal flutes. The light had their back (literally), the winding paths led my eye, and that downed tree made my Minnesota engagement photography bucket list very happy. 

Put a couple on a downed tree? Check. Try not to geek out in front of said couple? Can’t win ‘em all. The fact that they were game for all of it? 10/10 would photograph again. 

(Sophie and Jake. Not just the tree).

When the Storytelling Engagement Photos’ Props Get a Mind of Their Own

Sometimes the props have a mind of their own. And let me tell you, me and boats have history. Sophie and Jake’s Minnesota storytelling engagement photos weren’t my first time lakeside love story, but they may be the first to have me consider changing my second name to Sparks. 

We’d already worked our way from that pocket of light, past the downed tree I still haven’t shut up about, through open green stretch that dared me to shoot wide and with feeling (what, like it’s hard?). And then there it was: bucket-list check number two. 

Sophie tried to manage my expectations (“It’s just an old hunting boat”), but I was already gone (“It’s ev-er-y-thing”). Give me sentimental over staged any day. Give me the worn wood and battered bow. Give me letting go of any expectations that the boat was going to cooperate the moment we set sail.

The wind picked up. The boat spun wild. Jake tried to pretend he wasn’t losing to the current every two seconds. (He was.) But he didn’t care because there was Sophie: half laughing, half sunbathing, playing with her hair like they weren’t mid-blooper reel. It was comedy and a vibe.  It was giving The Notebook minus the rainstorm and existential angst. A blink of real life that’ll still sting sweet fifty years from now.

This is where my signature movie mindset lives and breathes. Not from storyboards and set pieces that sit still. But movement. A little crooked. A lot cinematic. Completely heart-in-throat, love-done-right.

Minnesota Engagement Photos Straight Out of a Storybook? Hit The Home Turf and Let the Light Lead

We wrapped the storytelling engagement photos session at Sophie and Jake’s home—the farm once owned by her grandparents, now the set for the next scene they’re building together. If you ask me, choosing to shoot close to locations that mean the absolute most to your story is always the move.

I mean, how can it NOT be? 

The driveway you walk every day. Your pups running down the road, tongues out and tails wagging. Farmland honey-dipped in that end-of-day glow. It’s something near and dear to my heart—it’s home. You know, if home also included millions and millions of wild flowers grown by generations of her family with love, patience, and prayer.

If I could have imagined it possible, the wildflower would have been another check mark on the bucket list. Instead, they’ve become one of my favorite client requests to date: Sophie’s engagement ring in the blooms. Nature’s props were back on the table, and we didn’t stop there. Jake put wildflowers behind her ears. She spun them in her hands. Basically, everything but “stand here and smile”… just how I like it.

And the sunlight? It kept showing up like it had nowhere else to be. Skimming shoulders, sliding through petals. Reminding me why I’ve spent the better part of this year chasing the glow and letting it lead. Not that cloud cover can’t be cinematic (it absolutely can), it’s just… different. 

Think of every romantic movie scene you’ve ever loved: the sun flare right before the kiss. The flicker in the moodiest room of a slowburn romance (hands up if you’re still not over the Kate and Anthony library scene). Those little pockets of light that say, “This matters.”

That’s the stuff that turns storytelling engagement photos into cinematic art. And the sweetness in your story into the kind of album that makes people wish time machines were a real thing.

It’s funny—sometimes the story keeps writing itself long after everyone’s gone home. You think you’re finished, and then the light whispers, one more for the road. 

I was literally at the end of their driveway. A two-hour drive ahead of me. Sophie and Jake already cozied up inside. And the sky just. wouldn’t. quit. I’m not even kidding when I say it stopped me mid-drive, mid-thought, mid-freaking-everything.

There’s b-roll you work hard for. And then there’s embracing the spontaneity of a moment. Throwing the car in park, grabbing the camera, and taking the shot. Raw, romantic, and a reflection of two humans’ happily ever after. 

That’s the whole point, isn’t it?