Sedona is a fantastic place for Senior Pictures!

My Grandmother started bringing me during summers to Sedona when I was a kid. The red rocks blew my mind back then and to me, it was the best play ground I'd ever seen. I just wanted to climb everything. Especially loved cooling off while sliding down Slick Rock in Oak Creek Canyon. But when I became a teenager, I spent my summers helping my Dad on the ranch/farm back in Texas. During my Junior and High School years, I trained horses, managed a small goat dairy (drank most of my profit, lol), team roped as a healer and hauled lots of hay. When it came time for my Senior pictures... all I got was a cheesy portrait sitting in front of a fake generic background. If I had gotten anything like the images below, I definitely would have kept them all my life with fond memory.

Bottom line... memories are important and pictures hold power within them. Capturing them is a blessing we have nowadays. My advice... don't ever take your special events for granted. Live in that very moment and enjoy it to the fullest. Then someday, your memories can inspire you to live and make even more!

Congratulations to all Seniors graduating this year. May God bless you as you pursue your dreams and may you keep Him first in all your endeavors.

Three Reasons To Hire A Local Photographer When You Travel

When we travel to a destination we don't know well, we always seek out a guide so we can make the best of our trip. Guides save us time and we enjoy our trip so much more. We have very limited time and we don't want to waste it going to spots all the other tourists are going to. We like to be away from everyone and see places hardly anyone knows about.

A good example is what has happened to Sedona. There's a famous natural bridge called "Devil's Bridge" that we used to be able to go to and be the only ones there. That was about 7 years ago. But now, you have to wait in a long line just to be able to walk out on it and you're continually surrounded by other tourists. Instagram has made Devil's Bridge extremely well known, so of course everyone wants to go to it when they visit Sedona. So us locals have learned to keep the best places secret and to ourselves so this doesn't keep happening to all our beautiful locations. And believe me... there's hundreds of places around Sedona that are far more beautiful than Devil's Bridge. Shhhh... so keep it a secret!

So that brings me to the first reason you should hire a local Photographer when you travel. A local photographer knows all the best and private places away from the tourists. So you have a guide and photographer all in one. This is especially important when traveling in the Great American West where there are so many majestic and beautiful locations. Some of them are very difficult to get to, so the Photographer sometimes can provide the way there. For instance, there are several places we go to take couples on dramatic shoots in beautiful locations... but they require a high clearance jeep to reach. So we provide that for the couple.

Now for the second reason you should hire a local Photographer when you travel. We see all the time people posting selfies on their Social Sites like Instagram. So many that they don't even catch our attention anymore. We just skim over them until we see an image that really captures our attention. Our eyes instantly can tell when there's actual creativity involved and an image has been taken Professionally. It means this person is serious about what they are doing and it instantly gets respect from their community. Besides, a Professional Photographer can tell you when your pose is not working and get you shots you never would have even imagined. These are the kind of shots that you treasure and get attention. And if you're going on a trip with your loved one... it communicates to them that you really value them and your time together. There's nothing more special than capturing your special memories together in a beautiful location such as Sedona.

The third reason you should hire a local Photographer is one of the most important. But you have to make sure they are a Professional Photographer and not just a Natural Light Photographer. Especially in a place as colorful as Sedona. When couple's and families travel to Sedona... they expect to see gorgeous desert sunsets and our famous Red Rocks. But it's difficult for a Natural Light Photographer to capture the beautiful colors of the landscape when they are limited to exposing for you in their camera. But a Professional Photographer is not limited whatsoever. They have professional outdoor lighting to overpower the sun so that they can expose to see you and the colorful landscape all at the same time. This is what cell phones and natural light photographers are not capable of. So no more washed out images of the sky or racoon eyes and harsh light on your faces. Our Sedona sunsets and Red Rocks are way too beautiful for you to go home to with only washed out images. You maybe able to take a picture with just the landscape alone. But the minute you add people into the picture with only a cell phone and no off camera professional lighting... then you have to make the choice whether to capture either the person or the landscape. You can't expose for both. A good example of what I'm describing is in the image below of a couple we took on one of our Adventure Elopements. So not only did they get a great picture they will always treasure... they got to have it taken by a professional in a majestic location they would have never been able to get to or find on their own. This couple had the time of their lives and didn't have any tourists at all to distract them from their special day.

How To Choose The Right Photographer In Sedona, Arizona

Couples come from all over the world to see and be captured in Sedona's amazing beauty. Sedona is most known for is its vivid colors. The problem is, most couples hire a photographer thinking they are going to be captured in Sedona's beautiful colors only to find out later, their images are all washed out. So it's very important to choose the right photographer when you plan your special trip to one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Natural Light Photographers can be great for capturing documentary or lifestyle pictures. But if you want to get colorful studio quality images even though it was taken outdoors... only a Professional Photographer that uses outdoor studio lighting can accomplish it. The lighting is very harsh here in Arizona. And when a Natural Light Photographer is taking a picture of you outdoors... they have to expose for you. If you're shooting against the sun, then your face is in the shadow. So bringing the exposure up in order to see your face totally washes out the beautiful colors of the mountains and sky surrounding you. If you're facing the sun... then the lighting is too harsh and you look like you have racoon eyes. So a Natural Light Photographer is very limited.

But a Professional Photographer has powerful off camera lighting (powerful enough to overpower the sun) to control the lighting on you even though you're in the bright outdoors. So the Professional is not limited by the harsh lighting. The Professional is easily able to use the powerful outdoor studio lighting to light you in soft light... making it look like you're in a studio, while capturing the beautiful colored landscape behind you.

We get couples quite often that have previously had their pictures taken by a Natural Light Photographer and were disappointed they didn't have the beautiful colors in their images Sedona is known for. That's why they seek us out and why we have been blessed with hundreds of happy clients and Reviews. We know how important it is when you are spending your hard earned money to travel to Sedona expecting the best. Nitzia and I love our beautiful area and want you to be able to take a piece of it home with you. So we go the extra mile in backpacking our lighting with us no matter where we go or how far we hike or jeep in order to make your images the absolute best. When we get to that gorgeous spot with the red rocks lit up against our golden desert sunset... we make sure we capture every color for you. It's important to us you have all your images look just the way your remembered it!

Here are a few images below we took with our Professional Outdoor Lighting. These images would be impossible to capture with a Natural Light Photographer.

(All images captured by Stacy Burk Photography)