08/18/2026
I think photographers get worse when they only photograph their own clients.
Creativity is a muscle. If you stop putting it under stress, eventually everyone starts to notice.
Sedona + Moab Wedding & Elopement Photographer —who is an insanely talented photographer specializing in adventure elopements—booked a last-minute sunrise engagement session in Moab.
She couldn’t get a flight that made sense, so she had to drive (8 hours!). I offered to keep her company, threw a lens I’d just received into my bag, and figured I’d use the opportunity to test it out.
By the time we started shooting, I’d been awake for more than 24 hours. Hello, chronic insomnia - again.
But there’s something I genuinely love about occasionally being the second photographer.
These aren’t my clients. I’m not leading the session. I’m not choosing where the couple stands or directing what they do. I have to work around another photographer’s vision and find photographs inside of what’s already happening.
It forces me to see differently.
When you’re always in control, it’s easy to fall back on the things you already know work—the same compositions, the same directions, the same safe photographs.
Second shooting takes some of that control away.
I can only anticipate, react, frame, and look for something the lead photographer might not be seeing.
And that matters when I’m back in front of my own couples.
Because I never want your photographs to depend on perfect light, the perfect location, or me putting you into the same situations I’ve photographed a hundred times before.
Sometimes keeping that creative muscle strong looks like being awake for 24+ hours, standing in the Moab desert at sunrise with a brand-new lens, and having absolutely no say in what happens next.
Turns out, that’s a pretty good way to remember how to see.
Oh and that new lens… the 24-50 2.8 from Thypoch Americas is a beast. Absolutely buy it.
