First and foremost, I love this shoot. I love every picture. Josh and Taleya are a beautiful couple and I could feel how much they love each other while I took their pictures. That's a great feeling as a photographer, because love is the one thing I cannot photoshop. The first location we went to was this neat abandoned barn. I'm used to photographing in Idaho, where your best shot of the day is probably near or inside something abandoned and you're probably trespassing. I've even photographed on a family's tire swing before without so much as maybe a weird look or people getting excited about engaged couples. Let me tell you, it is a different story in Tennessee. They take their private property very seriously. Within 5 minutes of photographing at this barn an ornery police officer shows up. He asks what we're doing, asks if we knew we were trespassing and that it was a federal offense, and told us he would have to bring us in. I mean seriously po-po are you for real? Do you really have nothing else to do? Do you really take your job that seriously? I tried to politely explain what we're doing and that we weren't even going inside the barn, but the officer was not kind. His rebuttal was "well would you walk in to one of these homes (pointing to a rather large subdivision of homes) and start taking pictures?" That is not at all the same. This was an abandoned barn on the side of the road, and we weren't even inside! He tried to tell us there had been 3 shootings at the barn (really? 3 shootings in front of a big subdivision right on the side of the road of one of the nicest and most family friendly cities outside of Nashville? Really?) and that people had been breaking in to the barn and stealing stuff. (We looked in the barn at one point, there was nothing but poop to steal.) After a lot of sweet talking the officer told us to leave before the owners got there to press charges. It was ridiculous! We were very cautious about trespassing on private property for the rest of the day. And even with that minor bump in our session I think these photographs are beautiful!
