I finally fulfilled a photography dream of mine with a gorgeous hiking adventure engagement photo session at Heublein Tower in Simsbury CT with this outdoor-enthusiast couple!
When Roni & Nate were telling me about the activities they enjoyed doing together during our consultation, I had a feeling. Then Nate told me about how he proposed to Roni, and that feeling was confirmed. These two love going on hikes together, and when Nate proposed it was at the end of a long hike up Mohonk Mountain in New York. So when we started discussing the perfect location for their engagement session, I decided to finally share the idea of hiking up to Heublein Tower with these two for some awesome adventure engagement photos.
The hike up to the Tower is a bit grueling and can take 45 minutes, so our total session time was about two hours long. Getting up to the top of the ridge is really hard work, but once you get there, it is SOOOOO worth it, because you’re met with views like this:
When you’re walking along the the top of the ridge toward the Tower, there are lots of different outlook points for you to take in the views of Simsbury and Avon. Fun Fact: Roni and Nate are getting married in Simsbury, which is one of the other reasons they were on board with going on the hike up to Heublein Tower, so we spent a minute or two trying to pick out their venue from the landscape below.
After we took in the sites, the path diverges back into a more forested area on our way up to the Tower. Roni, Nate and I spent some time on the walk getting to know each other a bit more and we stopped for a moment to put the spotlight on the gorgeous ring Nate gave to Roni. It comes from a ring designer local to where they live in Pennsylvania, Annie at Bella & Company.
Soon, we came to one of my favorite features of the hike up to the tower – the rock face. Roni and Nate were really cool about climbing up and on to the face for some epic shots of this unique feature of the New England landscape.
At last, we made it to the top of our hike: Heublein Tower! Just in time for it to start drizzling on us, despite our best efforts in rescheduling the time of our session to avoid being rained out. In my defense, I think part of the reason we were being drizzled on is because we were legit in the cloud, not just under it and being rained on. 😂 But Roni and Nate were good sports and we still got some amazing images of them around the tower.
On our way back down the ridge, it did start raining a little more in earnest, so I was able to convince Roni and Nate to do a few more photos sexy perfume commercial style! These two absolutely killed it when it was time to get extra romantic cliff-side in the rain, and these are some of my favorite images to date not only because of how they turned out, but because of the unique challenges creating them presented.
I loved everything about this session, and I can’t wait for Roni & Nate’s wedding next year because they were so much fun to work with! Drop a comment below letting me know what your favorite image is. Spoiler: my favorite is this black and white one right up here ^^
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