07/09/2026
Jessica & Hunter: An Engagement Session at the
I could tell Jessica was nervous the second she and Hunter walked into the studio. Not nervous like something was wrong. Nervous like something mattered. She had this calm sitting right on top of it, the kind you put on when you want a day to go well and you're not fully convinced it's in your control. I've seen that look on a lot of faces over the years. It usually means the person standing there really wants this.
For the session itself, we headed to the Brinkerhoff Mansion, and I keep going back to that place for reasons that go beyond the light or the architecture. The house was built in 1869 for George Brinkerhoff, a Springfield businessman, and it's a beautiful piece of work: red brick, Italianate, a wraparound porch, a tower, more rooms than most families would know what to do with. But what gets me isn't the architecture. It's what the place was actually for. Back then, George's wife Isabella was known around Springfield for her hospitality, for filling those rooms with people and conversation and celebration. Later the house spent nearly a century as a college, full of students living their own version of that same story before they knew how it would turn out. Now it's a private home again, and a wedding venue, and the current owners have made it their mission to keep that spirit going, opening the doors for other people's proposals and vows and anniversaries. Walk through it and you can feel that history stacked up in the rooms. Stand still long enough and you can almost hear all those old conversations. Jessica and Hunter's afternoon became one more layer in that. I like knowing their story now lives in a house that's been holding other people's for a hundred and fifty years.
Here's the thing about this job that people don't always get: when a couple hands you their wedding, they're handing you something that happens exactly once. No do-overs. That's not a small thing to be trusted with, and I've never let myself get comfortable enough to treat it that way. It's why I show up the same way every time, from the first phone call to the nights at the computer, way later than I should still be up, going through hundreds of frames looking for the ones that actually tell the truth about the day.
Jessica and Hunter made that easy. They're good together in a way you can't fake for a camera, it's just there, and my job is mostly just to notice it. Watching them, I kept thinking about my own Jessica, my wife, and where we were standing at that same point in our life. Whole world still ahead of us. No idea what was coming, good or hard, just a feeling that whatever it was, we'd handle it together. That's not naive. That might be the most honest thing two people can say to each other.
That feeling is the reason I'm still doing this after all these years, and it's the reason I still teach photography too. Not for the gear or the technical stuff. It's for the reminder it gives me, over and over, that your time on this earth ought to go toward something that actually means something to you. Something worth losing sleep over. It's easy to let life get eaten up by things that don't matter. This work keeps pulling me back to what does: showing up fully for the people in front of you.
That's the real job. Not the lighting, not the posing, not even a beautiful old house that does half the work for you. It's the trust. A couple lets you into one of the biggest days of their life and asks you to get it right. I don't take that lightly, and I hope I never do.
Jessica and Hunter, thank you. Thanks for trusting me with your day, nerves and all. You reminded me why I love this work, and you gave me another shot at doing the thing I care about most: capturing two people who chose each other, right at the start of everything good that's coming their way.
A special thank you to Jessica (my wife), Bradyn and Lacee for their helping making this session happen.
