Yosemite Wedding Photographer | Rebecca + Kevin

Yosemite Wedding Photographer, Clarkie Photography

Everyone kept telling me I should travel up to Yosemite as soon as I arrived in California but I kept putting it off. Too many other things to see and do first. Then earlier this year a sweet couple got in touch and informed me they were planning to marry there and wanted me to capture it all. Before I knew it the weekend had arrived and I was driving in to the park a couple of days prior, trying to familiarize myself with the area and scout good locations for portraits. Staring out the window of my car collecting flies as my jaw dropped at every turn, I soon realized there was a significant risk my creative brain might get frazzled with all the options available to me. I have to be honest, I didn’t avoid said frazzling as there were a few occasions when I just didn’t quite know where to look or what to suggest as every different view offered something new and the idea of a different composition kept teasing me. It was a bit overwhelming. I felt like the scenery was goading me to perform, provoking me in to shooting the best photograph I’d ever taken. I certainly felt the pressure of shooting in a place that passers-by kept declaring was “so beautiful you can’t fail to get good pictures right?” If you manage to move past all that though it’s sheer bliss for a photographer.

I will be forever grateful to Rebecca and Kevin for finding me, choosing me and ultimately deciding to get hitched with the most beautiful scenery I have ever witnessed as a backdrop. Yosemite stops you in your tracks and takes your breath away on any normal day. Add a wedding to the mix and you’ve got something extra special, at times intimidating but overwhelmingly magical. John Muir summed it up well:

“It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.” – John Muir

Thank you to my beautiful and talented wife Clare for helping me out during our evening portraits at Glacier Point. She captured two of my favorite images from that session – included above (3rd and 6th image from the bottom).