Zach + Charlotte’s Couples Session | Pyramid Lake, NV | April 2021

My husband and I do this monthly date-in-a-box called the Adventure Challenge and one of their advertisements was a half second TikTok video of a couple picnicing on an air mattress in the middle of the lake. I thought, “Okay, that would be so fun, and so hard, let’s fuckin’ go.” It was absolutely both of those things.

Char was my muse long before I started taking photography seriously. We did annual boudoir sessions in a safe and fun space for Valentines Day every year. After taking on my forever photography career, I’ve always called on her and Zach when I had a wild hair. They put up with my “hey I wanna try something, will you do it with me?” phone calls about once every 6 months. We’ve done hot springs at sunrise, a proposal at the top of a cliff at sunset, a golden meadow in autumn, and now a Parent Trap moment on an air mattress in the middle of a lake. They get extremely uncomfy so I can get my yayas out, and this one was the most difficult of all of them. It was windy, the sun was harsh and some guy was braaaaping a jetski around us. Keeping the mattress in one place, trying not to drop my camera in the lake, and trying to keep them from being splashed wasn’t the easiest. But the photos. The fucking photos! Absolutely worth it.
So here’s to standing nipple deep in an icy lake while your butt naked friends try to look like what you’re making them do is normal.