Adventurous Joshua Tree Desert Engagement Session || Giff + Ty

Joshua Tree National Park Engagement Session || California LGBTQ+ Adventure Wedding Photographer

Giff & Ty booked the coolest little Joshua Tree AirBnb for Conrad and I to meet them for a weekend filled with climbing, desert snuggles, Harry Potter board games, and ranch water (aka Topo Chico with lime and tequila).

We shared some slow mornings and light night chats, sprinkled with bouldering in the hot desert heat and gorging on Joshua Tree’s best breakfast burritos. We did a little adventurous romping around the Joshua Trees as well as some indoor AirBnB engagement photos. Between their magnetic connection and our comfortable friendship, photographing these two felt so natural and comfortable. Weekends like this are my wedding photography career highlights. 

I’ve had the immense honor of knowing Giff and Ty for a decade, long before they were the unit “Giff and Ty.” Their story is one for the ages. The short of it is that they met at our small, conservative school where they were placed in the same freshman dorm. Became fraternity brothers. Became best friends. Fell in love. Struggled. Reconciled faith with sexuality. Sent a fateful drunk text. Came out. Dated. Got Engaged. And now we’re here!

I remember my first impressions of them being that they were both extremely attractive (classic case of freshman girl with a crush on everyone), great dancers, cool in the most inclusive way, and weirdly genuinely kind human beings. Getting to spent a weekend with them affirmed my high view of their relationship. These two are tenderness, adventure, goodness, courage, and the embodiment of being fully known and loved.

Observing their growth from conservative college teenyboppers to these fully formed, thoughtful, empathetic humans has been extremely rad. Giff and Ty are constantly advocate for those in the LGBTQ+ community struggling to reconcile their relationship with God with their queerness. Their hearts are somehow more beautiful than their physical bodies, and that’s saying a lot. I love them, and am so stoked to watch them get down on the dance floor at 2021’s party of the year (aka their wedding).

Until then, fall in love with their relationship via these forever favorite adventurous engagement photos. 

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