All you Need to Know About your Hiking Engagement Session

As a New England Photographer, I find myself in the White Mountains a lot photographing a lot of hiking engagement sessions, proposals and of course, elopements! Somehow I just can’t seem to stay away and it seems like most of you can’t either! The White Mountains are my happy place + I’m so glad they’re yours too! If you’ve stumbled upon this post, it looks like you may be interested in an adventure session or some type of hiking engagement session! Below are some tips about preparing for your hiking engagement session!

I had the honor of photographing Erica + Brandon’s engagement before being able to shoot their wedding. They were totally up for any ideas I suggested and allowed me to take the creative reigns on where we went and what we did! I suggested hiking to them, as they both are an adventurous and active couple. To no surprise, they both were all in + jumped on the idea.

When the engagement shoot day came, it was raining all the way up until about 10 minutes before I parked my car in the lot to begin our hike. I asked them if they were still prepared to do a hike if it rains + they both said “sure why not!” To our surprise, the rain created this beautiful fog all around the White Mountains, giving us a beautiful backdrop for photos! My biggest piece of advice to other couples looking to get their engagement photos done (or other photographers) is to TRUST your photographer no matter what the weather is. In my personal opinion, my absolute favorite shoots happen when the weather does something funky like this.

Erica + Brandon braved the hike carrying all their outfit options to the top + we got so lucky, being the only hikers at the top! Here are some of my favorites from this mountain top engagement session!

1.) Do your research on the location!

You want to make sure you like the look of your location before you go, how crowded it will be, trail conditions, etc.

You can see what the location looks like by:

• Using typing the location into the Instagram Location feature + clicking “recent” to see recent posts from this area.
• Use google Earth to look at the street level view, if you’ve only heard of the location before, but never seen it in person!
• Ask around! Asking for help is totally okay + it just means you’re doing your research! You can ask about a specific location in Facebook Groups!

2.) Be prepared for the weather!

Next, you want to make sure that you are fully prepared for whatever the weather is to bring that week for your hiking engagement session! Do you need umbrellas for rain? Ponchos? Extra pairs of socks? Gloves? Make sure you bring enough water + don’t forget about the safety items to bring along with any outfits you may want to change into!

3.) Check the conditions of the trails!

Along with researching the best location to go to , you can check the All trails app to see how busy the trails are, read reviews + read anything relevant to the trail you’re going on from recent hikers for your photo session. This is the best app in my opinion to use, as the users of the app are generally experienced hikers. If they aren’t they’ve at least just recently hiked the trail and can tell you the current conditions!

Your photographer should be able to do all of this research for you, but when narrowing down your search on what you’d like your backdrop to look like, try some of these tips!

Feel free to pin any of these poses to your Pinterest Board for inspiration by clicking the images below!

Additional resources

For what to pack for a hiking elopement (easily applicable to a Hiking engagement session), check out this adventure engagement session session packing list!

If you’re interested in an adventure elopement session, here’s a complete list to packing for your adventure elopement!