Kyle & Stephanie’s Kananaskis Engagement Photography

Stephanie and Kyle are an active couple who love the outdoors and asked to have their engagement session in the Kananaskis mountains, which I was happy to do. Of course, I didn’t know when I agreed to it that I’d end up halfway up a mountain in a blizzard.

The Kananskis is a beautiful, peaceful area in the Rocky Mountains about forty minutes from Banff. During ski season there are people on the slopes, but this day we had the mountains almost totally to ourselves. Kyle and Stephanie had brought their skis and we started off with photos of them around the lift and on the hill, skiing. Then we went to a second location that Kyle had picked out. We parked our cars and talked about where he wanted to go. “There’s a ledge just up there that I think would be cool”, he said, waving his hand towards a flat, rocky area about ten metres up. “Oh, that would be no problem”, I replied. “I can even bring a load of photo gear”. So we started climbing up. It began to snow. After a minute we passed the ledge and kept going. I look at the ledge. I look at Kyle. “Yeah, there’s the ledge, up there”, he says, pointing out a speck of rocks through the pine trees, halfway up the mountain.

Kyle and Stephanie were kind enough to help me carry some of my gear, which they did with ease. As soon as we got to the ledge—which was really more of a scattering of rocks—we saw some darker clouds blowing in. I had time for about three photos before it hit us, knocking my light stand over and pelting us with snow. We retreated back down the mountain and spent the rest of the session around the river and the forest at the bottom. Stephanie and Kyle were awesome to take photos of—really easy-going and obviously in love. Here are some of my favourite photos from the day: