2018 - A Year in Review - Weddings, Elopements, and beyond.
A WILD YEAR FOR ADVENTURE
I’m sitting here in a coffee shop in the tiny little mountain town we’re about to leave, thinking about this year and getting emotionally nostalgic about how important these past 12 months have been. 2018 has been a year of life and loss. The good and bad of adventure. Friends gained, family members lost. Lots of miles hiked, goals attained, weddings and elopements photographed, mountains climbed, and cross-country trips flown/driven. To say this year has been good wouldn’t quite be right—I think significant would be a better description. It’s been a defining year.
Nate and I were lying in bed the other night talking about the highs and lows of this year and discussing goals for next year. This year was incredibly full—we shot more amazing weddings, traveled to more places, learned new things, and built a home (more on our Airstream later). Our business seemed to settle into something more sustainable, even more aligned with our values than ever. I couldn’t be happier with the way we’ve worked incredibly hard, and the way that it’s paid off in pretty wonderful ways. If you told us when we started this business that we’d be shooting the types of things we are, in the places we’re going, I wouldn’t have believed you. This year has been absolutely wild in the best way.
This year we were published a number of times. One of my favorites was being featured in Junebug Weddings’ Instagrammers to Follow as well as having a full blog feature of one of our favorite weddings. Several of our photos were featured in places like Venue Report, Green Wedding Shoes, USA Today, LooksLikeFilm. We had a four page feature in Couture Colorado’s print magazine as well. And just a few weeks ago, Junebug Weddings published their Best of the Best Wedding Photography where we received an honorable mention.
Coupled with the growth we’ve seen with our business, we were also able to accomplish a few personal bucket list items. We hiked some 500+ miles in total. 80 miles in Patagonia, 50 miles on the Zion Traverse, 360 miles of the Colorado Trail, and many more day hikes on mountains in Colorado and cliffsides in Utah. Nate assisted on his first big wall climb with friends—the Touchstone Wall, some 800+ feet above Zion Canyon in Utah. Together we broke our record for our longest hike in one day by hiking 26.2 miles (a marathon!) on the Colorado Trail. We also took our first international trip together to Patagonia—the southern tip of South America—and hiked the O Circuit in Chile and skirted the foothills of Fitz Roy in Argentina. And we’re headed back there in just 10 days. This time we’ll be shooting two weddings and doing a few couples sessions too!
While it’s been a big year for accomplishing goals, it’s also been a trying year in terms of our personal lives. We lost some dear family members, which resulted in plans cut short, quickly packing up to visit Nebraska to be with family. It’s moments like these that make me incredibly grateful to have a job where we can often work remotely and take personal time when we need to. I’m grateful for the gift that photography is—we were able to capture Nate’s grandpa during his last few days of life, and on the other side of that, we were also able to capture my brother’s new baby on her first few days of life. We are endlessly humbled by the privilege it is to put into print moments that words can’t describe.
We also took on a huge project together—renovating a 1974 Airstream Overlander. In April we rented a truck and drove across the country to Virginia to pick up the gutted ole beauty. Oh man, its been one hell of an undertaking. We started from a basically empty shell, researched how to wire it, insulate it, build walls and furniture, plumbing, propane, and many other tiny projects—all of which has been surprisingly difficult. And all of which has been accomplished in between traveling for weddings and elopements all over the country. But, we are ALMOST DONE, and we couldn’t be happier with the unique little home we’ve built together. (If you wanna see updates, follow our Airstream IG account here). We just moved in a few days ago, and it’s been so rewarding to be in a place we built and designed for our lifestyle, filled with the things that make us feel inspired and warm. It’s the perfect home base for our life on the road beginning in 2019.
If this year has taught me anything, it’s reinforced how much goals are important to me. I’ve always been proud of the fact that Nate and I are people who do the things we say we want to do. We’ve never hesitated at our goals, always able to jump head first into anything we set our minds to, sometimes to a fault (hah). These goals are what keep us going, what keep our hearts passionate, what make us feel alive amidst a world that is evermore demanding of our energy. Nate and I were talking about this the other night and he said something simple that really resonated with me. He said he wants to do things well this year. So instead of writing a big list of things we want to accomplish over the next 12 months, we want to focus on the things we’re already committed to, and do them with intentionality and excellence. Our goals are less physical this time around. We want to be the best storytellers possible for our couples, we want to find more balance with work and personal time, we want to seek to be more compassionate, and we want to lean into the community of friends around us.
To all of our couples who have entrusted us with some of the most intimate moments in your lives, thank you. Your weddings, elopements, grand and quiet celebrations of love, are things we feel so wildly privileged to capture. You are the reason we’ve been able to accomplish the goals we have. You’re supporting a lifestyle we find incredibly fulfilling, so from the deepest parts of our beings, thank you.
Here’s a collection of images from 2018 that are important to me. A mix of personal photos and couples, because who we are is so intertwined with our work, its almost impossible for me to separate the two.
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What a year.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d also like to thank you reader. All of you who like our posts, share our photos, encourage us with comments, family who brag on us to friends, friends who drink with us after long weeks shooting, and those of you who read our blogs—none of your support goes unnoticed.
Cedar & Pines is an adventurous wedding and elopement photographer duo made up of Nate and Megan Kantor, a married couple living in their Airstream and traveling the American West. They believe in honest wedding photography, capturing the small candid moments to the epic landscape views. They travel to photograph intimate weddings and adventure elopements from the mountains of Colorado to destination weddings in California, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Washington, Patagonia and the ends of the earth.
