Kate & Pawel got married back in the states, but had their amazing honeymoon adventure in Thailand where I tagged along to capture their Chiang Mai Portrait Session.

We chose Chiang Mai for the destination in Thailand for one word, ELEPHANTS. In northern Thailand, Elephant farms and sanctuaries are spread across the lands. This is the perfect and once in a lifetime location for a session.

Before we left for Thailand, I found a sanctuary called, Chai Lai Orchid. This sanctuary was about an hour west outside of the city of Chiang Mai. I relayed this info over to Kate and Pawel, and we quickly made the decision that this would be our starting location.

We met up with each other first thing in the morning as the elephants began to wake up. As we started the day, we found a male that we would photograph near. I was told the previous day not to get too close to this particular elephant, as he is not friendly. We kept our distance as we began our shoot.

About a half hour into our shoot, we then began getting closer to one of the female elephants. The day before, I actually spent time with this particular elephant, walking her and her baby into the jungles near by. As we got closer, we started to photograph Kate and Pawel near this enormous animal. Withou warning, she swung her trunk and flew Kate backwards. As Kate fell, she injured her wrist, and it begun to swell quickly. At this point, we knew we had to make a trip to the ER.

Our driver brought us to the local hospital where Kate had her wrist examined. During this visit they saw a couple of nurses, had x-rays done, had the doctor confirm that there were no broken bones and received medicine. All for the low cost of $18 American dollars!

Now that we know that Kate’s wrist isn’t broken, we decided to move on to other locations we had planned. We hit 2 waterfalls within Doi Inthanon National Park. As we arrived to the second waterfall, the clouds rolled in and the rain began. Heavy rain fell over the National Park for quite some time, and we used breaks in the rain to try capture everything we could.

As the rain broke, we made our way up the highest mountain in Thailand hoping to capture some incredible views. As we arrived to the top of the mountain and the beautiful temple that laid on top of the mountain, the wind, rain and fog covered up any view we would have. The three of us spent time trying to plan our next move as light started to fade away.

We made the decision to head back down the mountain in hopes to get out of the heavy fog. As we reached the bottom of the mountain, we found a coffee farm that laid off to the side of the road. With the light going away quickly, this would have to be our final destination. For the better part of an hour and until the darkness came, we captured these two, with Kate’s wedding dress that she brought with her from the states. It could not have been anymore perfect.