The Genther family, like many families I have the pleasure of working with each year, were on their way around the country while taking the time to 'road school' their kids. I guess technically you'd call it homeschooling, but when your classroom is the wide-open country that doesn't seem to encapsulate the experience. We met up in West Glacier towards sunset, headed into Apgar Village, and they ultimately ended up in Lake McDonald to close out the evening. Pretty much the perfect way to end a session on a relatively warm late-summer day.

It's not every day I get to hang out with a family from Texas, and some newly minted University of Texas alumni. While photographing the Wyat family, however, that was just the case. They were visiting from Northeast Texas—a small town I was surprisingly not familiar with already—and two of the grown children are now former students from the campus where I spent a lot of time growing up.

As bad luck sometimes does, smoke from recent wildfires in Western Canada blew into Northwest Montana the few days before our session, and decided to hang around. That said, I think you'll agree it did nothing to make the backdrop any less amazing than it would normally be. Different? Yes. But Montana rarely disappoints.