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.