Safeena Noah Photography

A little carousel of a few favorite desert moments with Giff & Ty this weekend! Let me know your fave. These two are truly magic together so I couldn’t choose just one. I admire Giff & Ty a lot, and I typed up a whole spiel on all the ways I do. But all the richest, deepest words simply don’t do justice to who they are or what they have together. Thankful to know these two; thankful for unlikely paths that overlap and weave all of our lives together; thankful to be reminded that love this true and magnetic exists and thrives, even in the harshest environments @ Joshua Tree National Park

yes, you are your sister’s keeper Just settling back in from a big 1.5 weeks in the little world of Saf. I dipped my toes in editorial work with @caramia, created just for fun for the first time in a long time, drove for 30+ hours, climbed in stormy Moab, got 2 incredible nights of sleep in my Subie, photographed a wedding in Palm Springs, and got fully vaccinated. It honestly feels a bit trite to talk a ton about that little world of Saf right now. I’d trade all of those gif...ts in my little world for a little more justice and accountability in our big shared world. For more collective sighs of relief. I think we’re walking in that direction, with hopeful trepidation. But hope nonetheless. And the hope for this little world of Saf is that I can learn to better steward justice in my art and work. The page is turning and I’m ready for the next chapter Content Director: @caramia Stylist/Art Director: @stay__co Models: @amekianaa @lauradennis_ @stellaproci Makeup: @makeupbysamanthaj Hair: @belezafish Builds: @adaptivetheory @caramiacreatives

Tafadzwa + Tiauna’s elopement in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. They let me plan everything from head to toe, from picking where they eloped to what in the world we would do all day. Their only request was snowy mountains.and Colorado delivered. We were bestowed with a fresh coat, beautiful sunshine, and roads cleared just in time :) They came with just their parents, and together we got a little lost on mountain passes, snowshoed in 3+ feet deep snow, continuously fell int...o said snow, ~attempted~~ to sled (do not recommend in deep snow unless you want to fail and laugh a lot, so actually I do recommend), drank some jet-boiled hot chocolate, lent Tiauna all my layers, and danced down an empty highway. One of my goals when I rebranded was to make adventure inclusive. As in, not just for the ultra-adventurer whose closet is made of Patagonia puffs, lives in REI, and breathes Yosemite. I want adventure documentation with me to be for the ones who ultimately recognize marriage as the ultimate adventure. And will just trust me to lead them into a day of adventurous joy that speaks to who they are as people, like T & T did. They’re not everyday mountain dwellers, but these snowy mountains absolutely make sense for who these two are as a coupleliving in glory, radiant, and down for anything, as long as they’re together. @ San Juan Mountains, Colorado

On mountains moving faith why I started believing in God: I find myself the most capable of loving deeply in the places I imagine that God spent a little extra time handcrafting the details. Maybe that’s why driving this highway feels like church to me, and playing in these mountains feels like worship. Every photograph I take is like singing an old, familiar hymn. I went through about 20 years of religious upbringing and instruction before I actually ever believed in God. I... actively rejected any semblance of faith in a higher being. And it wasn’t a final piece of evidence, a verse, or a commanding voice from above that convinced me. It wasn’t memorizing 99 Arabic names for God that led me to believe in one. It was getting to intimately know creation like this. It’s been 8 years of photographing and climbing and exploring places like this. My faith has become intuitive and rooted in a way that a lifetime of careful instruction and religious legalism would’ve never reached. I think about it every time I peer out my car window to watch the light glimmer across the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. There’s too much miraculously intricate beauty in the world for me to believe in anything short of a good and loving god. @ US 395

Mimi + Papa: A case study on love like an oak tree. I dream of growing into something like this far more than I dream of the cake, the flowers, or even the gown. This is what vows grow into, when well-watered and tended to beyond the romance of Day One. I love being reminded of what we’re really there for. On a personal note, I think these kinds of photos dig even deeper for me because I haven’t had many examples of old love in my life. And yet I changed everything in pursu...it of it. Of the grandparents, I only saw my maternal grandparents’ marriage, and only briefly since my grandfather (Abu Jaan) died when I was young. I viewed the marriage between Nani Ama (my gma, a 90-something year old British-Pakistani spark) and Abu Jaan as sturdy and functional. Perhaps I was too young to understand the love there. But I’ve identified as a true romantic for as long as I can remember, and I knew old, real love existed. And could exist for me. That knowledge was a big contributing reason I left my parents’ religious tradition, where arranged marriages are the norm over love marriages. I knew of only 1 love marriage in my entire extended family growing up. I know now that real love can also exist in arranged marriages, but it wasn’t the right story for me. It’s still wild to me that I left a ton of expectations behind in pursuit of a love-led life, and it eventually led me to a place where I spend my days cultivating, documenting, honoring love and romance. I didn’t marry the person I left home for (because I also left to go to college in CA, and college won the long-distance battle), but I did learn that pursuing old love was absolutely worthwhile and in the cards. I went from grounded for sneaky having a boyfriend for religious reasons to admitted serial monogamist professionally third wheeling for photos. It is my ultimate metamorphosis haha. My job, the photographs I take, and the connections I witness and make are an affirming testament that I chose the right path for me. Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Story of My Life with Saf maybe next week we’ll really deep-dive into my minor traumas before digging into the big stuff cool cool k cya @ Montage Laguna Beach

Planned in two days and still the most beautiful. Cheers to continuously falling off the face of the Instagram planet in order to partake in more moments like this on the real planet