I’m always looking for beautiful, ethereal places to take wedding, engagement or fashion photographs.

While I’ve lived in Northeast Ohio for nearly 5 years, I am still amazed by how little of the area I’ve explored. Because I am a rather restless person, this is works out in my favor — I love exploring new places for possible photographic locations.

My most recent scouting excursion was to an area within Cuyahoga Valley National Park known as the Virginia Kendall Ledges. Formed millions of years ago when much of Ohio was a great inland sea, the ledges were most likely the walls of a large island formation. What’s left now are beautiful ledge and cliff faces made up of a sandy, rocky material known as “Sharon Conglomerate.” What was once a scene of fast moving rivers is now a serene and tranquil forest with a thick canopy and graceful hiking trails.

I arrived a few hours before sunset, when the sun was starting to get low in the sky. The result was a forest floor with a gorgeous level of ambient light and equally wonderful spots of deep red, dappled sunlight peaking through the tops of the trees. I can’t overstate just how red that sun light really was — the areas where the sun’s rays hit the ground were lit up with a laser-pointer red that was so unnaturally vibrant it took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t something else just laying on the ground and was, in fact, the sun’s setting hues.

It didn’t take much imagination to realize this would be the perfect backdrop for gorgeous, empyrean photos. A wedding, engagement, or any other type of portrait session here would instantly take on a ghostly, magical quality. The surrounding area has no end of possible backdrops. There are small patches of open ground looking up at the cliffs, areas on the cliffs that look over the forest, and still more areas with stone stairways carved out of the rock face itself. Everywhere you looked there was a photograph waiting to happen.

I look forward to suggesting this area to my clients in the future, and I know when they see it, they will be overcome with how exquisite the location is.

Benjamin Lehman is a Commercial Wedding, Portrait and Advertising Photographer in the Northeast Ohio area.