Top 5 Most Photogenic Upstate Wedding Venues, According to Wedding Photographer Joshua Brown
💌 For the Lovers Out There, a Valentine's Day Top 5
This winter, we’re settling into a new rhythm at Escape Club: every other week, we ask someone with real experience and insight to share a quick “Top 5” from their world: design, hospitality, food, nature, and the quieter corners of culture that shape how we travel. It’s a chance to hear directly from people who genuinely live and breathe these spaces and experiences, and a small bonus for our paid subscribers.
We kicked off the series with Casey Scieszka — writer, innkeeper, and co-owner of Spruceton Inn — who shared her Top 5 motels across the U.S., drawing from years spent restoring, running, and reimagining one herself. More recently, Escape Brooklyn founder Erin Lindsey shared her Top 5 Spa Resets I Took in 2025, and Ari Heckman, co-founder and CEO of Ash Hotels, weighed in on the most underrated cities in the U.S.
For this installment, we turned to Hudson Valley–based photographer Joshua Brown to share his picks for the most photogenic wedding venues in the Catskills and Hudson Valley. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to gather some wedding intel.
Top 5 Most Photogenic Upstate Wedding Venues, According to Wedding Photographer Joshua Brown
Joshua Brown has spent more than 25 years photographing weddings, with a background in photojournalism that still shapes how he works today. Based in Newburgh and shooting primarily across the Hudson Valley and Catskills, he’s known for a calm, unobtrusive approach that prioritizes genuine moments over staged ones.
Over the years, he’s photographed celebrations everywhere from working farms and historic estates to quiet forest clearings and tucked-away creeks — building an instinct for the places where landscape, light, and atmosphere come together naturally.
That lived experience makes him a natural voice for this list. While the region’s scenery often does the heavy lifting, certain venues frame that beauty in ways that feel timeless across seasons.
Joshua’s selections reflect years spent working in these spaces — places where architecture, land, and light consistently create a strong sense of place, whether in peak summer or deep winter.
Below, Joshua shares five venues he returns to again and again — settings where the Hudson Valley and Catskills show up at their most cinematic, and where each season brings something different to the story.
Enjoy, and Happy Valentine’s Day to all the lovers out there!
– Erin + the EB team