They’re perfect strangers, but look picture perfect.
A Nashville photographer gets millions of views online for her Stranger Shoots, where she picks a man and a woman who don’t know each other and takes posed photos of them together as if they’re a couple.
The photos turn out more intimate than ones with real-life partners, with the pair staring into each other’s eyes, touching one another’s faces and waists, and fondly embracing.
Ava Butts told The Post that her most successful shoot was with a couple she captured during Christmastime — Neyland and Katie — who she has learned are now dating.
“They hit it off. We were there for over two hours, and I left and they stayed. And he actually posted her at his family Easter this past weekend,” Butts, 20, said.
The idea for Stranger Shoots — which can each get close to 15 million views combined on TikTok and Instagram — came about when Butts saw a blind date photoshoot on Facebook.
The first one she did was in the summer of 2024 with her male best friend from high school, Gavin McBee, and a woman she selected out of 10 who applied via an online form she posted.
“I really just did it to embarrass him. I went overboard with the posing too,” she said.
As she shot the photos, Butts also filmed the session using her Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, and when she was done, edited the video in a Little Caesar’s parking lot and posted it to social media.
“I wasn’t ever going to do it again until he called me the next morning and was like, ‘Holy crap, the video went viral,’” she said.
“Somebody found his dad’s phone number to try and see if they got together. People were coming up to him at his college and asking about it.”
McBee never asked for the woman’s number during the shoot, but attempted to contact her afterwards.
“He DMed her two days later and was like, ‘Hey, we’re going viral.’ And she never said anything back,” Butts said.
Butts then decided to use McBee’s friend group at Middle Tennessee State University as Stranger Shoots subjects, pairing them with women she knew or who had mutual friends.
“They all went viral. They actually have a competition of whose is going to do the best,” she said.
Although stranger photography is nothing new, Butts said the fact that she pairs the photos with behind-the-scenes videos sets her work apart.
“Once I posted that so many people started doing the behind-the-scenes videos of Stranger Shoots … it kind of took off on TikTok,” she said.
She is now inundated with hundreds asking to participate, but prefers to keep it to at least one acquaintance, “so it won’t go super horrible,” she said.
Although she does Stranger Shoots for free, the viral videos have gained her many paid clients.
“If it didn’t bring people to my page, I would not do them because it’s just so much drama,” she said.
The most drama-filled shoot happened when the man abruptly said he had to leave.
“And we’re joking like, ‘Oh, is your girlfriend waiting on you,’” Butts said.
“The photos were super cute. I post the video. Not even five minutes later, somebody calls me and is like, ‘He’s married.’”
