Anna and Mike’s Engagment Photography Shoot at the Boulder Vintage Train Yard
July 2, 2008 | Filed Under Engagement Photos | 1 Comment
I’ve been eyeing this old train yard for several months, ever since John Heisel dished out the hot tip. I have several shoots that I’d like to do out here, and Anna and Mike were the first ones to step up to the plate of adventure.
Like all of my shoots, I made sure that these guys had their tetanus shots before coming out. Nothing kills romance like a rusty nail through the sneaker.
Well, swarms of ravenous mosquitoes come pretty close. But these cats were troopers, and know that neither rain nor snow nor blood sucking insects should get in the way of art.
Yes, it is my job to ask people to make out in front of me, as a matter of fact.
When I first saw the little train car I thought, ‘no way am I going to do a cheesy shot in there’. Sometimes I’m wrong.
I like to balance my overall silliness with some nice solid portraits. It will make their Moms happy.
Anna and Mike really know how to get in good with their wedding photographers. They bought us beer and chicken wings after the shoot at the local brewpub. Good times!
The Great Flatirons Engagement Photography Shoot Challenge
June 17, 2008 | Filed Under Engagement Photos | 3 Comments
The Flatirons are an iconic geological formation here in Boulder Colorado. They figure prominently in the skyline and are a symbol of natural beauty in Colorado. As a result, there are approximately 6,873 engagement and wedding photos taken in front of them every year. There is a rock at Chautauqua Park where there is no grass at the base because so many photos get taken there. Yawn. So what is the Engagement Shoot Challenge? As a photographer, it is to honor Flatirons photo requests yet make the images unique and different!
The next part of the challenge is getting up early enough to be there at good light. Most of my clients and I are not really all that into getting out there at 5:30 in the morning for first light. Matt, Christine, and I decided 8am was good enough. Well the day started out with blazing sun, no clouds, no shade, and a whole bunch of wind. What has been with the wind this year anyway?! Still, these guys were awesome and we made due with the conditions.
For me the key to keeping things interesting is to not shoot too many pictures at the mountains anyway. I picked a different location on the south end of town. The bonus to that area is that you can shoot off in the other direction and get a completely different view of wide open spaces. The sun was blazing so I shot quite a few sun flare shots. I try to get at least 13 pieces of flare at every shoot (movie reference joke . . .)
Christine and Matt are going to be pretty famous on my blog this summer. They are already in the previous post, since they are friends with Leah and Matt! Their wedding is coming up REALLY soon, so they’ll be back up here again for their wedding at the Red Lion in Boulder. That’s all good with me, since they love photography and have tons of patience. They even let me play around with some zoom blur shots like the one above, which mostly amounts to a lot of trial and error! So until next time, thanks for checking out the photos.
Candice and Scott’s Snowy Boulder Canyon Engagement Session
May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Engagement Photos | 1 Comment
Candice, Scott, and I started planning this engagement session back in February when they first booked me to shoot their wedding. I love variety and shooting different locations and scenarios. I thought that it would be cool to do and engagement session in the snow and these guys were game.
Well as it turned out we really didn’t get too much spring snow this year. There were a few inches here and there, but not enough to really go sledding in a field where the old brown weeds were covered up. We had pretty much given up on the idea until we got one last spring storm in April. We planned the shoot in the morning, but by noon the snow in Boulder was rapidly being burned off. We didn’t let this stop us, and we headed on up to Nederland where the clouds were still keeping the snow on the ground.
On the way up to Ned we pulled off in Boulder Canyon and took the first series of shots. There was still snow clinging to the trees and rocks. Best of all, this was warm spring snow and we were able to shoot without coats and without freezing red faces! They brought the pooch along for the shoot, which is actually fairly common!
After the Boulder Canyon stop, we headed all the way up to Nederland where the snow was still coming down lightly. We shot these shots literally on the Peak to Peak Highway, where I liked the color of the field of old pussy willow type weeds. These guys did a great job, especially after I started making them dance on the side of the highway, haha! Well that’s all for this shoot, so check back soon, wedding season is here!
Denver Engagement Portrait Photography Shoot with Shauna and Bryan
May 14, 2008 | Filed Under Engagement Photos | 1 Comment
With all this winter weather still going on in Colorado it has been tough to get my engagement photo shoots going. Last weekend was sunny and warm and I was able to squeeze in a shoot before the next snowstorm rolled in.
I’ve been getting a little bored of shooting in Boulder so I offered to drive down to Denver to meet up with Shauna and Bryan. I’ve been wanting to do a shoot in the area around the Denver Public Library and Civic Center Park. There is a huge variety of cool architecture and sculptures in the area. I’m sure I could shoot there many times without running out of new ideas. I will not take pictures of anyone riding the giant cow sculptures unless they pay me extra. Sometimes you just have to draw the line.
The buildings near and around the library and art museum are pretty over the top and crazy. Which of course is perfect for me! I’m sure I’m committing some kind of compositional sin by having the pointy art museum building spiking Bryan through the top of the head, but I don’t care. The building was cool because it was shiny, and I used it as a giant reflector for my strobe.
One of the reasons that I get bored shooting in Boulder is that there is a dearth of cool architecture. There is mostly a whole lot of boring brick buildings. Ironically, I traveled all the way to Denver to shoot in front of a brick building! But I will say that I thought this one was particularly cool, as the brick was old and irregular.
So overall it was a pretty fun day. Shauna and Bryan are a super rad couple, and quite an attractive pair. Double bonus! Portfolio couple!
These guys are both pharmacists by day. They brought a whole pile of pills which made the shoot really fun. We took uppers for the dancing shots, downers for the fashion shots, and ecstasy for the romantic shots. Well, OK, not really, but I’m trying to add more humor to this blog!
Well that’s all for now. Hopefully spring will be here to stay and I will be back in the swing of warm springtime shooting. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next week!