This portrait session features images taken from my preferred view of the Flatirons in South Boulder, and one fantabulous family. We organized what was to be my last shoot for 2009 as a brother-sister reunion Christmas gift for their mom.  The ‘Boulder is a small town’ portion of the story, is that I originally met Brandy at the 303 Vodka headquarters right here in Boulder, Colorado.  Conveniently located next to my friends at Green Guru, the manufacturing facility was the perfect warm up spot for a couple of the Cruiser Rides this summer!

Like many of us in Boulder, Chautauqua Park holds a special place for the Ganey Family. We scored a perfect day in late fall with sunshine and a temperature near 60 degrees.  We started off with an attempt at a human toboggan, but there wasn’t quite enough snow to pull it off.

Dawson shows his many sides: On the left: Super Model Dawson shows off his Blue Steel look.  He says that Magnum is almost ready, but he can’t unleash the beast until he’s tamed it. On the right: Strictly Business Dawson -there’s a tree that needs climbing, and he is just the man for the job. Just keep your camera out of the way, buddy.

What are those memories that you remember longingly from your childhood?  I’d have to say that roughhousing and playing in the leaves probably rank pretty highly on a lot of peoples’ lists.  I love this shot, it is a true captured moment.  A split second of time that tells an entire story.

Wyatt was quite a busy little toddler, toddling his way all around the yard playing with his favorite things. He was quite challenging to get to look at the camera for the famous Holiday Card shot, but he was no match for 5 frames per second of camera shooting speed.

For a parting shot, I have a funny little sequence. Wyatt was pretty intent on holding rocks and sticks for most of the shoot. While trying to take some portraits, he was very pleased at his ability to chuck rocks at the photographer.  This was almost a very expensive shot!

It has been a while since I have updated the blog, but has not been for a lack of photo shoots! I’ve been busy capturing fall portraits under the leaves and in the studio. So we will have quite a few new posts coming in the next couple weeks. I can’t hide that it has been a while since this shoot with all of the green leaves on the trees The tree canopy of Ebin G. Fine Park provides some cover from the hard light of summer, and the playground and creek offer plenty of exploring opportunities for toddlers. Thanks for the great shoot Faulkners!

Now that the wedding season is winding down, I’ve been enjoying a change of pace with my photography work.  I’ve been having a great time working on the portrait side of the business.  Today we have some fun shots taken from a shoot with the Maloney Family.  I enjoy taking spontaneous and creative photos that capture the essence of who these girls are at this point in their lives.  Milk mustaches are cool!

The results of this capturing of these little characters runs the full gamut.  From a young girl busting out her best senior portrait pose at age 9, to another child in the midst of an uncooperative meltdown at age 4!  I love the pouty face behind the horse; it cracks me up every time!

Another great thing is shooting in the middle of a favorite activity!  When the paints come out there is certainly going to be fun to be had!

Especially when we get to face paint on Mom!  Now here is something that doesn’t happen every day, that’s for sure!

Finally we have an action sequence of a cartwheel.  I love motion and spontaneity!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about unique ways to get family portraits outside. Just having clients stand in front of the mountains can be a little limiting creatively. It can also be difficult to get young ones to cooperate at exactly the right time. I find that making an adventure out of the photo shoot is a great way to make kids thing the photo shoot is just one big game. Which it really is!

So for this shoot we hauled the family couch out through the backyard and set it smack dab in the middle of a Boulder County biking/hiking trail outside the clients’ Gunbarrel home. The kids brought out a few props of their own, including a great yellow pool chair.

I was testing out my new RadioPopper flash units today. Unfortunately there appears to be some issues with the firmware. Fortunately they worked well enough that I still got some cool shots. I started off with some shots of the parents while I was getting things set up.

After that we got everyone on the couch and let them interact. I shoot for a blend between the posed shots and moments captured in a photojournalist style.

The little boy’s attention span for photography was not very long, so I was happy to be able to get these shots!

But after the brother/sister together shots, I had a really fun time shooting creative shots with the daughter in the bright yellow chair. Fun! I love the attitude of the young model that she is throwing around.

That’s all for another blog entry here. I’m back at a wedding today, see you next time.

The difficult part about this time of year is it’s too easy to tell when I’m behind on my blogging!  In the summer I can get away with it . . . so lets just pretend it’s warm and sunny with pretty fall colors, and not negative 5 billion, OK?

About a month ago my girlfriend was house sitting for her parents.  Since all of their children are grown up and out of the house, the plethora of fallen leaves in their backyard were untouched.  When I saw the beautiful back yard full of leaves, I knew that I needed to do an impromptu shoot. I had seen pictures of my friend Issac’s boy on the old camera phone during some of our mountain bike adventures, and knew that he would be just the candidate!

I did quite a bit of racking and surprised Isaac, Erin and Logan with a gigantic pile of leaves. In fact, I was a bit over-zealous.  I thought that I remembered Logan to be 4 years old . . .  WRONG!   As it turns out he’s two and change, and the leaf pile was taller than he was!  I think in this next shot he look like a little stuffed animal, almost too cute to be real!

Another reason that the yard is such an epic location, they have an old car buried in the trees.  I’m for sure going to have to do another shoot with it in the future.

Christmas card photo!  Oh shoot, did I ruin the surprise?

For the record, I also predict young Logan will grow to be an awesome mountain biker, just like his dad. Never hurts to plant the seed early on! Check out Logan’s 2 wheeler!  Pure Boulder child, 300 dollar German wood bike!

At this point in time, I’m really starting to wonder if Logan isn’t some sort of reincarnated movie star.  How does he know to work the camera like that?

“Hello, North Face?  Yes, this is Steve Z, world famous child modeling agent.  I have a boy here who you have to check out . . . ”

I was hanging out at my photographer friend Bobbie Turner’s house on a warm Sunday evening when his family was getting ready to play on the slip and slide.  I had just returned from an afternoon wedding and I had all of my photo equipment on hand to capture the kids having a great time.  I wound up getting some pretty humorous photos!  I spent the extra time to set up some strobes to the sides of the Slip and Slide to really light up the water droplets.  Good times, but the only sad part is that I was shooting and not getting gymnastic on it myself!