If you too, are in need of some holiday family portraits for Christmas cards, you best contact me pronto! Winter is almost here and I have many dates already scheduled with a ski pass, and a plane ticket to South America on the horizon.

Olivia was looking for some shots that featured urban backgrounds, including a graffiti wall. Fortunately I know the weird little back corners of Boulder like the back of my hand, so I’m able to come up with new locations all the time. Often I find new spots that I wasn’t even planning on, such as the barbed wire and Airstream trailer combination in this shoot. Badass.

After spending some time on the big scenery, I like to take the kids over to the grassy park and the playground for some candid moments and more importantly some fun. These perfectly imperfect portraits capture the unique personalities of these two girls. Over near the playground, the “dollhouse” is a great spot to capture some of those sparkly eye photos that every mom cherishes. So there you have it, another colorful, energetic and fun family portrait session in the books!

One of the key components to creating a simple, elegant portrait was lighting Karla with natural light to give her skin a soft, flattering glow. In the outside photos, I chose north and west facing walls as backgrounds, since those directions provide the best light in the late morning. Of course directional window light works well at any time of day, so we did some shots indoors beside a window.

The backgrounds themselves were textured single-colored building walls in downtown Boulder. This ensured that the portrait would focus on Karla, and not a complicated composition.  The final and perhaps most important element of the portrait session was to capture her in relaxed and natural poses that are not over the top fashion, nor cutesy senior portrait. Karla made my job easy, and was able to drop into a relaxed and comfortable posture despite an onslaught of bad jokes thrown at her by the photographer.

We managed to steal two hours of perfect weather in an otherwise rainy week. The natural light is often at it’s best when the clouds have parted after a storm, and the shoot was a perfect example. Melissa looked absolutely radiant in the field of yellow wildflowers. After capturing some soft and natural portraits, we moved on to capture the dramatic clouds and Flatirons scenery with some off camera lighting.

I was happy to help two friends create memories of this special time in their lives. In another few weeks I will moving on to another first … newborn photos!

Part of the appeal of being a location portrait photographer is finding new, creative places to shoot. I enjoy the challenge inherent in discovering compelling scenery, interesting buildings, and unusual props to add visual interest to my portraits. Boulder is not a huge town, so I often venture beyond the city limits to achieve this. I’m usually looking for somewhere that I can combine Colorado mountain scenery with unexpected architecture and buildings that allow me to use light as a powerful element in the portrait.

Tracy and Cotton were up for the adventure of having their engagement photos taken in an unknown location, so we headed out to a rustic farm north of town. My two favorite spots were the grain silo and the barn. The radial symmetry of the silo combined with a super wide 14mm lens created a very striking composition. Inside the barn, the sunlight streamed in through cracks in the vertical wood siding, allowing me to play with different light and shadow patterns. The trick was to balance off camera lighting so the couple was illuminated without losing the shadows.

In addition to the architecture on the farm,  I also captured some of the beauty of the Front Range mountains in the evening with a scenic landscape image that will look great on the cover of their Guest Signing Album. It’s also important to bring in some humor and unplanned action into a shoot, so I included an image of the goat petting session. What’s an engagement shoot without farm animals anyway?

Happy Monday, and welcome to a standout family portrait shoot from Gunbarrel Colorado. This portrait session was a little different than most, in that the kids were no longer kids. When shooting a group of adults, I do more advanced planning than if I was shooting young children – Nick and Lauren were unlikely to run around playing in the field, after all. I’ve found that props coupled with interesting backdrops provide an engaging blend of extra interest for these types of sessions. In the case of the Stockwells, the fabulous family Fiat was the perfect accessory.

The weather was looking a little marginal in the time leading up to the shoot, which turned out to be a good thing. The rain held out and I got some dramatic clouds over the Continental Divide to work with. The top shot is going to make a fantastic wall portrait for their home. I used high power strobes to light everyone, as well as the 1976 Fiat Spyder in this backlit sunset composition.

After the big scenic shots, we took some natural light portraits of everyone in front of an eclectic old farm building.