I can feel it, summer isn’t far off!
With the time change, its lighter longer. The weather is starting to shape up and we can actually spend time outside.
We can do photo sessions outdoors without jackets, gloves, hats, crying/cold children!!
I cannot wait for spring and summer to get here, we got a nice little taste of that at this session… pure joy!
Meet Valerie and her son, Joe…
Valerie lives next door and her son, Joe, and my daughter, Allie, have become best buds. Such good buds, Allie is determined her and Joe will be getting married in the future, she’s just “waiting for a ring”. It’s cute… but scary how fast they grow up!
Valerie’s hubby, Dave, is currently deployed and won’t be back till June… she wanted to have some pictures taken of her and Joe to send to him. So we headed out east of Colorado Springs to where she boards her horse and had a blast playing around on the farm. It was a gorgeous March day, the sun was shining and we couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Joe looks incredibly handsome in his cowboy hat and Valerie always looks gorgeous! I look forward to doing a session with them once Dave returns this summer, so keep your eyes open for this cute family later this year!
Amanda, Lenee and Britney were so much fun, and you can totally tell from their session! Amanda wanted funky, graffiti wall type pictures and I think we did a good job making that happen! Britney didn’t want to let go of her Dora book, but that’s okay … it captures the moment! Lenee is a beautiful young lady and was a great help with her little sister!
Thanks Amanda, for allowing me to photograph you and your beautiful girls!
Seeing these four together again brings such joy to my heart. Mark just got back from his third tour in Iraq. I am so happy (and relieved!) that he made it home safely… I photographed the Shepherds right before Mark left for Iraq and then again just now when he returned. It was a great pleasure to photograph them again… after that long year apart put behind them, them knowing their family will always be together from here on out!
And thank you to Mark… who has sacrificed so much to serve his country. To keep us safe… you are a true American hero and I feel honored to call you a friend!
Colby and Becca were so much fun to work with… we didn’t have a location in mind, I met them at Colby’s house and we just jumped in the car and drove around… very spontaneous and we found lots of neat little places to take pictures! They are so cute together, so in love… and were willing to do anything I asked them, gotta’ love that in a client!
Colby’s little brother, Jack, wanted to join in on some of the fun too!
16 hours of photography, lots of laughter, and a lifetime of memories later, I give you: The Rowdiest Wedding We’ve ever Captured.
Emily and Neil (whom you might remember from their cute and fun engagement portraits) did their wedding right!
First of all, they chose to have in the most meaningful place to them in their relationship: Grand Lake, CO. It’s where Neil proposed and where they love to escape from their hectic city lives as often as possible. Charlotte and I loved Grand Lake: it has that small town feel like my hometown of Fairplay, but it has so much more stuff to do (boating and skiing in the same town?!?)!
Second of all, they booked Charlotte and I for unlimited photography, which meant instead of being on a time-line, the vast majority of their day could be a lot more relaxed and chill. Without unlimited photography, we would never have captured Neil being thrown in the freezing lake after breakfast, we would not have had time for the couple and their wedding party to stop for cocktails between the formals and couple photography, and we definitely wouldn’t have been able to go to the after-reception-party at the bar at midnight.
But there was a certain apstect to this wedding that can’t be planned or purchased: the indomitable fun-loving spirits of their family and friends. Absolutely, positively, no question about it: Emily and Neil’s friends and family were the most fun loving, high energy group of people we’ve ever seen at a wedding. And it was everyone! No aunt or uncle, grandparent, parent, college pal, or work buddy stayed sitting in their chairs. Everybody danced and sang and drank and laughed and partied hard all night. It was amazing.
And I often brag about the caliber of people we get as clients, and I think this wedding is a testimony to that as great people attract great friends and usually come from great families. The success of a wedding really does come down to attitude and personality. There were so many things that could have dampened everybody’s jubilant moods: rain sprinkled and threatened all day long, gusty cold winds tore through Grand Lake in the evening, the outdoor reception got so cold (in June) it had to be moved inside, the indoor reception was so cramped and impromptu that it must have been 90 degrees in that room. But did any of that affect anybody? Not in the slightest!
I couldn’t fit all the photos I loved from the day in our little sample gallery, but I’ve included some more of my favorites in the slideshow below:
For those of you who don’t know, I spent my formative years (jr. high and high school) in a little place known as South Park (Fairplay, CO to be exact). It was in interesting place to spend your teen-aged years, seeing as it was a town of 500 people and all…
Erin and Brian are from South Park, too. So their wedding was like a school reunion, if not a town reunion! It was really fun to see everyone from back in the day. It was very uplifting to see that there doesn’t seem to be much of a “small town curse” for anyone. We’ve all moved on to some pretty awesome things: I mean, Erin and Brian are both in law school (sheesh, more lawyers), and that’s after Brian graduated from the Air Force Academy and Erin already has a degree in civil engineering. Pretty good you, two…
Say, has anyone noticed that high school’s 4 years seemed to take forever, and although we’ve been out of it for over double that amount of time… it almost feels shorter? Anyway, I digress…
This was the first wedding of the “official” 2009 wedding season, and it was a wet one, which has set the tone for pretty much every other wedding this year. Dodging rain for the ceremony, worried brides, teasing sprinkles, downright rain. Thankfully, the ceremony was dry and perfect, but we struggled with rain for the before and after ceremony shots. It was actually pouring rain during the couple photos, and Erin and Brian were troopers, and the photos turned out stunning even though we all were getting soaked (one of the joys of an outdoor ranch wedding…)!
Thank you both so much. Charlotte and I had so much fun at your wedding, and it was great to see everybody from South Park!
This one was a wintertime adventure, for sure. It was freezing for one, and poor Terra was sick. She’d fallen ill like the second she arrived in Colorado (from Texas). In fact, it was really cold for me and Charlotte, so all these Texans must have thought it was terrible. I was sure we were in for a really challenging day.
However, I was proven wrong, time and time again. Not only were the spirits of the entire family really, really high, but Terra was a dream bride. Her attitude was so great, even though you could tell she didn’t feel well. She even insisted we still shoot outdoors at the garden of the Gods regardless of the fact that it was freezing. And boy did it pay off! You see, the wonderful thing about photographs is the telltale hints of freezing cold: the breath, the wind, can all be minimized. I mean, obviously it looks cold in their photos, but it’s not nearly as cold looking as it actually was. And that’s due to how great their attitudes were. Daniel and Terra could have looked miserable in the photo above, but instead they’re beaming and joyful. What a blessing to have clients like we do!
Thank you so much for choosing Trystan Photography, Terra and Daniel. We had a blast at your wedding!
This wedding was a wedding of firsts for 2008.
It was the first wedding with truly Fall/Winter weather with dreary cold rain. Did I mention it was cold?
Also, it was the first wedding we photographed with our new assistant, Julia. Our former assistant, Kim Harms, is now our associate photographer (stay tuned loyal blog readers, you’re gonna find out all about Kim’s new role here in the coming weeks!), so we needed to find a new assistant for our weddings, to groom and train accordingly.
Well, here’s where it gets complicated: Julia was originally a bride, who booked with us about 4 months ago. At our booking meeting, she revealed that while she may be an office professional by day, she really… really, liked photography, and she’d always had this little fantasy about doing it professionally. Her enthusiasm and passion was palpable, and apparent.
However, as many of the local photography and arts students, who have applied for an assistant job here, know very well, we don’t take in just anyone. In fact, we’ve hired none of the photographers who have contacted us. While many of them have had great portfolios, there was usually something missing. A certain, unnameable compatibility that was simply lost from our interactions, and simply wasn’t apparent in their portfolios.
Well, we weren’t about to to it any differently with Julia. We told her she needed to put together a portfolio, and contact us again when she was ready. Well hardly two weeks had gone by and Julia was back. She was obviously nervous, and began making apologies about her portfolio before I’d even seen it. And what she handed me was probably the most haphazard and basic presentation I’ve seen yet. A loose collection of various snapshots, some from film, some from point n’ shoots, and no real connective theme to speak of…
Yet, I hadn’t looked at more than two shots before I realized I was seeing something really interesting, and vaguely familiar. I knew looking through her work that I was seeing a thought process, and “eye” if you will, very similar to Char’s early work.
Frankly, I was stunned. Right there in my nearly shaking hands was that certain “something”, that missing ingredient that had kept me from calling back any of the photographer hopefuls we’d met with over the years. A mild mannered accountant by day, Julia was completely unaware (as far as I could tell) of what a rare and natural gift she’d been born with. Her work clearly showed a keen sense of composition and style, but more importantly, she was adventurous. She wasn’t afraid to play with her photographs, which is the bedrock of what makes Trystan Photography unique!
A sense of adventure is what intitially drew Charlotte and I to Kim Harms’ work. She was realtively new in the industry, but everyday she would update her blog with a new style, a new technique, a different way of looking at the same old shot…
Well, Julia would need all of that, and more, for Audra and Jason’s wedding! Woodmen Valley Stone Chapel is notoriously dark, and Tre Luna is a schizophrenic montage of neo-European/art-deco sensibilities where every surface is a different material, ranging from brick to stucco, to brass to mirrors, and even steel. It’s a really challenging combination of venues and lighting scenarios. Put that together with the fact that we had to work with a really dreary cold day, I think most newbie photographers would have thrown their camera down and run away screaming! But Julia didn’t, and in fact, she had a lovely, positive attitude that worked amazingly well with my goofy effervescence and Char’s nervous excitement.
As for a 1st subject, I think Julia was flat-out spoiled by getting to photograph Audra and Jason. What a gorgeous bride! And they showed such an authentic, relaxed love all day, that made photographing them almost easy. Almost. Except for the wind, and drizzle, and the fact we had to keep taking breaks so the bare-shouldered, bare armed bride could warm up!
What a trooper! Some brides would have succumbed to the weather, but Audra stated without a doubt, “I want outdoor shots!”
Don’t worry about her, though. She had her cuddly new husband to keep her warm, and looking back through the photos as I processed them, I still am amazed at how easy Audra and Jason were to photograph.
Audra. Jason. May your love continue to be so beutiful and inspiring for the rest of your marriage. Thank you for sharing your special day with us, and Julia, the newest addition to Trystan Photography!
Okay, loyal blog readers. Even I’ll admit, I’m getting tired of blogging about it raining at our weddings. I mean, this is Colorado, right? I read photo blogs from all over the world, and not even Seattle photographers say it rained as much as I have this year!
Sadly, this time the rain claimed a victim. It’s the first time in my entire career as a photographer that a well planned, gorgeous outdoor ceremony was completely rained out. We’ve had ceremonies in the rain, but it was a drizzle, or sporadic drops, but Hannah and Matt’s wedding was hit by a real, true downpour that lasted all afternoon. We knew it was coming and we got all of our couple shots done before the rain hit, but we were literally snapping our last frames as everyone ran inside to escape the huge, fat droplets that were falling and spotting her gown.
Hannah tried to be a trooper and put her best face forward, but as the downpour continued on, it became more and more apparent that the outdoor ceremony of her dreams would never happen. Glen Eyrie is a beutiful place, but it’s indoor area, the Great Hall, is more “butch” than “fairytale”", complete with dark rich wood, dark cavernous atmosphere, and mounted hunting tophies filling the walls. Hannah dreaded the idea of being rained out, and seeing her worst fear become reality was too much, and her joyous, giddy exterior began to give way to the sorrow of her dissappointment. She went away to her room to be alone and wait out her last glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, the rain would stop.
But an hour passed, and the staff at Glen Eyrie began to press for a call to be made (chairs had to be set up, sound equiptment moved, lighting arranged), and neither Char and I, nor her family wanted to be the one’s to make the final call and seal the deal.
Finally, once the official call was made, the family sprang into action, and swarmed all over the castle, re-setting every last detail from the outdoor site into the Great Hall. They wanted everything to be just as Hannah would’ve had it, just inside now. Charlotte and I sprang into action as well, metering, testing, and devising a lighting plan than would force as much light, warmth and openness into that dark cavern of a hall as possible.
I always brag that Charlotte and I have enough experience and expertise that we can photograph anything, anywhere, and this was our chance to prove it. I felt everything was riding on these photos. Hannah would be crushed if her sunny outdoor dream wedding metamorphosed into something more dark and Gothic. But if Charlotte and I could capitalize on the available lighting and access it just right with our strobes, then we could present it more as a true fairytale castle wedding and emphasize the grandeur of the hall, and not it’s coldness.
Well, long story short, it really didn’t matter where the wedding was held because has soon as Hannah appeared, every last bit the glowing and happy bride, Matthew was crying, and then Hannah was crying, and then everybody was crying. I had only taken a few frames when I began to realize that it looked so amazing and warm at the altar, almost as if Hannah had brought a little bit of sun into the hall with her!
The ceremony was so moving it verged on the ridiculous. First of all, Hannah comes from a family of ministers, and her brother officiated the ceremony as her father gave her away, and then he would be the officiant. But before that, her brother sang a little song about his sister (quite well)… and I was done. Cried like a baby. As I wiped tears from my eyes I realized that we weren’t even 10 minutes in, and I was already emotionally drained.
Once Hannah’s dad took over, it was your classic wedding ceremony. That is, until Hannah suddenly was handed a microphone and she was off and running with a song about Matthew… and she sang like an angel. So then I was begging to realize that not only this was her whole family attractive and nice folk, but they all could sing like the dickens, too!
Have any of you ever felt that little twinge of jealousy when you see a seemingly perfect and wholesome family, and then find out they are really good at something like music, or sports, or dancing, or…
Wait a minute.
The Osmonds! They were Colorado’s version of The Osmonds! I don’t know why I’m only realizing this now, but that’s what they were. Good looking, talented. In fact, they were too good looking and too talented.
But I digress…
In the end, as I look back at the photos, I am so thankful that we were able to capture that amazing wedding like we did. We captured the magic, romance and grandeur it deserved. Would it have been best if we’d been able to shoot outside as planned? Sure. But I’m sure that after it’s all been said and done, with the whole wedding behind them, Hannah and Matthew probably think their wedding was perfect, and wouldn’t change a thing.
… and neither would I.
