Vail Event Photography - 3 x 40th Birthday Party at Bol, Vail Village

Up in these mountains, you'll find that most residents would consider themselves more Country Mouse than City Mouse.  If we have to wait behind five cars at a roundabout, we complain about the traffic.  

We do miss some of the big city luxuries though.  Luckily we have Bol.  It's a bowling alley in Vail Village and it's about the most cosmopolitan place you'll find around here.  

When Brandon contacted me about shooting a 40th birthday party, I had no idea that it was 3 x 40th birthdays combined.  I was later told that these three guys had been born at the same hospital at the same time and they've been throwing elaborate birthday parties together ever since.  

Friends from all over the country, from every phase of their three lives flew in to help these boys celebrate.  They brought in their own DJ, turned the lights down on the lanes and let the good times roll - bad pun intended.

Side note...I may or may not have been humming Marilyn Manson's 'The Beautiful People' throughout the night.  Such a good looking group!

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Vail Commercial Photographer - High Altitude Crossfit, Gypsum, CO

Summer is officially here, which means peak season for photos in the mountains has begun.  It also means that catching up on blogging and social media is a welcome break from all of the editing!

I always love to do a good commercial photography session.  It's a welcome change from the day to day and it requires some quick thinking on your feet, with as much creativity as you can muster.  My recent shoot for High Altitude Crossfit in Gypsum was all of the above and then some.  I like to work out a few times a week with my own awesome posse of fierce ladies, but these guys take it to a whole new level.  All before the sun has even come up!

The trickiest part of the shoot was the lighting.  Half of the gym was in really low light and there was little to no light coming in through the small windows.  Using a flash was not an option because you definitely don't want to temporarily blind someone while they're lifting insane amounts of weight. I was also trying to capture the movement with no blur.  The only answer was to turn up the ISO and use my 50mm 1.4 fixed lens at the lowest f stop possible without getting shakey.  The results were a much darker color scale than you'd see in my outdoor family photos, but it also gives them some great shadow, richer colors and a moody feel.  

Kudos to these great athletes!

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Lifestyle/Travel/Fashion Blog Shoot with Melanie - Vail Village

Melanie contacted me recently about shooting for her blog, Something Dashing, with the directive of capturing the essence of Vail Village and The Sebastian Hotel while she was staying in town.  Of course I was excited to help her grab some images around our little resort, especially with her precious pup Mia.

We started out at the hotel, taking in the gorgeous decor in the lobby before heading out to do a walk around some of  Vail's better and lesser known landmarks.  The beauty of The Sebastian is that everything is in close walking distance.  We were able to shoot at The International Bridge, Gondola 1, Golden Peak and Gorsuch before ending our session at The Covered Bridge.  

It was Mia's first time in the snow.  It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how excited a husky pup would be to see the snow!  She was ecstatic to say the least.

Here are a few photos from our session.

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