Breckenridge Post-Elopement Session | Rachelle & Tyler

Rachelle and Tyler did the paperwork the simple way: a quick trip to the courthouse, signed and official, no ceremony to plan. Then they came to Breckenridge to actually celebrate it, and booked a post-elopement session to have something to show for the honeymoon.

Rachelle had one request going in: she wanted mountains in the background. We ended up at the south side of Lake Dillon, and the water level worked in our favor. It was low enough that we could walk down onto the exposed shoreline, which gave us two options in the same spot, minimalist shots with the two of them and the lake, and a photo that turned to bring the mountains in behind them. 

October in the high country did not hold back on the weather side either. Within the same session we had snow, rain, and hail, sometimes all three moving through within the hour. That is the trade-off of shooting the mountains in the shoulder season: the light and the drama are unmatched, but the weather does not ask permission.

At one point the rain picked up enough that I set a flash behind the two of them, angled so it caught the rain as it fell. It is a small technical trick, but it is one of my favorite effects in bad weather, because instead of fighting the storm, the camera shows exactly what it was: two people standing in it together, lit up in the middle of it.

They had brought their dog along, and we got a handful of shots in before the weather turned serious enough to put him back in the truck. From there it was just the two of them and the lake, working through hail and snow squalls to get images that would have looked flat on a calm, sunny day.

They were cold. There is no getting around that when it is snowing, raining, and hailing on the same afternoon. But it is also exactly why the images turned out the way they did, and why one of the nicer reviews on my site mentions staying out there with them through it.

Just got married and want something to remember it by? Based in Denver, available throughout Colorado's high country and worldwide.