Albion Basin is My New Favorite Place

I've lived in Utah since I was eight and have always loved all the awesome hiking trails, campgrounds, and wilderness areas. Growing up, I spent all my time on the mountains in Davis County, but for whatever reason never really was introduced to the great canyons and trails in Salt Lake County and other places. Now that I'm an adult and work down the street from Big Cottonwood Canyon, I'm discovering a whole new world full of photographic opportunities.

I recently discovered that Albion Basin (drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon, past Alta Ski resort until the road ends) comes to life late in July/early August with thousands of colorful wildflowers. It's a short, and mild, one mile hike to Cecret Lake. Just hiking this trail would hardly take me any time at all, but with all the photos waiting to be taken, I spent a good three hours to do the 2 mile roundtrip hike. You can see in the pictures how breathtaking the wildflowers are, and I even missed the peak of the wildflower bloom. I'll head back next Spring a little earlier and hopefully get an even bigger dose of wildflowers.

Brock & Cami's Bridals

I posted some pictures a while ago from Brock and Cami's engagements. I also shot their bridals several months ago but just hadn't taken the time to post any of them (and I've since shot their wedding which I'll post soon).

We shot them at the Garden Park Ward building in downtown Salt Lake. It's an LDS Church building that has beautiful landscaping. It's not common for an LDS church building to have landscaping like this, but for some reason this one does, and they let you shoot photos there for free within certain hours. We also headed over to Temple Square to finish up. The pictures turned out great, and Brock and Cami were awesome to work with. They're really light-hearted and were willing to fully dive into any wacky pose I asked them to:

Never Posted Baby Pic

I was looking through my old posts and realized I've never posted my favorite picture of my little girl when she was a newborn! She was only about a month old in this picture, but for whatever reason (and maybe this is just her Dad speaking), but she looks like she is much older. She just seems to be so aware in this picture. Enjoy!

Brock and Cami's Engagements

B&B Bridals

I had another fun photo shoot recently with a couple that's getting married in the next couple of weeks. I shot their engagements back in June up Big Cottonwood Canyon.

The new trend is to shoot pictures of the Bride and Groom in their wedding duds before the wedding. This is a bit untraditional because the Groom sees the Bride in her wedding dress before the wedding, I know, but it makes the wedding day a whole lot less stressful for everybody, photographer included. It eliminates the stress of getting your only pictures on the wedding day, when everything is stressful and going a million miles an hour, and everybody seems to need the attention of the couple, and also provides the opportunity to get some pictures in a cool location other than the wedding location.

This location is at Union Station/Historic 25th St. in Ogden, a very popular place for portraits. We had a ton of fun, even though I was stung by a wasp, the couple looked great, and the pictures turned out really well!

Step by Step Backflip

I don't get to do much sports photography........correction: I don't take the time to do much sports photography......but every once in a while I'll be at a sports event and snap a few pictures. I always come away from these shoots wishing I had a telephoto lens, but end up getting a few good wide angle images. Because my lens selection is limited, some of my favorite pictures to do are the step by step action shots. This process consists of holding the camera in one place, and snapping several back to back shots in rapid succession of an action sequence, and then piecing them together in Photoshop. I love seeing each and every step all laid out in one image.

This is a shot I took at the Ogden Pioneer Days Rodeo. They had the guys from OGIO come and do a little motocross at the very end. This was the final jump of the night, and they saved the best trick for last. If you have any questions about how I do this in Photoshop, let me know and I can give you the details.

Portrait Portfolio

I recently had a friend ask me if I had a portfolio of my portraits that I've shot lately, and it helped me realized that I don't have anything really put together! This blog is the closest thing, but there are a lot of portraits that I haven't ever posted. So, in an effort to display more publically, here are some of favorite portraits that I've shot recently. Some of them are repeats, so I apologize for anyone seeing them for the second time.

Allen & Alexis' Engagements

My Sister's New Little Boy and Her Family's Feet

John & Chrissy's Engagements

Brandon & Brittany's Engagements