On Saturday, Hailey and I did a family portrait shoot with the Halls — Bryce, Marni, Oliver and Harrison — at their Centennial home. Marni is my sister-in-law’s sister; she was the maid of honor at Ben and Amy’s wedding while I was the best man.  So we’ve known each other for roughly 15 years, and it’s such a treat to see her and her wonderful family these days, especially since Hailey and I are expecting in March, making their two-month-old son Harrison an automatic play buddy for our baby.

We did much of the shoot in their front room, which for me was conveniently empty and east facing, making it very studio-like with lots of natural light (yes!). Their two-year-old son Oliver took only a few minutes to warm up to us (after all, it had been a few months since we last hung out). He showed us some of his awesome toys in his play room, and then he had fun jumping off an ottoman onto a massive, pillowy, stuffed sheep chair. He’s also a natural in front of the camera. Look at that smile and pose!

Harrison was born just two months ago, and he’s at that super sweet age where his eyes search everything and he’s smiling a bit. The blanket in these images below was knitted by Harrison’s grandmother, Linda (Bryce’s mom).

After the shoot at their house, and a little lunch, we all went to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. This place is awesome. Locomotives and cabooses of all kinds, a Galloping Goose engine that makes circuits, and all sorts of memorabilia in the gift shop. I’m not a model-train collector by any stretch, but we’re definitely hitting this place up when our child is old enough to love it like Oliver does.

Thanks to Marni and Bryce for such an awesome shoot. Really fun, really engaging and easy-going. What more could a photographer ask for? We had a blast!

And here is the final set from Jacqie and Ken’s wedding. You can see parts 1 and 2 here. We did portraits at the church and then moved to their reception at The Ridge at Castle Pines North. Beautiful spot.

Congratulations to both of them. It was an honor to photograph their wedding … here’s to many happy years to come.

(Click on each image for a larger view)

Jacqie and Ken were married on August 12 in Castle Rock. Here is part 2, with images from the ceremony and immediately after.

At my wedding, my brother’s words to me before walking down the aisle were “on occasions like this, there’s no difference between the sacred and the profane.” Things don’t go perfectly, and that’s part of the fun. I love the spontaneity of shooting a wedding, and the pictures above capture one of those moments. During the ceremony, a bridesmaid’s hair clip got caught in the maid of honor’s veil. It brought a few chuckles in the front pew, and a round of smiles from Jacqie and Ken.

I’ll have more portraits and images from the reception later this week.

Jacqie and Ken got married on August 12th in Castle Rock, and Hailey and I were honored to be their photographers. You may remember their engagement setting at Confluence Park back in March. At that time, it was clear these two were meant for each other. Both were easy going, funny, and full of laughs, and amazingly enough, that’s exactly how they were on their wedding day, too.

Here are images from before the ceremony. I’ll devote posts in the coming days to the service, portraits and reception.

As with all of my posts, you can view a larger version by clicking on each image … especially handy for the huge bridesmaid collage I have below.

Summer’s end is certainly weighing heavily on me these days. Not that I can’t handle the cold — it’s that I can’t handle the torrid pace of life. September: it’s next week. My God.

It’s been a snap-happy time for me and my shutter release. There was the trip to Steamboat Springs for the Balloon Rodeo, the remarkable reunion of the Reitzugs, a portrait session with Michaelanne Dehner, and three weddings (only one of which I’ve had time to post just yet). In the midst of it all, I managed to go backpacking zero times. I’m fairly certain I won’t even get a chance next summer either, but “woah is me.” I live in Colorado, one of the world’s most beautiful places, and I’m healthy and so is Hailey, and the future: oh, it couldn’t be brighter.

So, without more rambling, here are summer’s loose ends of photographs — little spare bits that didn’t quite fit into the story line of any blog posts, whether past or future. At the top, glacier lilies near Buffalo Pass. In early July, I went hiking with Tim Lamberton (below right) and bagged my 21st wilderness area — the midway point to bagging all of them in Colorado.

At left is me at my favorite place in Colorado — Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. We stopped there en route to New Mexico for the family reunion. My cousin Nick, his wife Guilia and their adorable son Lorenzo (below) paid us a visit for a few days before hand, and since they were coming from Rome, well, how could you not see the Great Sand Dunes? We had to go, and Lorenzo had to fulfill his playing-in-the-muck quotient for this trip to America.

Once in New Mexico, we did countless things — among them the ambitious white seamless project, but we also did a half-day bug hunt with the fourth generation. That’s my nephew Isaiah (below right), pointing at the grasshoppers. The Nuggets jersey? His favorite piece of clothing. He doesn’t know who the Denver Nuggets are, let alone the first thing about basketball. He loves it because his favorite food is chicken nuggets. I love that boy.

And finally, a few golf shots from our recent trip to Idaho for Adam Huggins’ wedding. That’s Adam (below left), teeing up on the eighth at Sun Valley’s amazing golf course.

The views from the course — like this one from the second tee — were astounding. I love Idaho. Plan to go back when we have kids.

And as for golf course photography … yeah, I could definitely get into that.

Thanks for letting me have an indulgent and aimless blog post. Coming up: more from Adam and Tess’ wedding, a trash the dress shoot with Jodi and John, and a whole slew of great shots from Jacqie and Ken’s wedding.

(Click on each photo for a larger version)

Last week I was able to get a post up on my Mom’s amazing family, The Reitzugs — mainly, generations 1 and 2. Well, they’re back on the blog, this time, generations 3 (which I belong to) and 4. Rather than try to make sense of this massive family tree, I’ll just do this.

ABOVE: Elsa, daughter of my cousin Holly Rydel … I think I’ll entitle this sequence After Effects of a Blue Raspberry Lollipop.

ABOVE: Aidan, Jimmy and Nick Reitzug, sons of the oldest cousin in my generation, Joe Reitzug and his wife Stephanie.

ABOVE: Mark, Peter and Damian, three of the four Leonard boys (their brother Andrew, couldn’t make it to the reunion due to his house selling). As you can probably note from their choice in sunglass styles, they’re all outdoor-active types. Mark and Peter schooled me in soccer on the final night and they were, um … well, my teammates.

ABOVE: Mr. Andrew Gunnison Day. My nephew, my bud, and popular star of such previous blog posts as Us Kids Know and Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitchers.

ABOVE: Byron Lillie and Kate Balerud. Kate took the 40D from me at the tail end of the photo shoot and did a sequence of shots of Hailey and I jumping in the air in front of the white backdrop. Through no fault of Kate’s, they will not be posted on this blog. Let’s just say that I look like a complete bozo.

ABOVE: Alex Reitzug, son of Aunt Maria, trampoline extraordinaire and a fellow photog.

ABOVE: Isaiah and Jeremiah Day, my nephews. See also Us Kids Know and Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitchers.

ABOVE: Amy Bierman and Randy Rydel (left); Rebecca Reitzug (right). Amy and Randy are roughly the same age as Hailey and I, and we spent a good deal of time hanging out with them at the reunion, including two memorable meals in downtown Santa Fe. I also got to know Rebecca better this go around … we’re about 10 years apart, but with each reunion, those age gaps matter less.

ABOVE: Quinlan and her mom, Mary Beth TeSelle. At left, Quinlan is showing off her fabulous Fourth-of-July-themed rub-on tattoo.

ABOVE: Nick and Guilia Reitzug with their son Lorenzo (left); Stela Reitzug (right). Nick and Guilia live in Rome, and were kind enough to host us for a few nights when we visited last year. This year, we got a chance to reciprocate in Denver, and carpool down to the reunion in New Mexico (with a stop at the Great Sand Dunes). My cousin Stela is headed to Kosovo right now for missionary work. She’s originally from Albania, so the trip is holding great significance for her.

ABOVE: Elsa with her grandpa Mat (left); my mom Angie with her oldest brother Henry (right). OK, so this isn’t generations 3 and 4 as promised, but I had to include them because they are two of my absolute favorite shots. If you are wondering where my preoccupation with cameras comes from, look no further than the ‘Zugs.

And finally, I have to include a shot Hailey took of me with my mom Angie and brother Ben. Dad had to return to Denver the day before, so we’ll have to do a reshoot to get the true family portrait.

As soon as the family book and family tree are done, you know me, I’ll get another blog post up. I loved this gig, and am looking forward to shooting more family reunions, especially with the white backdrop.

Contact me if I can offer this service at one of your own family reunions.

So we stopped at the Evergreen Hotel (above) which has a good old fashioned Western lobby. These seats seemed perfectly situated for royalty.

We also did a series of portraits outside on the covered patio that stretches from the hotel to the Little Bear Tavern, a roadhouse bar with a raucous vibe. After the shoot, John and Jodi ducked into the tavern where a lot of their guests were already passing an hour or two between the ceremony and reception. The roadhouse band on stage crooned a bit of Elvis for the newlyweds, and they had the first of three first dances. Little was going accordingly to plan, but that’s weddings for you. Spontaneity is the key.

By 6pm, the party moved the Evergreen Lake House and the weather eased a bit. Here’s Jodi dancing with Dad. They had a tremendous band called Alive on Arrival.

The below cupcake was an additional treat to the cake, and Jodi and John were generous to include two for Hailey and I. I normally don’t care for sweets, but I’d drive 100 miles to eat one again.

All in all, a beautiful day. You can see a bigger portfolio of images on my portfolio site, and please leave a comment in the box below if you are a guest and would like me to send you the link to their Pictage image gallery where you can see the complete set and order prints. Please be sure to include your email.

Congratulations to John and Jodi.

Jodi, John and I met back in April at a coffeehouse in Denver to collaborate and discuss the details. It was clear early on that their love of the mountains, the outdoors and nature was a central part of their lives and would be reflected on their big day.

So Jodi asked that before the ceremony, we get a picture of her dress hanging from a pine tree.

We had just enough time before the rains set in to do a round of pre-ceremony portraits. This has been an unusually wet summer in Colorado, and this day was no exception. The skies were fairly cloudy through about 2pm and then the rains came in for a good four hours. However, I’ve always heard that rain on a wedding day is good luck, and I believe it: It rained on my wedding day!

Jodi’s cousin Amy designed the programs to the wedding (above).

Later this week, I’ll post more images of the post-ceremony shots from the Evergreen Hotel, the Little Bear (a local hangout where they popped in for a bit) and the reception.

We were there for the weekend of the Balloon Rodeo, a festival devoted to all things colorful and filled with hot air. What’s a balloon rodeo you say? Well, I’m not sure entirely, but based on attending the event, I think it goes like this: 30 balloons take flight during the first 90 minutes of daylight, and if the wind doesn’t send them down the valley, they compete in goofy games like a beanbag toss. Cattle, broncos and clowns have nothing to do with it … and PETA is no where to be found either.

Many of these shots were taken by my lovely wife Hailey, as she attended both Saturday and Sunday mornings’ festivities. (I went hiking all day with my buddy Tim Lamberton on Saturday…pics of that to come later).

As you’ll notice from many of my posts, Steamboat Springs is becoming a go-to hangout for us. We have access to a condo up there, and since its a good three hours from Denver, it’s right in that sweet spot: close enough to be convenient, far enough away to fully unplug.

Along for the trip were Hailey’s parents, our good friend Jenny Jordan (minus her husband Matt, who was at U.S. Nationals for Fencing) and the Lambertons. We drove up Friday, looked for moose on Rabbit Ears Pass, dined downtown, hiked Saturday while everyone else went to the Balloon Rodeo and the Art Fair, and then Sunday we all went tubing down the Yampa River. Sunday night’s drive home was a bit mournful — I’m increasingly having a harder time leaving the mountains after a weekend like that.

So anyway, back to the rodeo.

The balloons’ mass ascension takes place in a field just south of town. One of the “rodeo tasks” is to lift off, then dip the basket into this lake and lift back up again.

We also learned that the Upper Yampa River Valley is ideal for ballooning because of its “box winds.” At lower elevations, the winds take you down valley, but as you get higher up, they take you back up the valley. Doesn’t always work, but when it does, it saves gas for the chase vehicle.

OK, coming up I’ll have images from my day hike with Tim, photographs from John and Jodi Hardee’s wedding, plus a very personal project that involves the white seamless and almost everyone from my mom’s side of the family.

It took roughly five minutes on the ground in Léon to ditch any lingering fear I had about traveling in Mexico. I’d love to point to one symbolic thing that put me at ease — a child releasing a white dove by the side of the road, or something ridiculous like that — but I can’t. It was just a feeling. Got bags, cleared immigration, found a taxi, we’re moving. OK, it’s go time. We’re on vacation. We’re traveling. Look: a Pollo Feliz billboard.

Soon, the taxi driver was excitedly conversing with Hailey about Guanajuato and the heat. Hace mucho calor, verdad? My Spanish is spotty, but I was catching the drift. I was still wearing jeans from an early start in Denver, and now the heat was making me regret it. This I resolved to change as soon as we checked in.

The highway between Léon and Guanajuato was finding a fold in the landscape and climbing into a dusty canyon speckled with dead-looking trees and colorful houses: the outskirts of the city. There was a festive air to Guanajuato on this Friday afternoon, and it was readily apparent even on the fringes of the city. Families were out in the plazas and in the parks, doing things together in the hot April sun. It was Viernes de Dolores, the Friday of Sorrows, just two days shy of Palm Sunday and the first in a chain of holy events we’d experience during our time in Mexico. In fact, despite being curious agnostics, Semana Santa was the whole reason Hailey and I were coming to Guanajuato and later visiting San Miguel de Allende. The celebrations and pageantry were something I had read about and wanted to photograph for some time. My religion didn’t matter, just the desire to witness an intense cultural celebration and learn from it. Little did I know just how much I would learn.

By the entrance to the Hotel Antiguo Vapor was an altar to the Virgin Mary, decorated in papel picado, clipped flowers and candles. By nightfall we had seen dozens of these shrines, some decorated in sawdust, others with dried food like corn and beans. All of them were intensely purple — a sovereign color that would mark the days of our travels through Easter — and all of them were centered on a portrait of Mary.

At first glance, the shrines seemed to be in the background of Guanajuato’s festive atmosphere. Our introductory walk through town led us by an endless stream of food vendors, street musicians and comically overburdened toy salesmen who catered to moms and dads and children who were cramming as much fun as they could into their day off. Our wanderings lead us to the El Pípila monument — one of the most impressive city overlooks I’ve ever visited — and it too was crawling with families and permeated with the vendors who were capitalizing on their hunger, their thirst, and their desire for simple but amusing toys.

But the solemnity of the Viernes de Dolores emerged at nightfall. We had negotiated our way through the streets to Plazuela de San Fernando and dined on a molcajete filled with steak, chorizo, chicken, onions and nopales. Slap the ingredients on a corn tortilla, drop a spoonful of salsa verde across the top and you have one of Guanajuato’s signature dishes. We would have an even better one two days later at La Botellita, which included pineapples. But as dinner wrapped up, a cacophony of drummers echoed from Iglesia de San Roque, a yellow and red church just a block away. Soon, a massive procession of drummers of all ages entered the square, followed by an altar with a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, dressed in purple robes and bedecked with flowers. The altar was too tall to pass underneath the phone and electrical wires draped across the narrow streets. So, it was an individual’s task to follow the altar with a large, forked stick and lift the loose wires for Mary to pass beneath.

It was the trip’s first instance of serendipity. It’s second would follow on the heels of the parade. After we watched the parade continue into the heart of the city, we opted to walk back to the hotel — a bit fatigued and a bit comotose from the molcajete. We got a mere 100 yards before we discovered a crowd of people congregated around a stage set beneath Iglesia de San Roque. Merry mariachi music filled the air, and on stage, eight couples danced in a beautiful performance of baile folklórico. They pranced with gleeming smiles, and while it was so quintessentially Mexican in its colors, its sounds and its movements, it was also chivalrous and nostalgic, the kind of display that allows the audience to reach back for simpler times.

Behind the audience, Guanajuato crawled up the hillside like a colorful array of Legos piled toward the stars. My feet were tired, and I was a bit dehydrated, but I was happy to be standing there. After all, we’d thought about cancelling the trip because of safety concerns. After all, Edward James Olmos — the guy who played Selena’s dad! — said “don’t go to Mexico…anywhere.”

I can tell you right now: from where I sit and from what I experienced in Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, go to this part of Mexico. It is so very worth it.