This was one of those shoots that was just meant to happen. Craig is an old friend of a friend and we haven't seen each other in years, but when he and his fiancee Bernadette booked me to shoot their 2011 wedding, I was thrilled! We scheduled an engagement session for the day before I was supposed to leave to shoot a Seattle wedding. No problem, I thought. I'll just get home late, I thought. Craig and Bernadette and I talked a little bit about the engagement session and came up with some great ideas and still had everything under control for the first part of the session, which we shot at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville.Then, for the second part of the shoot, we headed up to Turquoise Lake near Leadville. It turns into a dirt road, nothing extreme, but I drive a little VW Golf. With not the best clearance. Also with not the best history of keeping oil pans intact. I heard a big thunk and my stomach dropped and I thought "Oh CRAP. I hope that wasn't what I think it was." So we get down to the parking area for the site and I drop to my hands and knees and look under my car... sure enough, lots of fat black drips of oil. Yes, friends, I hit a rock and cracked my oil pan. Again. A few hours before I'm supposed to drive to the airport. Honestly, my first reaction was just to start laughing hysterically. So I'm sitting in the middle of the dirt road, just cracking up, and Craig reminded me that we should, um, you know, probably get going. We sped back to town, and in the ten or twelve minutes it takes to drive from Turquoise Lake to downtown Leadville, I lost almost HALF of the oil in my engine.

"Well," I laughed. "It's not like I'm going anywhere... we might as well head back and finish the shoot!" So they were kind enough to lend me a mixing bowl to stuff under my car, and I hopped in with them, and we produced one hell of an epic shoot while my car was slowly bleeding to death. When we got back to the house, Bernadette slapped some chewed up gum on the crack and I bought like six quarts of oil and just kept pulling over every ten minutes to pour some more back in. All in all, it was a great night :)

Seriously - these two are so kind, so laid-back, so flexible, and so so great in front of the camera. This has to be one of my favorite engagement sessions ever. Turquoise Lake is gorgeous, but so is the intimate, playful love that Craig & Bernadette share. I know I'm blogging WAY out of order but I sort of felt like I owed them :) I am so thrilled to be a part of their wedding! Congratulations!

Yay! What a great great shoot.

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Theresa and Jason have one of the cutest love stories I have ever heard. Seriously, you can't make up something this good :) A few years ago, Jason was walking past the window of a health foods store when a gorgeous girl caught his eye - she was working the cheese counter inside. To make this story even more perfect, he just so happened to be a wine salesman. He stepped in and nervously tried to make conversation, which went something like this:(Jason) "Ooh, this is good! What's it called?"

(Theresa) "Irish cheddar."

(Jason, trying to be charming) "Where's it from?"

"That's how I still like to think of her," he told me, smiling. "Covered in cheese and laughing at me."

We shot their gorgeous engagement session at the historic Turner Farm in Buena Vista this weekend, and everything about it was absolutely perfect. The light was golden and astounding. The grass was newly green. The wooden farmhouse door swayed open and slammed shut in the breeze. Their puppy, Lulabelle, chased imaginary critters through the orchard. The apple trees in the orchard were blooming like cotton candy.

"You did a great job designing this movie set at the last minute," Theresa joked.

"Okay, can I just stop and cry for a minute?" Jason asked, smiling.

In tribute to their love story, we split a bottle of Beaujolais and had a picnic and hung out in the orchard until sunset. It was epic.