I am typically shooting families, mostly families with young children. But this request was special - two sisters, both going through major life changes and moving away from eachother.
“Can we bring our dogs? ”
Dogs? If there is anything better than capturing the raw emotion of humans, its capturing the raw, innocent, and loving nature of pups AND their humans. So of course, the answer was YES!
“We want two things; snow & mountains as the backdrop.”
Lucky for us, it started snowing early this season so the high peaks have a good base and I suggested we drive up Castle Creek Rd. in Aspen, Colorado to the base of Pearl Pass to get some shots. Not only would this accomplish the two things that they requested, but the landscape, fencing, and old haunted cabins that make up the ghost town of Ashcroft would make for the most perfect backdrop to their ‘western’ theme. The sisters arrived at the shoot with coordinating hats of all kinds - just my style! I am always surprised by how prepared, or sometimes unprepared people are for shoots and just how much thought they have put into the shoot before it happens. Clearly Emily hit up Pinterest and wasn’t wasting an opportunity to have her sister and this backdrop line up perfectly.
I always need a bit of ‘warm up’ time when I first shoot. Some time to get comfortable with who I’m shooting and some time to let them loosen up a little so we can have some fun with it. The warm up didn’t take long with these two, before I knew it we were cracking up and the emotion i love to capture came naturally.
“Hat swap.”
Before long we were joking that these looked like engagement photos and I’ll be honest, directing sisters to pose in a way that didn’t look “posed” and also didn’t look like engagement photos was a challenge, but one that added lots of laughs and one that I was willing to take. Due to Emily’s Pinterest research (she even made a board, and sent it to me), she had the ‘look’ down and all the outfit changes were on point.
It was 30 degrees at 9am on a Saturday, perfect Colorado bluebird skies (which can sometimes be tough lighting for photos) and we had two pups that weren’t as stoked about the photos as the sisters were. But it all came together and worked out for the best: 300 images of the love these two share. Good luck on your new life adventures, Burke sisters - and thanks for the laughs.