What is an Alt Session?
We’ve been taking photos of couples for the better part of two decades and we’re always pushing ourselves to think outside of the box and do things a bit differently. Several years ago, we realized that most of our engagement sessions were similar. We would take a couple to a mountain park just before sunset and take 60 or so minutes of portraits. They all turned out beautifully, but they also all looked relatively the same. So, we drew a line in the sand and promised ourselves that from then on, we wouldn’t shoot the same session twice and we began thinking up all sorts of cool alternatives to traditional engagement sessions. Hence the birth of Alt Sessions!
Nowadays, instead of standing in a field practicing awkward prom poses, we’ll hang out and do something fun for your Alt Session. Like skiing. Or hiking with your dogs. Or grabbing a drink at your favorite happy hour spot. We have a long list of cool ideas and we never do the exact same shoot twice, so your session will be unique to you.
Our list of ideas can essentially be divided into three categories: epic locations, fun activities and avant-garde shoots.
Some of our favorite “epic location” sessions have been White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico, the ice caves in western Colorado, the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah and the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. And while we think that “epic” is one of the most overused words in the English language today, it’s still the best word to describe these locations (Trust us, we’ve spent hours looking through the thesaurus.)
Examples of activities we’ve photographed include going to watch fireworks, riding around in a tuk-tuk to a bunch of breweries in Denver and touring an antique airplane museum in Palm Springs, CA. Last, but not least, our avant-garde sessions have involved trampolines, colored powder, paint-filled water balloons and many more. There are a million alternatives to traditional engagement sessions we have yet to do, but start by checking out our past shoots below!
Eden and Cade live in Iowa, are getting married in Colorado, and made a special trip to Utah for their Alt Session this past weekend, which is exactly the kind of dedication to photos we love to see! So Jesse and I wanted to make sure this Arches National Park engagement session was completely worth…
One of the things that can make or break a photo shoot is the level of trust a couple has in us. The more a couple trusts our (sometimes bizarre) requests, the better the photos turn out because they’re able to relax and rest easy, knowing that we’re going to take them on a super…
Catherine and Kacey are two of the most intelligent, caring and kind people you’ll ever meet. They laugh easily and often. They’re not scared away by a challenge. And they may have found a solution to the incessant noise of today’s digital world – in the form of their Bay Area tiny house. The idea…
After our adventures at Vail, we headed off to one of my favorite resorts for the second part of Kelly and Chris’s Alt Session. Beaver Creek Resort is a beautiful spot to ski, get hitched, or just hang out and eat cookies. But because we’re always searching for interesting activities for our Alt Sessions, their…
If you ever hear me complain about what we do for a living, I want you to go ahead and just slap me. Then remind me about this Vail ski engagement session. Kelly and Chris are awesome people. I know this to be true for several reasons. In no particular order: They’re adventurous: When I first…
My obsession began a few months ago when I first saw the Dillon Ice Castle in a Facebook post. I knew immediately that I had to do everything in my power to do a shoot there. With Natasha and Doug coming from Glenwood Springs and us being located in Boulder County, Dillon ended up being the…
As millions of people were spending Wednesday night in crowded airports on their way to celebrate Thanksgiving, Jesse and I were hanging out with Cat and Bryant at Copper Mountain’s Woodward Training Facility for their aerial engagement session. At our first meeting with the couple, they casually mentioned doing their engagement session at Woodward and…
The very first time I spoke with JaimeJo on the phone, before she and Nick had even booked us, her first question was, “What are you doing on August 21st?” She explained that she really wanted a solar eclipse engagement session, and that was the date of what’s come to be known as the Great…
Our couples hire us for many reasons. They like the color and emotion in our images. Or the different angles. Or how we incorporate the environment. But what we hear most often is that they were drawn to us because our photos looked unlike others they’d seen. All this is thanks to opportunities like P…
Kirsten and Mike’s mixed martial arts engagement session was a wonderfully collaborative experience. As owners of and coaches at MMA gym The Training Camp, it was a no-brainer to highlight that aspect of their life during their engagement shoot. But we also had an idea that had been simmering for a while and suspected that they…
We’re behind the Chinese New Year by approximately two years, apparently, because 2016 has been our own Year of the Horse. With Tank and Thunder at Devil’s Thumb Ranch and an unnamed mare at our most recent wedding, we’re starting to sense a trend. One which we happily continued with yesterday’s Colorado horse ranch engagement shoot…
Even though I’m not from Colorado originally, I’ve embraced the dogs + microbrew lifestyle 100%. So when Kelly and Nick mentioned that they have three goofy dogs and like to visit breweries, it was a no-brainer to combine these activities for their Boulder brewery engagement session. With the most perfect fall weather, we started off with a…
