Winter 2024
Flatirons Winter Sunrise - January 2024
With a blazing winter storm, -10-degree temperatures, and clear skies in the forecast, I decided to head out to the famous Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado, in an attempt to photograph the Flatirons covered in snow at sunrise. I had been anticipating this shot for a few months, waiting for the right conditions to get a photo like this. I wanted three things in my photo, direct sunrise light, fresh snow, and some clouds in the sky. These conditions are not quite as common as you would think. There has to be just the right amount of clouds, enough to make an interesting sky for the photo, but not too many that the sunrise light is blocked. To get this atmosphere after a snowstorm for the fresh snow on the landscape makes getting these conditions very rare. On the previous day, I checked the forecast knowing that fresh snow was to fall over the landscape. I saw that the sky was supposed to clear up over the Eastern Plains, which could make for a good sunrise. Not knowing if there would be any clouds over the peaks, however, I was eager enough to take the chance and venture out to see for myself. After all, you don’t know until you go.
After leaving my house at around 5:30 AM, I started on my commute to Boulder on very slushy roads. Traffic was light but the road conditions made the drive longer than expected. As I got off the highway in Boulder, the sky started to light up. I knew there was going to be a great sunrise. I drove into the Chautauqua Park lot, got out of my car, and raced up the trail to find a composition for my shot. As I was setting up my tripod, the cloud in photo #1 slowly formed over the Flatirons, and complimented the sloping hill in the foreground almost perfectly. After taking a few exposure brackets at my first composition, I started moving up the hill where I would capture photo #2. I also captured several other shots, including some verticals, and a large panorama, for a more detailed photo to print big. My favorite shot from this day was photo #1. The unique clouds in the sky, brilliant sunrise glow, and snow blowing off of the peaks are exactly what I imagined when planning this shoot. What I remember most about this experience is the biting cold and the dead silence of winter. A type of silence that you can only find out in nature, at 6 am, when it's -10 degrees outside.
As always these images are available for purchase as prints on my website! You can click or tap on each image to go to the store page or browse my entire collection here. If you have any questions or are interested in an image that isn’t featured on my store, please contact me.
Summit County Winter Images - January 2024
These four images were captured during a ski trip in Summit County with my family. The sky was overcast for the entire weekend, which wasn’t ideal for some scenes I had in mind, but I was able to take home some more intimate, abstract, and moody images. These are more secondary images for me, so they aren’t up on my store, but I might add them later.
Red Peak Up Close - February 2024
This image was captured at sunrise from the roof of my grandparents’ house in Silverthorne, utilizing the impressive capabilities of my new 600mm lens. With this powerful lens, I was able to zoom in on the couloirs and avalanche terrain, showcasing the captivating interplay of light and texture on the prominent peak of the Gore Range.
Freezing Thorne - February 2024
Taken on the same chilly morning as the preceding photo, this image gets up close and personal with East Thorne Peak, a sub-peak of the majestic Mt. Silverthorne which towers directly behind it. The icy mist between the peak and my lens delicately diffused the early morning sun's glow, resulting in a stunning array of hues illuminating the jagged spire.
Intertwined - February 2024
It seems that every ski trip I take, overcast skies and loads of snow follows. This makes for some fun skiing, but these conditions are not my favorite to make images with. I still strive to make do with what nature gives me, however, so I brought out the telephoto lens again to compress this snow-covered aspen forest in Tenmile Canyon.
Berthoud Pass Sunrise - February 2024
While on my way to Winter Park for a commercial ski assignment, I had a thought to make a brief stop at the summit of Berthoud Pass in hopes of capturing a breathtaking sunrise. To my delight, as I ascended the winding road, the sky ignited with a vivid display of colors. I promptly exited the highway and positioned my camera at the overlook on top of the pass. I divided my frame into three sections. A foreground of textured fluffy snow, a midground of giant spruce trees, and in the middle of my frame I used the road to lead into the Fraser Valley, and Continental Divide in the background. I very much liked this composition, but the textures in the foreground and the glow of the colorful sky are what made this image truly come together.
Commercial work for the YouTube series “The New Radical” - February 2024
Last Thursday I was hired to capture behind-the-scenes and promotional images for a new YouTube series focused on connecting Indigenous Peoples back to their land through skiing. Professional Lakota skier Connor Ryan, the director and producer of this series, pictured above in the cyan jacket, runs a Native scholarship program in collaboration with Natives Outdoors and Winter Park Resort, that provides recipients with gear and season passes with the goal of promoting equity within the sport. This episode of the series shares the stories of three scholarship recipients from New York, who are visiting the big mountains of the west for the first time. I was tasked with creating photographs that document their experience on the mountain, that can be used for promotion of the series and scholarship program. Check out the first few episodes of the series here. The episode I worked on last week is set to be released in December.
F-Stop Magazine
Earlier this month, I was excited to see my photo “Moraine Lake Sunrise” featured in the February/March 2024 edition of F-Stop Magazine.
Viral Instagram Reel
This month I had been experimenting with Instagram Reels, which currently seems to be the best way to grow on the app. Creating these short, attention-grabbing videos is definitely not something I like doing or I’m proud of, but I want my work to be seen by a larger audience, and these are the only thing Instagram will push to a large audience. After creating about 5 or 6 of these, I was starting to learn what kind of content performed better. This is when I posted a reel that gained over 1 MILLION views in about a week. I gained about 5,000 followers from this which puts me pretty close to 6,000 total. Gaining a bigger following on Instagram is not something that will greatly affect my business/career on its own, but it will be useful for getting my name, brand, and work out to the world.
