Wow! What an engagement session this was!
Gwen and Farhang first contacted me as they were having a destination wedding but wanted some engagement session photos in the stunning mountains of Summit County. I was only more than happy to oblige. I loved how they were adventurous, down for whatever locations, and leaned on me for my knowledge of the area. I never really thought my knowledge would come in handy as much as it did for this session.
Mother Nature gave us a doozy of a day. It was early summer which often comes with afternoon rain. Usually the saying goes “if you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait 20 minutes.” All day we had been back and forth on if we should do the shoot or not as it was forecasted for rain. Problem was, every day that time of year is forecasted for rain and typically it doesn’t rain all over the county—just in patches here and there as each mountain creates a bit of its’ own weather. So we decided to go for it. We had already put it on hold once with the delayed Spring we had causing the wildflowers to be more than a month behind schedule in blooming so we wanted to capitalize on the peak blooms happening and not miss out.
We started at one spot with some glorious wildflowers and after about 20 minutes there we felt some drops. I checked the radar to see where the storm was and it looked like it was staying south, around Lake Dillon. So we packed up and went north to a stunning trailhead that overlooks the Gore Range. We had a beautiful time there among the field grasses, mountains, and the aspen groves until the rain caught up to us again. Of course we were without cell service at this spot so I couldn’t check the radar but based on what we were seeing, it looked bright back again to the south of us.
We decided to head back down to Lake Dillon as Farhang had mentioned trying to do some photos with the lake. On our way south, out popped this gorgeous rainbow so we made a quick roadside detour to catch it before continuing on to the lake. Well, things were okay on the east side of the lake but the second we crossed the dam road to the west side of the lake, all heck broke loose and the spot I wanted to take them to was a definite no go. Undeterred we went back across the dam road to the east, which miraculously was only sprinkling AND there was an awesome, peachy sunset happening behind Buffalo Mountain. Of course within about 2 minutes of getting there it starts raining harder and we can’t do much but shoot off a few stunning sunset images before running back to the safety of the cars.
It was quite a session! Although all the zipping around trying to avoid the rain cause the session to be nearly double the normal time, Gwen & Farhang were truly awesome and remained in good spirits, ready for anything…which I suppose is the true hallmark of a Coloradan! While I won’t be joining them on their international destination wedding, I wish these two nothing but the best for their future!
Check out their photos below!
