A weekend job

"You shoot weddings? Isn't that stressful? I could never deal with that kind pressure"

I hear that quite a bit. I used to tell people that it's not stressful since I work with my friend Randy and we have the luxury of having two cameras shooting all the time. No, it's not stressful.

That's a load of crap.

Let me back up a bit and tell you a little about ourselves. Randy Barnes is a good friend of mine who lives outside of Telluride, CO. We've known each other since 1989 when we were freshmen in college. Both of us have pursued similar paths as photographers. Randy's website is www.barnesfoto.com. Being the outdoorsy types, we naturally both photographed outdoor sports. We shot for the same companies and the same magazines. We photographed many of the same people and athletes. For different reasons, we both faded out of the outdoor photography world. Me, I needed to separate work and play. Randy, he has three kids and chose to stay a little closer to home.

Randy approached me one day and presented the idea of working together to photograph weddings. I had shot a couple of weddings for friends but never really pursued it too much. Randy gave me his best sales pitch on the viability of a wedding photography business in southwest Colorado. After mulling it over for a bit, I bit the bullet and hopped on board. With some initial planning, we formed Alpine Wedding Photography. Probably not the most creative name but it did put us at the top of all the directories. Having no reputation or experience, we needed to use any advantage we could. It's funny, as I look back, we had no idea what we were doing. Sure, we knew how to take photos but we had little experience in running a business that catered to consumers. We were assignment and stock photographers that knew about licensing agreements, page and day rates and photo editors. We had a LOT to learn.

It's been a few years now and we've learned and grown quite a lot. Actually, we're pretty psyched. The 2010 season is booking up fast. While most all of our weddings are in Telluride with a few in Durango,  we really would love to book some weddings in Maui, Belize or Morroco. Tuscan Italy would be pretty good too!


Randy and I have different but complimenting styles. We have evolved to a level where we don't need to talk to each other as much about we're doing or shooting at the wedding. We know each others style as well as strengths and weaknesses. We have developed a natural intuition with each other. Our laid back personalities also work well to ease the stress of brides and other family members.

And speaking of stress. Yes, there is stress, but its how you handle it that is important. I think having both of us shooting really helps that. I know that if my cameras craps out on me at any given time there is another camera with a talented photographer behind it to capture the moment. I can resolve my immediate issues trusting that Randy will continue to cover the moment and nothing will be lost.

One asks, isn't it redundant then to have two photographers doing the job that one person should be able to do? Well...no. Having two of us allows us to be in different places at the same time,  we can capture the same scene in different styles and it provides a bit of insurance when something doesn't go as planned. Which we know, NEVER happens at weddings! :) We also assist each other with lighting, props or styling. And it always helps to have two people coordinating a group shot of 300 people.

The days are long but rewarding. We typically finish up at the wedding around 10pm, we head back home where we then download, backup and preview our work until 2 or 3 in the morning. That work could be done the next day but we sleep better knowing that the wedding was fully covered and backed up. Also, we get to sip on pale ales at that point, so it aint that bad.

Our job is cool. Our office is the incredible mountains of Colorado. We get to hang out with a bunch of people who look about as good as they can possibly look. They're all there to celebrate and pretty much everybody gets happier as the night goes on. We usually end the night with warm, appreciative hugs from the bride and often the groom. Lastly, we get paid to push our creativity the whole time! Not a bad gig.

I invite you to waste a little more time, put off doing your work and visit our site, www.alpineweddingphotography.com. I hope you like it and feel free to share it with your friends...especially the engaged ones!

 Cheers