Volkel Image Blog » The life and times of a Colorado wedding & fashion photographer!

Oh the power of Facebook! I first “met” Laura Glisan of {Paperdoll} through mutual friends Mark & Jason Nava and Julian Donaldson (JNava & Geniuz Ink) via Facebook. I posted a message on my wall stating that we’d love to do more fashion projects and she responded to my post. I browsed through some images she had of her clothes to get an idea of what we could do and how we could make something different for them. She had a lot of indoor, urban style images so we went in the opposite direction and headed outdoors. We’d been playing with a few concepts over the last few months and thought Red Rocks would be the perfect location for this shoot- and I’m glad we did because it turned out awesome! We did run into a couple snags along the way in planning when a makeup artist was nowhere to be found. It was nuts- I swear every makeup artist in all of Denver was booked that day. Which I guess being the beginning of wedding season on a Saturday probably had a bit to do with it:-) In the end it all worked out great though. Laura’s friend, Giulia Isernia, ended up being able to help out with makeup and I don’t think it could have turned out any better- she did a wonderful job! As I said, it is the start to wedding season so there happened to be one wedding taking place at Red Rocks as well as a second wedding party who came by to take photos. We just had to get one shot with the guys surrounding our model Liz. Hmmm….. wonder what the bride thought of that? Oh and I can’t forget the baby owl that was hiding in a little crevice in one of the rocks- there’s something you don’t see everyday. A big thank you to Liz & Pat for modeling for us that day- you both did a great job. Definitely hope to work with both of you as well as Laura & Giulia again in the future- it was a blast!

The thing I love most about fashion photography is the opportunity for creativity. I think most photographers would agree with me that the reason they started with photography in the first place was the ability to produce art. Of course with weddings & portraits there is also the ability to create something timeless and capture people’s emotions and personality which is one of the reasons being a photographer is so rewarding. But it all starts and ends with art.

I had the opportunity to meet Julian at the JNava + Geniuz Ink Fashion Show in March. He’s such a great guy and an awesome clothing designer so I was glad we were able to work together again on this project for his clothing company Geniuz Ink. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy so his clothes are just my style. When he told me what he had imagined for the shoot I was immediately hooked and excited to be a part of it. The theme was art meets science. We used some various props painted white against a white backdrop to complete the look and I think it turned out awesome! I haven’t done too much studio work so this was really exciting to do something completely out of my comfort zone and brand new. We originally planned on renting some studio space but everywhere that we wanted to use was already booked or too small so we ended up back at our garage which turned out great. Julian will be updating his website with more of these images in a few weeks so make sure to check out geniuzink.com for his full line available for purchase. This first image is Julian- the genius behind Geniuz Ink:-)