©JL - joshua lawton

I know it's been a while, but I've been spending most of my time posting stuff over on the blog for Joshua & Co. Photography the last few months.

In any case, here's a gallery from a recent engagement session with Jackie and Evan in Boulder. They are going to get married in The Big Easy in May 2012. I'm really looking forward to seeing New Orleans for the first time in my life. Should be fun and interesting, to say the least.

2010 was a very big year for me.

Managed to finish my thesis project on time. Graduated from DU with my masters. Went to several weddings of family and friends. Got married myself! Did a bit of traveling. Started a new photography venture with my good friend, Joshua Buck. Photographed some great weddings and groups of fun people. And a host of other smaller things mixed in. It was a rapid pace of action last year.

I'm hopeful that 2011 will be as wild and fun, yet successful. Joshua & Co. Photography is gaining momentum. Consortium Productions is beginning to take shape. And married life is fun and fantastic.

Since the last post was delayed by a month, I'll add another one to the mix.

I've been doing all kinds of things with a still camera lately, but one of the more important ways has been family photographs. Most families are looking to get a great photo of their immediate family to share with other family members and friends for the holidays.

Well, the weather in the Denver Metro area hasn't really even threatened to be winter-like. It's the middle of December and I have yet to see even a skiff of snow around here. The mountains have been getting hammered, but we've just been getting blown around. All that being said, not having much of the white stuff on the ground doesn't make for too many "holiday moments," if you know what I mean. Dead brown grasses and leafless trees don't scream out winter wonderland and Santa. So it's been a bit of a challenge to shoot photos in a nice setting. But the fall colors were fantastic this year, holding out for several weeks and offering up some great backgrounds.

Have a look at these, and if you or someone you know is still scrambling to get some photos together for their holiday cards, let me know. I'm pretty sure we can make something good happen.

Meant to post some photos of my great friends, Ryan and Melora, getting married at Chautauqua Park in Boulder a few weeks ago. Just got wrapped up in...you know. Some things.

Anyway, here's a few of them but pop on over to Flickr and look at the few dozen of them. I didn't shoot all that much and was kind of limited in where I could go. You see, I was an usher for the wedding so I had other responsibilities.

We (Joshua & Co. Photography) were downtown this weekend to shoot a wedding at the Curtis Hotel. I was a little stressed when first hearing about some of the challenging lighting conditions – candlelit ceremony and an all blue ballroom – along with logistical issues in getting the wedding party around downtown before the wedding.

All those worries were quickly erased from my mind after embracing it all and playing around with what the situation presented. A little mishap ripping the crotch of my pants climbing up on a pickup truck helped lighten the mood, and cool me down. Pictures to come of that debacle later.

After it was all said and done, I look forward to the next "difficult lighting situation" and I really can't wait to shoot just about anything at The Curtis again. Wow, that place is fantastic.

Anyways, here's to the happy newlyweds Maggie and Lou!Thanks for letting us do pretty much whatever we wanted with the cameras.

While I was in Minnesota I broke down and picked up a Holga and a couple rolls of FP-4 to shoot while at my brother's wedding. I was inspired by a good friend of mine who had shot her pimpin' gold Holga at my own wedding earlier this summer. I'm still working out the variance of the viewfinder to the actual film framing as well as the focusing guesstimations. There's something refreshing about taking a step back from technology and being forced to lose absolute control.

Holgas are funky little plastic cameras that each have unique quirks like light leaks and vignettes that are never the same from one camera to another. You get either f/11 or f/16 at 1/100th for a shutter and little icons that represent distances for the manual focus lens. Since this was the first roll of film I had run through the camera, it was all going to be pretty much a surprise. All in all I think the results were fairly to be expected. Now I'll try some color film and some different exposure tricks to see what else I can come up with. That's all for now.

So I know it's been a while since the last posting. I can only say one word: weddings.

First was a couple friends the first part of July. Next was my own wedding on the 23rd. The following week was another good friend's wedding, but it was on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. After that wedding my wife and I took a bit of a trip to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington on our way back from BC. Then after a couple weeks of trying to put our selves back together from back-to-back weddings we left once again for my brother's wedding in Minnesota. Needless to say, it's been a jam packed summer.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back in the groove and start posting more here again. There's a bunch of new projects and ideas to create visual goodies in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here's a few photos from the weddings of our friends and my brother and couple from the Northwest.

So today I walk across the stage at the University of Denver in the commencement ceremony for my Master's of Arts degree in Digital Media. It's been a quick two years and at times difficult, but a pretty rewarding experience. I'm not really sure what the future holds in store yet. It's been so busy finishing my schoolwork and degree that I've had little time to focus on job searching. I feel pretty confident about my skill set and the possibilities, it's just a matter of finding an employer that understands what I can offer and they have a position. It'll all work out, soon.

So now with a bit more free time and living in a playground called Colorado, I think I'll be doing some fun stuff for a change...for a few weeks anyway. Fun stuff like this!!

Well, it has been a difficult last few months.

But now I can say my thesis project is nearly complete and been launched on the web. http://cyclorado.us/
 

Shot a series of images for The Laughing Goat coffee house out in Boulder this last weekend. Here's a compilation of some of my favorites from the morning. Gotta love a couple Speedlights and an umbrella. No reason to make things overly hard, when simple is effective.

Too bad I don't drink coffee either. There were several cups that needed a belly to call home and a brain to over-stimulate. Enjoy.