For my Mom’s birthday I decided that I would get us a photography session while we were in Utah attending Spark: The Event in October. To me, the obvious choice for a photographer was Utah Valley Photographer Collin Kartchner. I came across his work from his wife’s blog, Dear Lizzy. Liz is a scrapbooker and her blog captures their well photographed life’s moments, which she happens to scrapbook. Obviously. I loved the look of the photos on the blog, and in Collin’s portfolio and on his blog. His photos and videos capture a multitude of emotions through poses and angles but I really loved his play with light.
We met Collin near the location he had in mind to take us. We ended up by some beaten up buildings in the Pleasant Grove/Lindon area, which is South of Salt Lake City. My mom was skeptical of the locale but went along with it since she has not other choice but to follow my sparkly heels in the weeds. I love the juxtaposition of getting dressed up and sitting in a barn so I happily wobbled along to the different areas where we took the photos.
We spent 45 minutes taking the photos. Collin asked about us, our hobbies, our jobs… which prompted lots of laughs from the stories my mom had from work and her less than PC approach to retelling these stories. There were even some hilarious demonstrations caught in the act. All in the name of loosening up to take lots and lots of photos around the buildings.
After our photo session, Collin sent us on our merry way to Thai Ruby, a restaurant that he suggested highly. The man not only knows how to take great photos but he knows his quality Thai food. 🙂
In all Collin took over 320 photos for us to cull through. We received a link to the album he put online for us to go through and select 20+ of them for him to edit. Once he was done with the edits he emailed me a few of them for review and to be able to order 1 as a large print for Christmas for my mom (see top photo). I then received a flash drive of all the photos in the mail.
I can’t stop raving about my experience working with Collin. I look forward to venturing to the beautiful Beehive State again and scheduling another session with him.
