A Journey to the Promised Land of Colorado

Written by Darren on September 13, 2010
Very recently Taylor and I took a cross country road trip. We had been talking for a long time about going out to Colorado to do some hiking and camping in the mountains, so when an opportunity to take off for two weeks arose we jumped on it. We looked at our calendars and realized that because of our packed schedules if we didn’t take advantage of it now we wouldn’t get another chance until next spring, so “now or never!” was the idea.

So we sat down one night and mapped it all out. We planned to visit some national parks, do some camping, some business planning and focusing, have some great experiences, and of course take a boatload of sweet photos. And yes, we decided to drive the whole thing.

If you’ve read my bio on our portfolio site, you’ll know that I’m “an information junkie”. So of course I tracked data on everything that I could think of, and before you get to see some photos I feel a compulsion to share this data with you. You’re so lucky. Here’s the GPS track of the entire trip:

So now that I’ve royally geeked out over my sweet data set and gotten that out of my system, here a few favorites photos from the road trip.

Sunrise Behind Kansas Wind Turbines Cheyenne Bottom Refuge in Kansas Cheyenne Bottoms Refuge in Kansas Colorado Sunset Pike's Peak Colorado Mueller State Park Colorado Camping Colorado Mountains Colorado Lone House by Great Sand Dunes Great Sand Dunes National Park Colorado Great Sand Dunes National Park Colorado Great Sand Dunes National Park Colorado Sunset and Campfire Taylor at the Great Sand Dunes Sunset at The Great Sand Dunes The Milky Way over the Great Sand Dunes National Park Colorado Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park In front of the Painted Wall at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Taylor at Sunset at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Camping and Campfire with Star Streaks at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Rocky Mountain National Park Taylor with his awesome hat I also threw together a slideshow of all the photos that I took on the trip, with my DSLR and my iPhone. But rather than bore everyone with 4500+ photos spread out over a 2 hour slideshow, I treated it more like a time-lapse movie and sped it up so its only just over six minutes long. I think it came out pretty cool, especially the parts where I actually did a real time-lapse. Let me know what you think in the comments!


It was an incredible trip! So all that to say, if any brides living in Colorado or planning to get married in Colorado are reading this, GIVE US A SHOUT! We absolutely love it there and we’d be thrilled at the opportunity to shoot out there for your wedding. That also goes for any other destinations, we love to travel and we love to take awesome photographs of people in love, so why not combine the two?

Pittsburgh and the Niewola Family

Written by Darren on July 23, 2009
Last week I went to Pittsburgh PA with my girlfriend Mary. The real purpose of the trip was to help her move a bunch of her belongings from her parents’ attic to her apartment in New Jersey, but we had a lot of fun in doing that and there were a few photos taken that are worth putting up here. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city. It’s clean, quiet, inexpensive, the people are ridiculously kind and friendly, and there’s hardly any traffic compared to the area where I live. We visited the Duquesne Incline (pronounced “doo-kane”, yes I was corrected multiple times) where I snapped this photo with my Lumix LX3. niewolafamily1 That week was the first time in over a year that Mary’s whole family had been together, so of course I offered to take some family portraits for them. niewolafamily2 niewolafamily4 Just the ladies of the family. niewolafamily3 Here’s Mary, and us on a hammock, courtesy of Mary’s younger brother Jon. I hope you like feet. niewolafamily5 And when I thought the week couldn’t get any better I found a stash of 80′s AWESOMENESS in the attic.
niewolafamily6
After that photo there’s just nothing left to say.