Smokey Haze from Wildfires Caused Golden Orange Hour at Long LakeProposal Details:

When we call this a wildfire sunset we are not talking about the color but more the effects of an actual wildfire in Colorado.  Kyle and Alyssa had this proposal planned for a while then on the other side of the state some fairly major wild fires started causing a smokey haze to make its way across the state.

It would have been a blue sky day with a perfectly clear view of the mountains if it were not for the smoke.  What this did for the view was lessen the clarity making it look like a cloudy day.  The bizarre thing that makes it so you can tell it was not a cloudy day is the bright orange sun at sunset.  Normally to get this kind of extreme gold look it is isolated to a certain angle at a certain time of day not this deep in the mountains.  We would call this a positive to a really tragic fire destroying 80k+ acres of land.

If you are one with respiratory issues we would not recommend these conditions.  We had been out in it for hours for a couple days straight for shoots and it was starting to get to us in getting a raspy voice.  Though the closest fire was circa 150 miles away ash was falling from the sky.  All that to say that this is a really unique look that is not the norm for Colorado but happens in wildfire season.

They had come with his family who conveniently were lagging behind but ultimately got lost because they didn’t have a map of the spot we use.  They got there eventually with flowers in hand and a congratulations sign that had bling on the other side of it.  Emotion was high and lively.  We love the raw real candid emotion we are able to get at a distance cause you capture things you can never recreate and never last as long when you are shooting up close.

Long Lake is in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area and one of the couple mountain lakes.   If you like the look of this location here are some other shoots at Long Lake. You can get proposal ideas from reading past blogs and read about how we do proposals on our engagement proposals page.