Maroon Bells Sunrise Proposal With Your DogProposal Details:

Having parents surprise the proposal is somewhat normal.  For Travis and Katie they had something a little more unique happen than family watching from afar and coming up afterward.  They had flown into Colorado and were out in Aspen.  They had to leave Sammie back in Texas.  Little did she know that the photos she was seeing of Sammie had been staged a week earlier and that Sammie drove out and had arrived the day before.  Well . . . she actually was more cuddling up on the way out with some friends.  When arriving at the Maroon Bells the count of people lining the shore was over 150.  At sunrise it might have been closer to 200.  All this to say there were a couple reasons for our wanting the proposal to occur 45 minutes after the sunrise than literally at the moment the sun hits the tip of the bells.  One big one is that there are literally people lining the shore of Maroon Lake.  As a photographer we have to confess there is a lot of hype around this moment in the day.  Despite the conditions not being ideal with fall colors mostly being gone and the wind picking up blowing the water from the storm front coming into Colorado people still were lining the shore.  Functionally we are landscape + portrait photographers in how we shoot and we seriously do not get why people flood the shore for the moment.  Nonetheless they all leave and then the next wave of people come in for those that slept in or are going hiking.  This change makes for a variable in traffic.  They were able to make it on time but Sammie got held up for 30 minutes in some traffic.  Overall things were not as bad as the day before when they literally were not letting people in but they were still regulating the flow of people.  What this meant was a longer more candid time of photos along the lake while we waited for her surprise arrival.  We LOVED the reaction as it was completely unexpected.  We also love the idea of having your dog surprise her after the proposal.  As always though the more people you have + the more variables outside of your control = the less likely things will work out perfectly according to plan.

The reaction was awesome and the emotion continued for a good hour.  Most women have things sink in about 30 minutes in and the emotion will lessen.  There was this playful full joy shared between them complemented by a carefree loving life attitude.  This is pretty much the case for all the Texas A&M couples.  They seem to have this adventurous side to them and love to take trips to Colorado to have fun in the mountains.  It might be around 9 couples that we have shot for so we certainly get and expect you to want photos with the class rings.

We took a bunch of photos which we will say are likely the most difficult conditions to shoot in.  We love a good challenge and wish we could use our light for all photos such as the proposal but nonetheless it would be distracting.  If you wonder what pretty much ever photographer would get without our lighting setup look at the proposal photos.  Compare those to the ones after the proposal with the light.  The difficulty of the morning is you have two extremes: Bright sun on background and dark shade on the couple.  At that you basically have two choices to either get them in focus and blow out the background or have them be black and get the mountains.  If you are thinking of using this place at sunrise and do not have a photographer with powerful lighting you can only expect something like the proposal photos till the afternoon. You can get Maroon Bells proposal ideas from reading past blogs and read about how we do proposals on our engagement proposals page.If you like this location and are considering using it here are some other shoots we have done at the Maroon Bells.