By Monique

Usually Scott, having covered the Salt Lake and Italy winter Olympics alpine skiing events for USA Today, is the expert Tahoe winter ski wedding photographer between us, but since he had a master’s ski race last weekend, I jumped at the chance to get a Squaw Valley skiing trash the dress session under my belt! Lara and Kent are season pass holders at Squaw, and they had a few “must have” shots in mind as the focus of their session on the mountain in their wedding dress and tuxedo. The important shot for Kent was to have him hucking a cornice above Lara. And for Lara, it was a classic chair lift shot, from the front and back, she even made a Just Married sign, and Thank You signs for them to display on the chair lifts. They really were not that interested in the actual skiing images of them in their wedding attire, so I only shot them skiing towards me a few times through out the session. For the ski jumping images, I wanted to make sure we got it covered from a few different angles, both as a wide shot, and with a telephoto. This required me to carry 2 cameras while skiing, one in a backpack, and one in a chest pack. We did about 5 or 6 jumping shots all told in a few different locations. Kent was full of energy and was launching huge jumps, and at one point, he even took his skis off and hiked back up the steep slope to the top of the cornice to get back in to position for another jump. We did a few of these images off of the cornice skier’s right of the Granite Chief chairlift, and off of a rock on that same slope. When talking with Lara the day before, I asked her if they had a favorite apre ski place for a drink in the village once we were done with the session on the mountain, but they had already done a ton of village shots on their wedding day, so we decided to first go do a few quick snow angel images in the valley, and then head back across the street to Kent’s family home for the final photos – jumping in the hot tub. Lara said this was their favorite apre ski place, so they enjoyed a few drinks in the hot tub at the end of the session. Cheers Lara and Kent, and see you next time on the slopes!