Las Vegas, NV Family Photography – The Very ALT F Coopers!

John and Dalisa are some of our favorite people!  They are so much fun, super creative, and extremely giving.  In addition to everything they have going on with their studio, Alt F Photography, they also started the Roadside Families Project in response to the void they saw in the lives of many photographers.  As important as photographers know photography is, they rarely have even a single image with all members of their family in it and so John and Dalisa traveled around the country last summer photographing photographers and encouraging all of them to do the same for other photographers.  This is why I was surprised when it dawned on me that I saw no family photos of the Coopers hanging in their house when we went to visit them last fall!  As of last week, things have been set into motion to make sure that will no longer be the case! :o)

We planned the shoot for the dry lake bed in the desert which we were SO excited about!  Beautiful blue skies, the cracked texture of the lake floor and a light breeze with the mountains in the distance sounded amazing!  The vision shifted slightly though as we pulled up and saw this:

This massive dust storm was incredible we couldn’t have possibly had a better family to propose getting out in it to! :o)  Do you want to walk right into the biggest dust storm John has ever seen out here in his 20-something years in Vegas?  Yes please!

Off into the middle of that huge cloud of raging dirt we went.  It was pretty challenging to shoot in because most of the time, it looked like this:

But, when the wind died down for a minute or two in between the large gusts, it looked like this!

…and this…

…and that was just so unbelievably worth the sand blasting our skin received and the 3 showers it took to remove the dirt!

I realize it’s totally contrary to the kosher way in which to build a blog post to show you my favorites first but it worked better that way for my story!  Anti-climatical or not, here are some non-dust storm images that I really like too. :o)

JMC and Sam…

Dalisa and Ros…

The beautiful couple and their other babies – Bachi and Visa Marie (the boy :P)

Oh yeah!  I almost forgot this one – another favorite…

A quick one of our disheveled selves by John

Some fun randomness…

and lastly, the whole crew.

Thank you guys so much for playing in the dirt with us! :o)  We truly are getting spoiled by seeing you so often lately and we miss you already!  Come visit Tennessee soon!

Thanks for looking everyone! :o)

- Mel and Sean