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Meet Callie Riesling

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Callie Riesling.

Callie, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I think my love for photography really started when I was little. Some photographers will tell you that they picked up a camera and instantly loved it… and to a certain extent, that is true. Really I think my mom really kicked off that passion… it wasn’t necessarily the photography itself, but the way she preserved memories. She would make scrapbooks and stand behind my Nana’s chair and narrate all of the photos she took of us on vacation. It wasn’t that she had the newest gear or the most expensive camera. But she took so much time to sit and make scrapbooks for my brother and I. It kind of makes sense that my love for this started this way because it is still very true to my style as a photographer. For me, it’s about really documenting a stage in someone’s life. I have my certain pieces of equipment that I nerd out about, but I’m not much of a gear head. I hate to sound all cliche and stuff, but the reality of it is… I am not as much of a photographer as I am a storyteller.

In high school, I got into journalism. At the time, I actually preferred writing (you would never know by this article, I am a bit out of practice haha!). I had a major passion for sports journalism. I really truly thought that was what I was going to do. I loved photographing sports too, I guess I just never thought I was good enough and it was something that everyone wanted to do.

I started my business at the age of 18. It was absolutely an uphill battle, most everyone I knew told me that I needed more life experience, schooling and maturity to be successful. Thankfully my parents, brother and my boyfriend at the time (now husband) were all extremely supportive and helpful. When I started out, I photographed pretty much anything and everything someone would trust me with. I photographed everything from high school seniors to military homecomings, family sessions, modeling portfolios and more. After a few years of working myself to death – kind of joking, kind of not, I photographed 8 weddings and 46 portrait sessions in one August alone – I realized that I knew what I loved and that I could specialize.

My passion was and is photographing weddings and couples. As I grew in my passion for it and even specialized deeper into more of a documentary, adventure style couples photographer, my clientele started to really get me. I guess the first step as a photographer is to get people to trust you, then to pay you and then to really understand your style and vision. I would say that probably happened about six or seven years ago. I started encouraging my couples to do something they loved DURING our session. I think one of the first ones that really affirmed that was when I did a snowboarding engagement session in Keystone. Not too long after that, I received an email from someone unique who wanted to hire me for their engagement session. He mostly talked about his fiance’s accolades and the restrictions that would come with that… but it was actually his name that I recognized.

He played for my favorite baseball team, the Rockies. For a little while, I honestly believed that one of my friends was playing a cruel joke on me, knowing that I loved baseball. But sure enough, it was really them. They randomly found me online and fell in love with my work. After their session, they referred more and more. I’ve now photographed Major League Baseball players, their finances and families on 20 plus occasions. One of my guys even had his World Series ring for his wedding photos. It’s kind of funny because my original love for sports journalism has kind of come back to me. I may not be the team’s action photographer… but I sure do a lot of their weddings and sessions haha.

Anyway, it’s been 10 years now. I wear all the business hats you could think of… I’m the web designer, marketing department, office manager, location scout and primary shooter on every single wedding and session. I’ve photographed nearly 300 weddings and somewhere around 1000 sessions. I’ve photographed weddings and sessions all over the US, Europe and the Caribbean. I’ve photographed weddings where I was the only witness and weddings where there were 300 guests. I’ve photographed weddings in everything from a tropical storm to natural disasters. I’ve photographed weddings at 12,000+ feet above sea level and at sea level. I’ve done camping sessions, surfing sessions, snowboarding sessions, travel sessions… you name it! And I will never, ever, ever get tired of it. This is 100% my passion and I am so thankful I took the leap at 18.

Has it been a smooth road?
Hahaha, no absolutely not. I started my business at 18. Pretty much everyone thought I worked for someone else. That wasn’t just the first year either. I’d say that really continued for probably my first five to six years in business. People thought I was too young. I was told I needed to put it on hold until I had more “traditional schooling”. Pretty much everyone introduced themselves to my assistant. I honestly just got used to it. Thankfully I always had a solid clientele who believed in me and continued to hire me and refer me, so I didn’t necessarily struggle with booking the weddings… It was more-so convincing the bride’s uncle that I really was a professional photographer, not a friend with a camera and that I really did need them to cooperate for family photos. Haha. My perspective really changed when I started getting my baseball clients. Most of them were my age or younger. They had their successes at a young age. People believed in them when they were 18. So they didn’t think twice about my age when they hired me. It probably seems silly to most people, but that did wonders for my heart.

Another challenging time for me was when my husband and I did invitro to get pregnant with our son. I legitimately had to bring a big cooler bag with all of my medicines in it to weddings. I had to do my hormone injections in crazy places and I had to jokingly explain to a few guests that I wasn’t doing drugs in the bathroom… just trying to get pregnant haha. Craziest I think was in an outhouse with no electricity with my phone flashlight in the middle of nowhere in the mountains during a rehearsal dinner. Thankfully all of that paid off and we did get pregnant with our son Jacob. Which brought on a whole new challenge. Leaving a colicky baby who did not like bottle feeding for weddings. I am so thankful for my job that the majority of the time I am able to stay home with my son… but the first year was especially challenging. Right off the bat, I had 3 weddings in 9 days. That year I did a lot of pumping in the car, editing with a sleeping baby in my arms and got even less sleep than an average newborn mother would with my son being born right at the beginning of the wedding season. Thankfully it’s not so hard these days. He is four now and likes to put my tripod in his little tikes truck and pretend he is driving to the mountains to take pictures of weddings.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
Like I discussed in my start story, as time went on I decided to specialize in weddings and couples and then after that even more into a documentary, adventure photographer. That doesn’t mean I ONLY photograph crazy adventurous weddings with helicopters and hiking and stuff. I mean I’ll do that too (any day of the week) but what I really mean is that I want to photograph my clients doing something that they love. My biggest peeve in the wedding business is faking. I HATE it when people show up in clothes they hate in a place they’ve never been (and will probably never go again) and sit and cheese for the camera. That is NOT me. You can tell that it’s not authentic. You can tell they aren’t having fun.

The only time I will ever tell a client to “fake” something is when I ask them to fake laugh… because then they feel ridiculous and the real laughs follow. I encourage all of my clients to pick something that they love for their engagement shoot. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Could just be playing with their dog or taking in a sunrise…. it could be somewhere in the middle and be going for a hike, surfing, going for a beer at their favorite brewery, or camping…. or it could be completely elaborate and could be paddleboarding on an alpine lake at sunrise. Yes, I’ve really done that one. It was cold. And early. hahaha. But so worth it for the Alpenglow! But really the important thing to me is putting my clients into a position where they are having fun so I can document that part of their life accurately and beautifully.

At weddings, I push for the same authenticity. I document the wedding day as it plays out. During portraits, I really push to capture that feeling of ‘finally married’. I am always a sucker for big, epic, location-based shots where the couple feels the memory of their day in this huge piece of art… but I also love the close-up, emotional photos where you can see all of the joy at that moment.

More than anything, I am an adventure photographer not because I photograph some crazy, adventurous activity. Adventure is not just a verb, it’s a way of living fearlessly and passionately. It’s a way of living to the maximum capacities of joy and emotions. It’s just this heart that some people have and those are the people I love photographing.

I’ve done some really cool things in my career. I got to fly my client’s private plane the other day during their session. I’ve had full reign of Coors Field on several occasions. I’ve had clients fly me to Europe to take their wedding photos. I’ve been the only witness for a few couples on their wedding days. I’ve seen some of the rawest moments in people’s lives. I’ve maintained stellar reviews consistently for 10 years and am now part of the Knot’s Wedding Hall of Fame. I’ve been published well over 50 times and have placed pretty high in some contests. I’ve been there for nearly 300 couples on one of the most important days in their lives. That’s really what I am proud of. I am so very proud that I’ve built this business where people understand me and love me and choose me to be their person. I am so very proud of the relationships that have developed with clients into friendships. It’s not something everyone gets to do. It’s a privilege and I am so grateful for all of the clients who’ve hired me over the past ten years and who have already chosen me for the next two years. You guys are the best!

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
This is a tough one to answer! Because of the way my business operates, I really am never centered in one place. It’s actually a bit rare for me to frequently shoot at one specific location just because there are SO many wedding venues and locations in Colorado. So I am just going to kind of generalize this to include Denver, Colorado Springs, all the Front Range Cities and the mountain towns I frequently work in. Colorado is a dream. I am a native – born at St Joe’s hospital in Denver. Being a wedding photographer in Colorado is arguably one of the best places to do this job on earth. Colorado covers it all. Like this summer I photographed a barn wedding, a mountain wedding, a Maroon Bells wedding (one of the most beautiful spots you could imagine!), another barn wedding, a Coors Field baseball wedding at home plate, and a city wedding all within a short time period. There is so much diversity in Colorado’s beauty. The sunrises are as beautiful as the sunsets, we have plains, we have alpine forests, we have lakes, we have the Broadmoor, we have mountain peaks, we have cities and we even have our cowboy culture, Colorado has so much to offer and with our thriving economy, Colorado has been the perfect place for my business to grow and succeed.

Pricing:

  • Colorado Wedding Photography Starting at $2600
  • Colorado Elopement Photography Starting at $1200
  • Destination Wedding Photography starting at $2600 (pricing will depend on cost of travel)

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Photo of Callie by Tyler Riesling, all other photos by Callie Riesling

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