Member spotlight - The Outlovers - Public Land Creatives

A bride shows off her dress in the sunlight.

Where are you based? Where do you photograph the most?

Hey friends, we’re Chad and Vanessa, ‘The Outlovers’. We’re a husband and wife elopement photography duo, working with all couples who find their deepest connection in the great outdoors. We’ve both been active in the outdoors for as long as we can remember: from camping trips as young children, right through to working as professional scuba divers for many years. We’re at our absolute happiest when we disappear down a dirt track into the middle of nowhere!

We believe nature is a source of peace and inspiration, and for many couples there’s no better place to share their wedding vows – perhaps the most important words they’ll ever speak – than against the backdrop of Mother Nature’s finest art work.

We live right on the border between Colorado and Utah, so we work primarily on the Moab BLM lands, national parks and state park, as well as the Colorado National Forest lands around Ouray and Telluride.

We love these lands DEEPLY: the vastness, the peace and the natural beauty fills our souls, and sharing that with couples on their wedding day is an absolute joy. Often, our favorite part of the day is simply seeing our couples’ faces light up in sheer awe and amazement as they see such incredible places for the first time! THAT’S what wedding dreams are made of.

A couple shares a kiss in the mountains on their wedding day.

Why did you join PLC?

Our reasons for joining Public Lands Creatives are twofold:

1. We recognize that working on these lands is a privilege we must respect and we want to do everything in our power to follow the rules and behave in the right way to protect the land: Public Lands is a great place to gain knowledge and ask questions. There’s decades of experience in the group and everyone is there to support each other and to share any info they’ve gathered from working in a specific location.

2. We worry that we are going to lose our right to work on these lands as rules become stricter and stricter and near impossible to navigate. We don’t like how arbitrary the rule-makers’ decisions seem to be: we would like to see a situation where rules are clear, predictable and easy to follow. We’ve found the situation particularly frustrating in Moab in the last year or two: the national parks’ rules go back and forth, different points of contact will tell you different things and some individuals in positions of power have been less than professional in their interactions not only with photographers, but also with couples. We hope that collective action from all involved in Public Lands Creatives will help improve this situation.

The ultimate goal would be for standardization of permitting rules across the entire US: every national park/state park/etc. should have a clear set of easy-to-interpret federally mandated rules that they all follow with no exceptions, permits should be easy to apply and pay for and no photographer following the rules should be scared of or frustrated by ‘the powers that be’. We’re ultimately all on the same side: wanting to enjoy and protect these lands.

Public Lands Creative is SO important as they are fighting the good fight! They’re pushing for fair rules on all of us photographers’ behalf and we HIGHLY appreciate their efforts.

But this isn’t just about us, the professionals. This is about our COUPLES and their wedding days. They not only deserve to have the wedding of their dreams, they have the RIGHT to have it on public lands. I can’t imagine a situation where all these lovely couples, who find such joy and connection in the great outdoors, are told they are no longer welcome.

If our membership fee can help pay for the good fight, well, we’d do it a hundred times over!