Everybody has a gift inside them. That passion for me is capturing little slices of life moments. It was obvious from my first art photography class in high school that photography was what I was born to do.
I grew up in Wichita, Kansas and went to Wichita State University on an art scholarship where I met one of the most famous photojournalists of all time Eugene Smith. Smith who also grew up in Wichita was one of the great photo essayists for Life Magazine. He did photo essays such as "The Country Doctor" which was actually photographed in Grand County Colorado. Seeing his work and work by Dorothea Lange's "Great Depression" photographs hanging on the walls of the art museum at WSU opened my mind to the power of documentary photojournalism. I changed my major from Art to Journalism and never looked back.
I spent the next 20 years working as a newspaper photographer in Kansas and Colorado winning numerous state, regional, national and international awards for news, feature and sports pictures. I was twice nomanated for a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography while working at the Fort Collins Coloradoan for two different long term documentary projects.
Most of my newspaper career was spent working as a staff photographer for the Denver Post during a time when the paper had the budget to cover sports teams both at home games as well as on road trips. There were also two Sunday magazines and an arts section that kept me traveling all over the west.
I met my wife, Geri, working at the Post where she was the Marketing Director. I seriously almost had to quit my job so that we could get married in the middle of July in Montana 25 years ago. That's when I first realized I needed to get out of the news industry and work for myself. Five years later in, 2000, I began photographing weddings full-time and winning awards from the Wedding Photojournalists Association consistently. I still enjoy competing with many of the top wedding photojournalists around the world.
In the summer of 2108 we sold our house in Denver and bought another house in Kalispell, Montana all in the same week!
We've come full circle to live in the town where we were married and we are looking forward to enjoying skiing, bicycling, camping, hiking, cooking, gardening in our new location.
See a short slideshow of Vanessa and Erik’s wedding day in pictures. Vanessa Delgado and Erik Lacayo were married September 1, 2012 at Holy Ghost Catholic Church in downtown Denver, with a reception following at The Curtis Hotel. Vanessa and Erik combined a very grand, historic church with one of the hippest hotels in downtown […]
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