Where I’ve Been
If you’ve been following along on social media or checking in on the blog — first of all, thank you. And second: I owe you an explanation for the silence.
The honest answer is simple: I’ve been working. A lot. The kind of stretch where you look up from your edit suite and realize weeks have gone by without a single personal post, a blog update, or a breath in between. When you’re a one-woman production studio based in Colorado Springs, a full calendar is something to be grateful for — and I am, genuinely — but it doesn’t leave a lot of room for reflection until things quiet down a bit.
So here I am, on a rare slow morning, ready to pull back the curtain a little. This is what the last several months have looked like from inside the Lux Creative Co. studio.
Eight Shoots, One Very Tired Videographer
Let me start with the number that still surprises me when I say it out loud: eight out-of-town shoots.
For a Colorado Springs–based videographer, that’s a significant amount of travel. Some of those were day trips up and down the I-25 corridor — a stretch I know well, from the steel-industry roots of Pueblo in the south, through Colorado Springs, past the quiet bedroom community of Monument, through Castle Rock’s fast-growing professional services scene, and on up into the Denver metro. Each of those communities has its own business culture, and part of my job is reading the room before I ever set up a light stand. Others were longer hauls that required flying out with a full gear kit, coordinating with local crews, and managing complex multi-day shoot schedules across time zones.
Each trip came with its own set of logistics: location scouting in advance, rental gear coordination when I couldn’t check everything on a flight, briefing on-camera talent I’d never met before, and adapting to environments I couldn’t fully anticipate until I walked through the door. It’s the part of this work that nobody really talks about — not the glamorous travel, but the real work of problem-solving in unfamiliar spaces with a deadline that doesn’t move.
And I loved every minute of it. That’s the truth. Every location taught me something. Every client’s office, conference room, or facility gave me a new visual puzzle to solve. There is no such thing as a boring location when your job is to find the light and tell the story.
When I came back to Colorado Springs each time, I came back sharper. This city has a way of grounding you. You drive south on I-25, you see Pikes Peak on the horizon, and something settles. It’s home.
Thirty-Plus Interviews and What That Taught Me
Alongside all of that travel, I produced more than thirty interviews across multiple projects. Some were executive-level testimonials for corporate clients. Some were stories from people on the front lines of their organizations — healthcare workers, program coordinators, field staff. Some were deeply personal accounts from individuals who had never sat in front of a camera before in their lives.
The Art of the Interview
If there’s one thing thirty-plus interviews will do, it’s sharpen your instincts for how to create safety for a subject. That’s the real work of interview production — not the lighting, not the framing, not the lavalier placement — it’s making a person feel so comfortable that they forget the camera is there and just… talk.
Colorado Springs has taught me a lot about that, actually. This is a relationship-driven city. The business culture here — whether you’re working with a defense contractor near Fort Carson, a healthcare organization connected to UCHealth, or a small business owner in a downtown storefront — is built on trust first, transaction second. People here can tell when you’re present with them and when you’re just checking boxes. I carry that sensibility into every interview I shoot, whether I’m in Colorado Springs or a thousand miles away.
What Thirty Interviews Produce
Beyond craft, this kind of volume taught me something about efficiency and consistency. Thirty interviews means thirty sets of lighting adjustments, thirty audio checks, thirty moments of helping someone take a breath before the camera rolls. You develop systems. You get faster at the setup without ever rushing the person in the chair. And you come away with a library of stories that genuinely moves you — because these were real people, sharing real things, trusting that I would handle what they gave me with care.
That responsibility never gets old. I hope it never does.
The World Challenge Partnership
Of everything I’ve been working on, the partnership with World Challenge is the one I want to share most carefully — because it deserves more than a quick mention.
World Challenge is a nonprofit organization focused on international development and humanitarian work in some of the world’s most under-resourced communities. Their work is serious, impactful, and rooted in a deep sense of mission. For those who know Colorado Springs — a city with a significant and well-established faith community, home to organizations like Focus on the Family — it won’t come as a surprise that meaningful nonprofit work like this has roots here. This city has always had a heart for mission-driven causes, and Lux Creative Co. shares that.
Working with World Challenge asked something different of me than corporate video production does. The stories being told aren’t about products or services or quarterly results. They’re about human beings whose circumstances are genuinely fragile, and about the people dedicating their lives to serving them. That kind of storytelling requires you to check your ego at the door entirely. The camera is a servant to the story, not the other way around.
I’m not going to share specific project details here — there are elements that aren’t mine to share publicly — but I will say this: this partnership has been one of the most meaningful professional engagements of my career. I’m grateful for the trust World Challenge placed in Lux Creative Co., and I’m honored to have played even a small role in helping communicate what they do to the people who support them.
If you represent a nonprofit or mission-driven organization and you’re wondering whether a small studio like mine is the right fit for work of that weight — I want you to know that this kind of work is exactly what I’m here for. Reach out and let’s talk.
Back Home in Colorado Springs
Between the travel and the production load, returning to Colorado Springs has meant something more this year than it usually does. There’s a particular kind of relief in landing back at a place where you know the coffee shops, the back roads, and the way the afternoon light falls across the front range when a storm is moving in from the west.
Colorado Springs is a city that doesn’t get enough credit for its creative energy. Yes, it’s home to major military installations — Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base — and those relationships define a significant part of the local economy and culture. But the city is also home to a thriving arts scene, a growing tech corridor along Powers Boulevard, and a small-business community that punches well above its weight. The clients I work with here, from healthcare organizations to startups to established local brands, are genuinely interesting people building genuinely interesting things.
Being a videographer in Colorado Springs means being part of a community, not just a market. My clients introduce me to other clients. I run into people I’ve worked with at the grocery store, at church, at school events. That texture — the smallness of a real community, even inside a growing metro area — shapes how I approach every project. I’m not just a vendor here. I’m a neighbor.
And that matters to me more than any portfolio piece or production stat ever could.
The range of work available in Colorado Springs specifically is something I don’t take for granted. On any given week I might be shooting a testimonial series for a defense contractor near Fort Carson, producing executive headshots for a healthcare group affiliated with UCHealth Memorial, filming a brand story for a tech startup in the Briargate corridor, or documenting a community initiative downtown near Acacia Park. Colorado Springs sits at an interesting crossroads — military and aerospace heritage, a growing entrepreneurial community, an arts scene centered around areas like Old Colorado City, and a deep nonprofit sector anchored by organizations that have called this city home for decades. That variety keeps the work interesting and keeps me versatile. Whatever your industry, if you’re a Colorado Springs business with a story worth telling, I understand the landscape you’re operating in because I live and work in it too.
What’s Next
So: what does fall look like from here?
Honestly, I’m excited. The calendar is filling in with a mix of corporate video projects and brand photography work, a few exciting conversations that I can’t announce yet, and a renewed commitment to writing here on the blog more consistently. I have stories I want to tell — about the craft, about the business of running a creative studio, and about what it actually looks like to produce broadcast-quality work from Colorado Springs.
If you’ve been thinking about a video project — whether that’s a corporate testimonial series, a brand story, an interview-driven piece, or something you haven’t quite figured out how to describe yet — now is a good time to start the conversation. Fall is when a lot of organizations begin planning their Q1 content, and I book out further in advance than most people expect.
Tell me about your project and we’ll figure out whether we’re a good fit. No pressure, no pitch — just a real conversation.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for the messages and the check-ins and the patience while I’ve been heads-down. It means more than I can say.
— Audra