A walk in the park
I first met Maggie through her sister Jess who was married a year earlier on a warm July day in a barn and park wedding. Maggie was the maid of honor and she won me over that day with how helpful and caring she was toward her sister.
A year later, her fiancé asked me to take a small engagement portrait session with him and Maggie at Fox Brook Park in Brookfield.
The particulars of an engagement session
I talk a lot about engagement sessions, but what are they really like? What can you expect when you get there and beforehand? It all starts off with an email from you asking for a portrait session. After we pick a date, I ask is if you had a particular place in mind? If you do, then great! That’s where we’ll do the session. If not, I ask whether you like the city, beach, woods or somewhere else and then based off that, I suggest a place or two.
In this case Maggie and Matt really liked Fox Brook Park and the place was special to them.
Leading up to the portrait session I let you handle the clothes you’ll want to wear. I can offer suggestions and help if you’d like. The basics are to wear something light and bright to the beach, something casual and earthy to a park and something more upscale and dressy to the city.
Once you arrive I greet you and I might chat with you a bit and then we’ll walk to our first spot. If I’ve never been to the location before, I might have arrived 15 minutes early just to look around, but either way I usually have an idea on where to start.
Once we arrive at our first spot, I’ll usually give you some basic posing guides, nothing strict, but a couple pointers to look your best.
As I take photos I try to talk to you and I’m feeding off your personality and vibe. I really want people to feel comfortable getting portraits taken and I find it helps if I’m talking and communicating while we work. Usually sessions start off with a lot of nervous energy, and I like that, but I usually try to get all of us eventually settling down into a more comfortable happy relaxed vibe. Too much energy and we’ll burn out right away.
Depending on the location, I’ll also bring my portable speaker and play some classic romantic songs to set the tone.
Depending on the spot and how photogenic it is, we might spend 10-15 minutes in each place and then walk to the next spot. In a park like Fox Brook, that would look like sitting at a fallen log overlooking the water, standing up for a few photos and then walking to a trail with trees 200 yards away.
Everything is within walking distance. If you choose multiple locations, we’ll walk around each location and then go back to our cars to drive to the next spot.
If you have a wardrobe change, please give me a shout and I can let you know if there is a place to change or how likely it is to have a place to change. Otherwise, changing in the car is best.
For a single location, we’ll usually take portraits for 90 minutes to 2 hours. It’s probably 50% percent walking, chatting and setting things up and 50% getting your photo taken.
And, don’t worry the whole experience is much easier and smoother than you think!
Cloudy and overcast days
One question I get a lot is about weather. The week of you session will arrive and you’ll start looking at the weather and you’ll see that ‘ooph, it looks cloudy and overcast on my day.’
Clients will do this and then ask whether we’ll still be shooting on that day and the answer is a resounding yes.
I definitely reschedule sessions based on rain, but that does not include overcast days, because sunless days still turn into great photo sessions.
The first thing is that all cloudy days the light is much more even on your skin and is more flattering. This leads to more options for us. I typically schedule my photo sessions for golden hour or the sunrise golden hour, but if it’s cloudy all day we can even meet in the middle of the day in June and still get soft flattering light on your skin. The clouds act as a giant diffuser, spreading out the sunlight like a giant soft box.
Also, as long as the photographer properly exposes the picture while they’re taking it, the photo will not seem dark, but still bright. Also, the coloring of the photo is something you can adjust in camera too. So, if you think of an overcast day and think ‘oh no, everything is grey and the colors will not be vibrant’ don’t worry, because cameras have a specific setting which you can adjust so that the color will compensate for the grey/blue tone of a cloudy day.
Even if it’s raining a little bit, I have a lot of outdoor spots that have an awning over your head to break the rain. Even walking in the woods can block out scattered raindrops, because the trees create a natural canopy.
Matt and Maggie’s session was overcast the whole day and you would never notice it at the beginning of the session. At the end of the session I purposely edited and photographed their photos to get more of a moody twilight type of look.
Laying in the grass
I really want to give some flowers and credit to Matt and Maggie for our session. There was one moment when I asked if they would be ok laying in the grass and they were up for it. I knew if we all got low enough I could take a photo with flowers totally surrounding them with flowers and grass in the foreground and background.
Also, I think laying down on the ground, just adds such a unique and intimate element to your session. Here it just created this beautiful romantic and lovely moment for Matt and Maggie. In these photos Matt sat down and Maggie sat with her back resting on Matt’s chest and leaning her head back toward Matt’s shoulders.
It was just a sweet moment that makes you think of a couple truly in love, enjoying a day in the park and on a date. It makes me think of a couple when they are early on in their relationship and they just can’t get enough of each other.
It’s really quite beautiful and something that you really strive to capture at an engagement session.
Verse of the day
“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love it would be utterly scorned.”
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
