While I love taking photos, I never consider myself a professional...not even close. So, when Heather asked me to take engagement photos of her and Greg, I was flattered, and a bit scared. I take photos of my yard, underwater and my family but something like this was a bit out of my comfort zone. I don't shoot a lot in manual mode unless I am experimenting. I still haven't figured out benefits of having 2 lens yet. Yet, I would give it a try. Heather and Greg trusted me and I knew I could get a couple of good photos...at least in program mode.
Heather and Greg met us on the Tacoma waterfront with Heather's 2 children, and her mother. Unfortunately, due to timing, we got the sun directly overhead and that would make for lots of shadows. I shot a few with Robbie to see how the lighting was. The shadows and sun were overpowering. Beautiful day outside, horrible day for photography.
I warned Greg and Heather about my worries, but decided to proceed and see what we could get. I brought a prop...some white roses for her to hold. I wanted to see how they would work in the photos and they turned out to be a great add.
I took about 150 photos at all different places in the park. We tried full sun, shade, water backdrop and grass. I took photos of them, the kids together, kids and grandma, and some fun family shots. The hardest part is the creativity...getting them not to pose, but capturing the pureness of the moment. While the sun and shadows got the best of a lot of the pictures, these are a few of my favorites.
While the sun and shadows were annoying, keeping Kylee entertained through the process was hard too. She is 6 and she was good for about 45 minutes and she was done. I brought out the secret weapon: Robbie and Lily. The 3 of them played while I took shots of Heather and Greg. The photo shoot turned out to be a lot of fun and Heather and Greg seemed happy with the photos I took.
One of the hardest things for me to master at the moment is coming up with a good editing software. While I have Lightroom, I still haven't made peace with it yet. I have photoshop too, but have not loaded it to my computer. I used Picasa to do most of my editing on these.
