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I wanted to try a mock-engagement shoot, basically a free shoot just to test and experiment with some new camera and lighting tools that I recently got, so I asked Lauren and Justin if they felt like helping me out with a few looks. Their wedding is less than a month away, so they really don’t need any engagement photos at this point. For this shoot, I wanted to spend a lot more time experimenting with my lighting and things like that rather than making more of the typical ‘natural-light lifestyle’ type of images that you expect to see at engagement sessions. I also thought they might appreciate the opportunity to just practice taking photos a little bit before their big wedding day.
I wanted to go after three main looks: a darker, moodier sunset look, a more high-key late afternoon beach look, and some simple looks where they are surrounded and kind of popping out of some green forest backgrounds.
So Lauren and Justin met up with me at Elks Neck State Park near NorthEast Maryland and we randomly stumbled upon this cool little beach area that we could use for photos. As I suspected, they were awesome to work with and it was like working with a couple of models. Their obvious chemistry for each other and out going personalities made the photos come alive.
Let’s start by looking at photos from the end of the day, when the sun was setting as we shot the last couple of images, because those are really the photos I had in mind when setting up the session.
Earlier that afternoon, we found this little private part of the beach with this little chill-out spot carved into the woods. It worked nicely as a place to frame up a few images with some tree branches and balance the lighting on them with the late afternoon setting sun on the water. I was using my new MagBox 24″ softbox for these and it turned out to be the perfect little light-modifier to go hike around the woods and beach with.
Before that, I did decide to put the lighting stuff away for a couple minutes and shoot some natural-light lifestyle shots (aka snapshots that anyone could take haha) but at an engagement session it is just kind of mandatory to take some natural light images, so we did.
For the images below, the sun was still pretty darn bright, so I actually used a bare flash to counter-balance the super bright sun on these. I like how the hard-edged light looks in certain situations, the opposite of soft light giving us kind of an edgy look. Again, these were somewhat experimental. I think it’s valuable for any photographer to kind of veer off the road of what we know works (flattering, even lighting) and kind of tinker and experiment with different looks, sometimes just to see what it looks like.
We actually started their photo session in this little spot in the woods near where we had parked our cars. I always like to start with something simple, and this little bit of forest next to the parking lot worked perfectly as a way to warm up as a photographer and also as a way to help them get loosened up and ready to make a bunch of photos.
