The above picture is at the end of the walk through campus and the below picture is at the start. In between we also went off campus and had some dinner and took a few pictures throughout town… we’ll show you some of those in the next post.

OK to begin (as we have done) at the end. I found myself spoiled not having an assistant and sadly not having my lightstand with me… it was in the car and it made me sad not to have it because i had to refrain from several shots I woulda loved to set up as it got darker with some nice Off-Camera-Flash but I simply had to try this one as the skys looked amazing and the lights as well… it was a holiday so there were no students around.

(Below) We parked a little off to the west of the main part of campus and walked over this bridge to get there. This was my way of letting them know at the very beginning that I would be stopping them all the time for pictures in random places that I thought would be great. The bridge isn’t so random, more typical I suppose, but still you’ll see that’s what I’d do in many of the following pictures.

Air Vents – Yep, big huge air vents are awesome! I flew 2000 miles to get pictures of air vents… I’m glad they trust me!

The sign says no visitors beyond this point! and so we stood just inches in front of the line. Sometimes make your limitations turn into awesome pictures… many people will see a shiny object (metaphor) and go racing towards it and think about how they wished the sign wasn’t there. Don’t get caught up in that, turn every situation into something awesome, make it work for your benefit! Say “oh well” and then get it out of mind and start thinking of how you can make it work!

Since this was his campus where he spent many years of his life… we had to get a few shots. The one on the right is my idea as she got shoes on and prepped for the pictures I took advantage of some pictures of him. The one on the left she wanted because this is the department where he spent a lot of his time.

My thing these days is telling them to act out something… I think it puts them in a different mind set to do fun and different things than a simple pose… you get different reactions.

In several previous posts I tell people that you don’t need to pose people as much as you need to put them in the situations that illicit the reactions and interactions you want.

And finally we have the gazebo… I’m sure you couldn’t even tell since this was the biggest gazebo i’d seen in my life… had I got this whole thing they’d be specs… but they’d be right in this area for their actual ceremony (across the road at the church) so I gave it a shot. I’ll give the spots people want a shot but I’m not afraid to tell them that our time is best spent in other locations… most of the time their suggestions are awesome and I love the challenge.

Like I say doing a photoshoot is a team experience where we all collaborate. I like this picture, good idea to them and adaption by me.

When they fly over 2000 miles to go do some engagements they better be some rocking engagements! Well here I am to submit them for inspection.

The shoot will be devided into many posts allowing me to talk about each theme. Like most of my posts they are to appeal to photographers interested in knowing what I do and what goes through my head when I take pictures. Also to future clients so they know the same things and get ideas of what they can do and also how I opperate and if it appeals to them and their style.

We shall start with the boats… A little bit of background.

Kristen and Thomas went to the same Highschool in Utah. It wasn’t til several years after highschool that they connected and she started to visit him at school, he was going to the Naval academy in Maryland, so much of their interaction occured there.

I’m obviously making a long story short and maybe they’ll write up their story for us… but the point for me is she loves him in uniform, she totally embraces the whole boat thing, and so this picture was the one they talked about the most when we first talked about engagements. She did want to be on a boat but they were unable to find one to rent.

I think this is a pretty good remedy for a picture in a boat. It contains all the elements and is totally unique.

These pictures happened at the very very end of two days of shooting. We had all gone back and forth about what we would do because you can’t necisarily jump into a boat that’s not yours specially as a naval officer that’s supposed to set a good example. I am not comfortable with tresspassing either. So we finally said let’s go over to the boats and see what we could do.

We got perfect cloud coverage at just the right time as I couldn’t diffuse such a big area, specially without an assistant.

So that’s the background and these are the pictures.

Each of these pictures seem to have a little bit different flare to them and I couldn’t say which one will be most well received. Perhaps the vertical one since it’s the only one of it’s orientation. Perhaps the only BW one… but with the sky so blue it’s hard to not like a color one. Maybe the one 2 below since it’s a bit closer. Or maybe the first one since we can see both the faces well… it’s a good send it to grandma picture.

This is why i give people lots of options to torture them into having to decide for themselves what they truly love the most.

I often say… These pictures are for you! They’re going on Your wall! Keep that in mind.