A Walk Through the District

    Another response to one of our craigslist ads was a wonderful couple named Alex and Bernadette.  They were interested in getting engagement pictures done. They told us a little bit about themselves and their personality and we found they were a very "green" couple. One of the things they mentioned was their walks together through downtown DC, so what better place to do their pictures? Bernadette had mentioned an interest in the Caroussel outside the Smithsonian on the National Mall, and I've always loved Carousel pictures so I figured that would be a good place to meet and to start.
     This was our first engagement shoot that we'd done together so Brandy and I were a little nervous about the whole thing. On top of that the Blue Line on the metro was, of course, doing track maintenance which made us a tad late... :-( As soon as we got off the metro with our back pack and camera we started looking around for them... just as I pulled out my phone they found us and off we went towards the Carousel. They were both pretty fun loving and seemed to be excited about having their pictures done. Like most, they weren't really sure how to react while having a camera in their face, but once they loosened up to the idea of just being themselves and forgeting the camera we started getting some great shots! Next we walked over to the Smithsonian Castle and got some shots by the flowers and some really great shots by the castle windows on some really cute benches that are some of Brandy's favorites. She is so good at setting up the shots in a very natural easy way. At the back of the Castle there was a little garden with a fountain and some more benches which we took advantage of and then asked if they were not too afraid to climb in one of the trees. With a quick look around to see if anyone there would have gotten upset with us climbing we just let them loose to play in the tree and they really got up there and I don't know anyone that doesn't just naturally smile while climbing a tree, so I just snapped away at their little cat and mouse game of chasing each other through the tree and a GREAT shot of him helping her down.
     From there we just walked through the city and toward the tidal basin.  We followed them and Brandy talked and got their minds off the shoot a bit (which she is great at) and I moved around and just took pictures of them being them making sure to catch those moments were they held hands or she leaned on his shoulder while waiting to cross at a red light. These are the pictures people want more than being put in front of something and then posed. We try our hardest to do as few shoots in a "studio" setting as possible because unless you're a full time model, it's just hard to be natural there. It's much easier to be somewhere they feel comfortable or somewhere that is easy to get a feel for rather than a blank grey canvas and a stool.
     We got to the tidal basin, which is near where Alex proposed; he actually proposed on the other side of the basin but that was a long walk! Brandy and I actually hung back a little and just watched them walk a little more and she hopped up on the railing and sat there while he stood in front and it was just a very romantic, cute moment that I'm glad I captured for them. We did make sure to get some shots of the beautiful ring she had, as well as him on his knee proposing which turned out great! Overall it was a very fun time, despite the heat.  We ended up filling about three CD's with beautiful pictures for them.
     Well.... one of the things I suggest to any of you reading this, that are aspiring photographers, is that if you have a list of locations that you are trying to move through with your customer and you're really excited about doing a certain site, try to move that one towards the end. Prioritize them... you want to make sure they are the most comfortable so don't do it too early where they might still be uneasy about the camera, but not too late that it's the end of the shoot and everyone is tired. Try finding a little secluded quiet area to just do a couple test shots and practice some posing a little bit and let them get the hang of it before you move on to the big one. So when you're out in a national park hiking do some test shots at the picnic table before hiking out to the waterfall.
     Here's one of the shots that we enjoyed the most that was just them being natural waiting on the light to change and she laid her head down on his shoulder. I enjoyed this shot but it's DC, on a Saturday, in the summer. It's hard to find a place where there isn't a thousand people walking around, and the crowd just limits the amount of "romance" that can be depicted in the photo. Fortunately with copy of Photoshop CS5 that I got for my birthday (Thank you Bobby!) there's a new feature that you will absolutely love called "content aware fill". In previous versions you had the patch healing brush but it only worked so well on things like fly away hairs and blemishes and if you're lucky a rail or something small. With CS5 you can select buildings or people or much larger objects and Photoshop will reconstruct the background using the surrounding pixels to complete patterns, so I eliminated the other people in the photo so now Alex and Bernadette appear to be on a quiet romantic walk alone through the city. Sometimes this feature doesn't work as well as you would hope if the background is complicated, but you can normally fix anything that photoshop "assumes" is wrong in the background by using the healing tool or clone stamp.

One of Brandy's favorites was this one of them sitting together on the benches. It's mid day and very harsh light but a little focal black and white and some burning and dodging in photoshop makes it seem like mid evening almost. I had to eliminate some distracting things in the picture using the content aware fill and then went a little further for the evening fill by dodging the highlights on the light post bulb and making it appear as if it were on. It's very subtle but when you remove it or look back at the original you realize the difference in ombiance.