It was a beautiful morning when we met up with Michelle and Chris for their early morning engagement shoot at Canon Hill park in Birmingham. The sun was out in all its glory but there was still a chill in the air. We love to do photo shoots in the morning or later on in the afternoon, as the light has a certain direction to it and is a lot more flattering for portrait photography if you know how to use it to your advantage.
We could tell Michelle and Chris were both very nervous at first about having their picture taken as so many couples are, so we find it’s important to help relax the couple to start off. We’ve found that taking a few quick portraits and showing the couple how good they look really helps to relax them. The very useful feature of using the new fuji cameras is that even in harsh sunlight you can view the images in the viewfinder instead of using the back of the LCD screen. This is normally hard to do on any camera in the sun due to the glare, but with Fuji it’s almost like your at the cinema, it’s fantastic.
We used the sun to our advantage during the photo shoot and I like to use it as a backlight in most cases as it makes for a more flattering image. We did a few shots with Chris where I lit him using the sun in the Rembrandt lighting style. This style suits men more as it helps chisel their features and is used in many high fashion magazines such as GQ and Vogue.
We had a great time during the shoot and even managed to get some photos of their dog as he loved getting involved.
We look forward to photographing their wedding later this year.
We’ve added a small selection of photos from their Engagement shoot below. If you are getting married in the future and would like an engagement photo shoot, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
