Liz & Chris - Engagement Part 2

As promised here is the second part of Liz and Chris' engagement session. Part 1 took place in a cold and snowy London, well the weather also had a prominent role to play in our Guernsey session. A brisk wind and heavy rain showers greeted us, but we ventured forth with our usual great enthusiasm. I enjoy these conditions, bad weather often gives exciting light, and of course photography is all about light, though in these conditions you have to be quick with your decisions to react and make the most of whatever opportunities present themselves in such changeable conditions.

You can gauge the conditions from the opening shot below, but hey we're having a great time!

Like I mentioned grab the opportunities quickly, this fleeting but perfect rainbow appeared, what a beautiful memory of the occasion. A quick wipe of the lens to clear the rain away and we got our picture.

Once again the light brightened enough to give a lovely saturated colour with highlights on the wet grasses. You can tell we're in for another squall by the sky behind.

Not sure what rules of composition this picture adheres to, certainly goes against some advice to get in close. But my over-riding rule is if it looks good it is good! This is going to be a stunning double page spread in the album.

A dramatic sky, a semi silhouette and again that sense of fun all combine to give us another effective image.

When I photograph an engagement session or a wedding I always try to keep in mind the final use of a picture, difficult but often very helpful. In this next image I purposely kept a large amount of negative space, now this would work as an image in its own right. But then see the following picture which is the actual double page spread out of the final album design. It was a bit windy for an umbrella, as was soon proved. But with quick reactions and a deft reversal of the upturned brolly Chris rescued the poor umbrella and it lives intact for another day! A good laugh too.


We had a good variety of work already but were keen for more, so we changed location and braved further rain. I really don't have the space to share many more images here, but to finish off this post here's an image that utilised my vision gained from my darkroom days, with the scene before me I knew what I wanted out of it, it is rewarding when one is able to manage this.

Even later in the day the smiles were still there, and yes, so was the rain! Once more the effort was worth it and we got a nice series of images to close off our session.

So thank you to Liz and Chris for their endless enthusiasm, the album is designed and being printed at the moment. I really can't wait to see the finished result in print.