First time around

In my first post, I mentioned that once someone gets a nice camera, that friends, more often than not, will ask that person to take photos of them. Its pretty true in my case, but the very first actual photo shoot I did was a favor to my friend Adam. He was getting married and was in a tight budget for a photographer. So I volunteered to shoot his engagement photo. On January 2009, me and my camera, with one lens (Canon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS) and a Gary Fong Puffer flash diffuser for the pop up flash met up with Adam and his fiancee Joni.

Its nice having known your subject for a while because you already have a sense of what they are like. I find it difficult to photograph someone if I had just met them. I guess, for engagement photos, where you are trying to capture an image of their relationship, its really important to have a sense of familiarity with the couple you are photographing. If its something superficial like a model shoot, then it kinda matters less. For me, taking a photo is more than just opening and closing your shutter. Its trying to tell the story of the people in front of the lens that makes a photo.

Here's a few from that afternoon...

I've known Adam since he was 13 or so. We were in the same Tae Kwon Do school. My best friend, Danny, taught Adam for a while. He was always joking and being a kid. So to see him in a different light was a treat. Until then, I have never seen anyone so young understand the meaning of being loving and caring to their significant other ... and the same is true for Joni.


I wanted to have a bit of fun and creativity in some of the photos. They were cool enough to let me have a few shots for me too. This one below turned out pretty cool.


This is what I'm talking about =) Makes me happy every time I look at it.


This one is kind of a happy accident, where being out of shape was kind of a good thing. We hiked down half a mile to a river bed where Adam and Joni used to go "watch the sunset." There was supposed to be a water fall, but when we got there, it was trashed and the water fall was barely trickling. We hiked back up, and I got winded half way through. The sun was hitting them perfectly so I told them to stop turn around and pose. And this is what came out of it...


I had Adam and Joni sit in a huge fireplace for this one. At the top of the hill where we hiked used to be a huge wooden gazebo with a smokestack. Well, it burnt down and all was left were the pillars and a HUGE fireplace. I had to lay down on the ground to get this angle...


And of course, more loving...



Aside from where we hiked, most of their engagement shots were taken at the Ft Worth Botanical Gardens. In the Japanese garden section. Great place to shoot, just don't tell the folks there what you are up to because then all of a sudden you owe them a hundred dollars because your doing a "commecial shoot." And if they do let you shoot with out having to pay, they'll have someone follow you around hounding you making sure you don't use any light. Geez... the nerve of some people.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun that day. This day was also the day photography became kind of an obsession. I had been shooting since 2002, but more for me and not other people. This was the "Ah ha!" moment where I realized that this is something I can do for other people that I can truly enjoy.

GZ