For some reason I’ve always shied away from engagement shoots, even though I love photographing weddings. But I thought I’d give it a go and started by signing up for a Creative Live class with Pye Jirsa ( https://www.creativelive.com/courses/incredible-engagement-photography-pye-jirsa?via=site-header_0). I was really impressed with this course, there was a ton of new stuff I learnt about posing couples, but also the approach to using flash was very cool and quite different to how I normally use OCF ( off camera flash ). A lot of the special effects I was already familiar with from my fashion shoots, but it was very cool to see Pye apply them to engagement shoots, plus he is a very funny and engaging presenter. I’ve watched a lot of online tutorials but this is the best I’ve seen. Of course the most important thing to do with something like this is to go and practice, so I did two engagement shoots for free this weekend and I’ve got a few more in the pipeline. I make it clear from the outset that these are slightly experimental shoots and just for my ( and the clients ) portfolios, but these are real couples, not models. Here are a few shots, all taken with the Fuji X-Pro2, various lenses and my Godox 360 flash system.
So on the first shoot there was quite a bit if light rain. I was really pleased as one of the shots from the course I wanted to try was a back lit water shot and the couple ( Evan and Amy, a super chilled out lovely Canadian couple )were happy to help. The godox 360 is right behind them and lights up the water nicely.
We found a nice tree with overhanging foliage for the next shot. I had an assistant with me by the way, Tim Davis, super nice guy and very helpful. I really needed an assistant for these shoots as with the godox flashes there is a fair amount of gear to carry a round. Tim is off to the right holding a godox flash with a CTO ( colour tint orange ) gel to make the light look like sunlight. We are diffusing it through the leaves and I think it works quite well. The idea was to make it look like the sun came out for a bit and I think we succeeded. I made a mistake with Evan’s posing here, he is wearing a long sleeve top so I should have asked him to just hook his thumb in his pocket and leave more of the hand out.
This is just a natural light shot, using foliage to frame the couple, I did a few more of these and they are super quick to do. Normally I wouldn’t use as much OCF as I did on this shoot, but I was trying new techniques and the couple were totally cool with that. Hope people find these interesting.