Nicole & Jesse

One of the things I'm most excited about is taking pictures of couples (and doing engagement portraits). Jesse and Nicole let me take a few of them after we were done getting pictures of Ashleigh and Mackenzie. They really wanted to recreate a favorite picture they had of the two of them. They wanted the waves behind them, so that's what we did. They were super easy to shoot -- really comfortable in front of the camera and they "posed" so perfectly. :)

Seriously, could the sea gulls have come at any better time in the picture above? I love it! The birds were working the camera, too.

This picture above was taken at a strange angle ... but I love how they're looking at each other. I should have framed this one differently. Maybe I need to crop it differently and see what I can come up with.

Yeah, so these are all really similar shots of the two of them. I wish we had thought to do more couples' pictures earlier in the day instead of just right at the end. Next time!

All in all, it was such a fun day for me! Thank you so much, Nicole and Jesse, for letting me spend the afternoon with you! Tell Ashleigh and Mackenzie they did an awesome job. They're beautiful little ladies.

I learned a lot today. After going through all of my pictures, I see that I tend to tip the camera and take pictures at a certain angle a lot. I need to change it up and take more pictures just straight on. Horizontally. I want to plan ahead of time for some general poses and plan in more fun activities so we're not just walking and posing. I like to capture real interaction ... especially with kids, the best stuff is the stuff you don't purposely try to direct.

Also, I'm a sucker for accidentally leaving my aperture at its lowest setting (I'm having a love affair with my 50mm 1.8) and then not checking it for a long time and only altering the shutter speed. I need to remember that when I'm taking pictures of a bigger group of people, that a really low aperture is not a good idea. There's no guarantee that each person in a big group will be in the exact same plane (the same distance away from my camera). With a really low aperture, that means that not everyone will be in sharpest focus equally.

Whew. Bed time finally. I have two more shoots coming up -- one on Monday and one on Tuesday. More pictures coming soon!