Welcome to the second part of Margaret + Luke’s Rochester engagement session, the night portion. I had been wanting to do this for a while, but it involved a lot of set up and was harder to pull off, which is why you haven’t seen it earlier. On that note, if I have any couples who want to do something similar – I would love to! We’ll just have to figure out the logistics.

For this night engagement session, we kept our picnic set up and strung up some lights for something more romantic. Long exposures and light writing completed the set of photos, and let me tell you it took multiple tries for Margaret to write love backwards for the camera – but it was worth it! I love this romantic set and we created a fun save the date for M+L where they wrote out the numbers for their date.

take 2 of the heart shot… two of many :) Save the date for 10.2.10 and can’t wait to see you then!

So, like I was saying this morning I had some of those same peaches for breakfast. Now, on a side note Matt and I been talking about a food blog for a while – although it’s mostly his thing. Something that’s personal and we can share with family and friends (if they’re interested), but most of all we want to chronicle all of the recipes we try and successes and failures so that we can look back on them. I don’t know how many times we’ve wanted to make something again only to spend 20 minutes unsuccessfully looking through food and wine magazines to find what issue the recipe was from. Sure, a blog might not be the easiest way to keep track of all of those recipes, but it will probably be the most fun.

Back to the peaches. They are delicious – if I haven’t said so already – and this morning was no exception. Because of the food blogging I have obviously stepped in as food photographer – although I don’t want to get your hopes up, cause I really haven’t been taking any groundbreaking pictures yet. Especially with cooking, since it can take some time to set things up and document the process while making sure you keep the camera clean. I have yet to figure out a good method for food photography, but I’ll be working on it.

Anyways, I took the peaches out this morning and thinking about how good they are, and I placed them on the counter where some light was streaming in. It made them glow. I grabbed my camera to snap a few shots from the front… and then I went to the side. (this is where I tie the post into photography) While the peaches looked good with the light streaming on them, I couldn’t resist them from the side with the light streaming through them. The back lighting was perfect and a completely different picture from the one I took at the front (as I’m sure you can tell).

Light can transform a photograph. You can use it in so many ways and get different results. I’m not a studio photographer, so in most situations I’m not in control of all of the light. Most of the time (because I work on location in faster paced settings) I work with the light that is given to me and add to it when necessary. It can be more of a challenge to shoot in so many different environments, but I like it because it’s always something new. Just to look back, here are a few different examples I found from my work when I used light in specific ways…

long exposures with different light sources

shooting for some flare

natural light – controlled through windows + doors

silhouettes