Engagement Session with Mariana and Wes at Alki Point

I am rather sadly behind in my blog posting schedule for which I deeply apologize.  I discovered recently that I had completely missed posting several engagement sessions that took place last summer.  Time to remedy that!

Last August I was contacted by Wes, who wanted to know if I could help out he and his fiance Mariana.   They both work in Seattle in the medical profession, but were going to be moving to the East Coast soon and wanted to get engagement photos taken in Seattle before they left.  But they had pretty much no idea where to take the photos.  We discussed some of the options, including various parks and other public access locations that would be suitable for an engagement session.  Then Wes mentioned that if possible they would really like to get some sunset photos during the session, and that is when I told him about one of my favorite photo spots, located along the west side of Alki Point.  Nicely separated from the beach volleyball courts and shops of Alki proper it is much less likely to be occupied (or over-occupied) by tourists or even locals.  Wes spoke to Mariana and she agreed that it sounded like a good place for their photos.  So we set up a time and got ready for the shoot.

The think about photo sessions in Seattle is that you never really know for sure just what kind of weather you might get.  Even in the middle of a heat wave you might get nailed by thunderstorms or some other crazy weather!  But as the date for the engagement photos got close it was apparent that we were going to luck out and have sunny, warm and DRY conditions.  However, it also became evident that it was going to be either cloudless or nearly so, which makes sunset photos a bit more difficult as well as meaning that the likelihood of really good sunset colors was quite a bit lower.

We met at the beach access about 30 minutes before the sun was due to set, and it was a gorgeous evening.  But as I feared, it was also completely cloudless.  That turned out to be no big deal, as the clear skies and lack of any haze meant the views of the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound were crystal clear.  We spent a half hour or so walking along the beach getting photos at various point and with a variety of backdrops.  As the sun began to set we moved closer to the water’s edge and played with some silhouette shots, as well as some fill-flash photos.  I can never quite understand why some photographers are so devoted to the idea of “natural light only” that they will not make use of the amazing flash capabilities to which they have access, since the effect of mixing natural and artificial light can produce some great images!

After playing around for another half hour or so it finally began to get dark enough that we decided to call it a day.  We ended up with a very nice selection of shots, some of which you will see below.