Kate and Kevin’s Engagement Session at Gas Works Park

Way back in early October I was contacted by Kate.  She and her fiancé Kevin wanted to have an engagement photo session and she was hoping that I might be able to set up a time to work with them.  I was happy to do so, and we discussed various possible locations for the session before finally deciding on Gas Works Park.

Next came what proved to be the tricky part, finding a date that would work for everyone.  Their schedule was such that the session needed to be in November, and I was already pretty heavily booked for various jobs on most of the November weekends.  And of course, being Seattle there was no guarantee that any date in November would not turn out to be a monsoon.   Which would not be very helpful for photos!

We set one date and had to change it a few days out due to a work conflict for Kevin, but finally set a firm date.  We met at Gas Works late in the morning on November 18, and completely lucked out with the weather.  It was sunny and mild, more like late September than mid-November.  And none of us were going to complain about the weather gods deciding to smile on us!

The Beauty of Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park is one of my favorite locations in Seattle for almost any kind of photo shoot.  I have done many sessions there with wedding parties, families and plenty of other engagement shoots.  So I know my way around the park and have a number of favorite spots for photos.  But the thing about photography is that even though the location is the same, on any given day the lighting will vary (sunny vs cloudy, early vs late, etc.).  And of course the time of year also means that the backdrops in the park can be very different.  We happened to be lucky and found an area with some nice fall colors that we used for some shots.

The very low angle of the sun, even though it was almost noon, was both challenging and rewarding.  Unplanned lens flare was an issue, but the backlighting possibilities were wonderful.  We worked our way around the entire park, and found a lot of great spots.  A few times we had to deal with what I call “unintentional photo bombers” getting in our way, but considering how nice the weather was we had great luck at finding ways to keep our photos private.

Here is a sampling of our session, I hope that you enjoy the photos.  And please feel free to leave some comments, I’d love to get your thoughts on the pictures we took during this session.