Bend Engagement Photography: Jaclyn and Cody

Engagement Photography at Sparks Lake with Jaclyn and Cody

Like a lot of couples, the first time I met Jaclyn and Cody was while doing their engagement portrait photography at Elk Lake. The lake is a wonderful location when doing portraits in the late afternoon just before and after the sun goes down. A photographer has tons of options with water, trees, sky, reflections, and bright colors to maximize the portraits and give a couple too many pictures to choose from. This is always my goal.

As I got to know Jaclyn and Cody I enjoyed both their company and their willingness to try ideas. Being in love and comfortable being close in front of a stranger always helps too. Doing engagement portraits helps with both getting awesome photos and with meeting and knowing the photographer. Jaclyn and Cody took several pictures from our portrait session and added them to a wedding day book for their guests to enjoy. Wedding day books are always popular with couples. Sometimes couples have framed pictures of themselves on the table out front and these portraits always look nice in the collection of pictures.

One way I loved working with Jaclyn and Cody was their willingness to allow me to get creative with ideas. Not all ideas are equal, and the creative process moves forward in the changing light of an afternoon without much guidance. My personal mission, as always, is to mold my process to the couple and create images unique of them, for them. It's like having a chalkboard empty of ideas getting filled up as we work together. I love getting input for ideas from the couple and am not in any way too proud to listen. People need to understand that while showing other peoples work on Pinterest is a good way to generate ideas, there's no way a picture on Pinterest can be copied exactly and should just be used as a starting point to make new ideas.

My secret weapon, as always, is the Profoto light I use extensively for both portrait and wedding photography. I talk often of using this tool for my work as a wedding and portrait photographer and it's invaluable for this work. It especially works well at Sparks Lake late in the afternoon and evening. The silhouette at the top of this post is done by turning the light off. This is what any picture at sunset will look like without the Profoto.

As you can see in these next two, having a couple willing to do things like take off their shoes and get into the water really helps. Plus the Profoto light allows for them to be visible as people and not just as shapes of shadow. It also allows for the color in the sky and water to be shown.

Jaclyn and Cody had a wonderful wedding I'll share in a future post. They used several of their engagement portraits in their wedding day book.

As always, I have to do a link to my site for more Bend engagement portrait photographers. Looking at that page and these portraits I'm thinking Jaclyn and Cody need to be added to that page. I did the website so quickly a lot of pictures were overlooked.