Hey everyone! Hope you are all staying well and spirits are staying high!
I got an email for a photo session a few months back with a couple who recently got engaged and they wanted to do a bit of a fun twist on their engagement photos. Both of them were really into Halloween and told me it’s their favorite holiday that they share together. So, when they asked if we could do an engagement session that was stylized to center around a Halloween vibe – of course the answer was a huge heck yeah!
I love when couples or people looking to schedule a session tell me a bit about themselves or have a vision for the shoot. It really helps me curate photos that are completely and entirely you! It’s so exciting when it all comes together, and this was one of those exact circumstances.
I woke up the day of our session (this was two weeks back when all the fires were going on up north) and I noticed it was still especially smokey and yellow outside. I figured I would shoot them a text to make sure that it works for them and to see they would rather reschedule to a different day given the conditions. In my mind I thought “jeez, this is kind of a perfect spooky vibe, but I can totally understand how people might not want their engagement photos to be overcast with a yellow-hue”. And just as I expected they responded with, “We literally woke up this morning and said, “This day is so perfect for us”. I love that! Sometimes things just fall into place so wonderfully it seems like it’s made just for you.
So, we as we were planning this engagement session, we were going back and forth on the location. They were really looking for a forested location that could give us that spooky look we were going for. And who would have guessed it, there’s not a ton of forests in our area of Southern California without making a trip out of it into the mountains ~ which I am always up for by the way 😉 Anyways, I love finding a fantastic location that will suit each session perfectly if I can at all help it. It honestly is kind of a fun past-time activity for me. I go look on Google Maps, find a park or natural area and just go hike around for a bit with my copilot, best friend, and pup Isla (I really need to throw in a photo of her on the ‘about’ page – she’s adorable). We’ve done trails and parks all over and have a little bit of everything for everyone at this point!
The location finally came to me through my memory archives after having two alternative ones in mind and I thought, “oh, that’s the one for sure!”. I guess they went and checked it out a few days before our shoot after I mentioned it and they totally agreed. There were so many wild, scraggly oak trees and fun backgrounds to work with and I saw it coming to life in my imagination. They loaded up the car with more than a handful of pumpkins and some fun props and we wandered around the park for a bit. We had so much fun with it all and I feel like the images speak for themselves on that note! Such a fun shoot!
I also realized that I don’t include a lot of black + whites in my posts, so I made sure to throw a few of them in there. I always love adding in a few black + white copies to the final gallery for those dramatic memories. I think it really brings some emotional life into the gallery as a whole.
Anyways, hope you enjoy some of my favorite memories from the shoot! And for the record, if anyone else wants to do a spooky family session, engagement, wedding, or proposal for Halloween – I am so into it!
