When God decides to put two people together to fall in love, he will use any means to make it happen. I have to admit I used to be one of those person that was skeptical about online dating but I am meeting more and more couples meeting through this method. This was also true in Joy & Shaun. How in the world does a guy from Illinois going to school in Michigan meet a gorgeous gal like Joy from New Mexico? I had met Shaun previously before the engagement shoot but I had not met Joy yet. Not only was she drop dead gorgeous, she brought me some coffee from New Mexico! I was in love with them already. 
I had so much fun spending the entire afternoon with them in my favorite city in the US. We started out our session at the University of Chicago where Shaun had went to school then finished our day off in the downtown area. Big thanks to Melissa Hayes for tagging along with me on this shoot and giving me a hand! Please take a moment to look through the photos and at the end there is a little lesson/tip for all the photographers. Enjoy:
Here is the final photo that I wanted to share for a quick lesson. Looking at the photo below, it looks like a nice quiet intimate moment inside an empty church, right? Well, not really. Read on…
Shaun really liked the Rockefeller Chapel on campus and requested to take a few photos inside. So we walked over there only to discover that there was some kind of a service/meeting going inside so the sanctuary was packed with people. Shaun and Joy were little disappointed but I did not want them to feel that way on their engagement session. I am a firm believer that when “life gives you lemon, you make lemonade out of it.” So I looked around for a bit trying to see if I can think of an alternate solution. Bing! (That’s the sound of light bulb turning on inside my head) Then I asked Shaun & Joy if they don’t mind being little bit adventurous. I think they liked the idea of that. I had found a small pathway between the church wall & the pews. I knew we could not communicate verbally since there was a service going on. So I asked them to go over to a specific spot and come up with their own pose (I’ve instructed them on several poses during the shoot up to this point so I knew they would deliver). To give you an idea of what the setting was actually like, I took the next photo to show the risk that my clients was willing to take to get the shot above:
At first they were a bit nervous about standing there posing and kept looking over to the congregation. I thought I placed them at just at the last row of where people were sitting to be inconspicuous. Then I walked over there after I had taken the shot to realize what was going on. I did not realize that there were several more rows of pews right next to them filled withe people and they were all staring at them smiling while they posed! But I’m so proud of my clients – they stuck through with it, ignore the congregation and posed as I asked them to!
So what is the lesson here? When you get stuck in a situation, you can always find alternate solution. When you get excited about your photography, your clients will too and will even risk a bit of embarrassment to get the shot that you/they want. So next time you shoot, try to push yourself more to do something different. Hope this was helpful for some of you out there. Let me know and I’ll try to do a few more of these in the future posts.
Joy & Shaun, thank you so much for spending the afternoon with me. Your photos were amazing thanks to you guys being such awesome models. I cannot wait for your wedding in New Mexico this summer!
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