Manami and Sam’s engagement photography session at Golden Gardens

A couple of weeks ago I met up with Manami and Sam at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle for their engagement photo session.  Manami and Sam are getting married in just a few months, in early May.  Sam and Manami  are still debating whether we will do some beach photos on the wedding day, but since this is Seattle and no one knows whether or not a day in early May will be beautiful and 75, or rainy and 45, we decided that taking advantage of a nice winter day to get some photos along the water would be a good idea.

Beach engagement photos

We had actually planned to take photos at the beach at Discovery Park, but when we went there we were told in no uncertain terms that we could not drive to the beach there, but would have to park well over a mile away and walk to the beach if we wanted to take photos there.  This was not particularly appealing to any of us, so I suggested that we make the short drive to Golden Gardens and do the session there instead.  Very surprising that Discovery Park was not available, as I have done numerous sessions there in the past and have never had a problem before.

Fortunately there were no such issue at Golden Gardens, and even better there were almost no people in the park.  Usually the beach is crowded whenever the weather is nice, even in the winter, but today proved to be different.  Though there were a few crazies playing volleyball on the sand courts next to the beach!

The Olympic Mountains were nicely visible to the west, so we started by getting photos along the beach with the mountains in the background.  Hard to go wrong with that kind of backdrop!

Moving around the park

One of the nice things about Golden Gardens is that there are a variety of different backgrounds there for photos.  We walked around the park just looking for nice spots for photos, and found a lot of possibilities.  One of my favorite places is on the railroad tracks that run through the park, which does involve carefully watching for trains since these are active tracks.  Unfortunately the fence along the tracks was completely secure, with no place for us to slip through for a few shots.  But I told Sam and Manami that it was not a problem, as I knew of another nearby location that would give us access to the tracks.

Photos with the train tracks

After taking a bunch of photos at various locations at Golden Gardens I suggested that we drive a short distance to where we would be able to get onto the train tracks without difficulty.  Manami and Sam were agreeable to the plan, so we drove back toward Ballard until we reached a spot with easy access to the tracks.  I don’t know what it is about train tracks, but I find that when shot at a wide-open aperture that the tracks create a very pleasing set of blurred converging lines in the background.  Maybe it is just me, but whenever I am able to find train tracks that I can use during a shoot I am always happy because I know I can create some cool photos.

We played around on the tracks for 5-10 minutes (no trains were seen), and decided we had enough photos for the day.  I am looking forward to the wedding in May, it will be a lot of fun to work with Sam and Manami again.