Kerry Park, Parsons Gardens and Seattle Center Engagement Session

Here is a small sampling of photos from my recent engagement photo session with Angelina and David, with stops at Kerry Park, Parsons Gardens and the Seattle Center.  I will be photographing Angelina and David’s wedding in early June, and we had been waiting and hoping for good weather for a photo session for almost a month.  If you live in Seattle you know just how wet and cold things have been for March and April, and how difficult it has been to find a “weather window” in which we could find an hour or two of conditions that a normal person (as opposed to the crazy types who WANT to get cold and wet!) would consider conducive to outdoor photos.

But we finally decided that we just had to set a date and (hopefully) make the best of what Mother Nature gave us.  Still, I was rather nervously checking the weather the entire week before the planned shoot time, hoping that we’d somehow luck out and at least not get rained on TOO heavily!  We arranged to talk the morning of the session to make the final decision.

As it turned out, the morning of the session started off gray and cool but dry.  Hey, for April in Seattle that is pretty darn good!  I talked with David and we agreed that we’d better go for it while we could, sice the forecast for the next few days was iffy at best.  So we met up at Kerry Park at 10AM and sure enough it was dry!

An unplanned benefit of the unpredictable weather was a much smaller crowd at Kerry Park than usual.  This is the most photographed location in Seattle, and typically on a nice day there will be anywhere from 20 to 100+ people here enjoying the view and taking photos.  Which can make getting photos without a bunch of unintentional(?) photo-bombers a bit challenging!  But there were maybe a dozen people in the main portion of the park when we arrived, so getting our photos proved to be fairly easy.  Though there was one group of obvious tourists who planted themselves dead-center on the spot I wanted to use; not to take photos of themselves or the scenery, but just to sit and talk.  LOL!

Once these folks moved to a different spot we moved in and got the photos I wanted, then moved quickly around the park to a few other good spots.  We wanted to keep moving because I wanted to take David and Angelina to Parsons Gardens (located just down the street) as well as Seattle Center, and we only had a bit over an hour to hit all three locations.  The sky remained gray, but started to lighten up a bit and at times it looked like a bit of blue was even visible.

After getting the shots we wanted at Kerry, we buzzed down the street to Parsons Gardens.  I love this little park, mostly unknown except to people who live in the neighborhood, and sometimes offering some really beautiful backgrounds of trees and flowers.  Still a bit early for many flowers to be showing yet, but there was a Magnolia tree in bloom that made a nice backdrop for some close-up photos of the couple.

Then it was off to Seattle Center.  As it was a Sunday and late morning, I thought there was a chance (although small) that we could locate the Holy Grail – free street parking near the Center!  We cruised the nearby side streets without success but then I spotted something I don’t think I have ever seen before; open parking places right on Mercer Street right in front of the entrance to the Center.  Not wanting to question our luck (or give someone else a chance to steal the parking places) I did a quick U-turn and slid into place.  David was a bit more law-abiding and made a more legal turn, but also was able to claim a spot.

We finished our session by making a quick circle of some of my favorite spots in the Center for photos, and ended up with a nice selection with lots of different backgrounds.  Check them out for yourself, I hope you enjoy them!