Engagement Photo Session at Kerry Park and Parsons Gardens

Last weekend I met up with Shailja and Joe for an engagement photo session.  We had not yet met in person; Shailja had contacted me a couple of weeks earlier about needing some engagement photos, and we had planned a date for the shoot with the understanding that we might have to make a change if the weather did not cooperate.

By some miracle we happened to luck out and have one of the better-weather days of the spring!  Because Shailja wanted to take their photos primarily at Kerry Park I recommended that we start in the mid-morning, when the sun would be to the south and behind them (out of their eyes) for the photos.  That way we would be able to get good photos with Seattle Center and Mt Rainier in the background, without Joe and Shailja having a bad case of the squints!

Perhaps an even bigger miracle than the nice weather was that there were really only a few other people at Kerry Park the entire time we were taking photos there, maybe 20 at the most.  On a nice day it is not unusual to have 100+ people there enjoying the view, and frequently acting as unintentional photo bombers.  We didn’t avoid extraneous background people entirely, but did manage to get a lot of photos with only Shailja and Joe in the frame.

After taking a variety of photos at Kerry Park I suggested that we move down the street to Parsons Gardens, a small “pocket park” that is almost always quiet and can have some great photo opportunities.  To my surprise there were several people in the park doing some kind of exercise routine, but we were able to work around them to get our photos without any real problems.  We also took advantage of a great viewpoint that looks across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula, where the mountains were as crisp and sharp as I have ever seen them.  I guess one positive thing about all the rain we had been enduring is that it does do a great job of clearing any haze out of the air!

Both Shailja and Joe are recent transplants to the Seattle area, moving here from Indiana where they had met while in college at Purdue University.  They are planning to get married in India; I’m ready to make them a great deal on a destination wedding photography package if they’re interested!  😉