Shayne and Lyndsey’s Pretty Long Lake Regional Park Fall Engagement Portraits
Today, I want to share the fun story behind Shayne and Lyndsay’s Long Lake Regional Park engagement portraits. We actually got pretty lucky, as Shayne and Lindsey had their first engagement portrait session attempt rained out. But this time we got it done on a spectacular Wednesday afternoon in Minnesota. Just a few days later, most of the fall colors were gone and an early winter had arrived.
Wow, what a cute couple! And wow, what awesome fall colors!
The 2017 fall color season was pretty short this year, but boy was I a busy boy for about two and a half weeks! I’m just finally editing some of these portrait sessions. But as we’ve learned this fall, winter can come any anytime and put an end to a pretty fall in no time flat.
Engagement Portraits at the New Brighton Historic Railroad Depot
We began their Long Lake Regional Park engagement portraits at the New Brighton Historical Society & Historic Railroad Depot. It was mid-afternoon when we started, and a bit on the sunny side. Because of the sunny conditions, we stayed in the shade around the depot building. There’s a retired caboose on display there, as well as some old railroad artifacts to use as props. Also, some of the prettiest fall colors were on display right there too.
These guys are such a cute couple!
I’m a believer in staying off of live train tracks these days. So for their images that do have tracks in them, Shayne, Lindsey, and I are well off the tracks. I just used a long telephoto lens to bring the train tracks into play.
Shayne and Lyndsey did a wardrobe change, and we set out to find some additional places to create more images. They are very interested in our cool light painting techniques, so we talked a lot about that as we walked around the park. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be creating at least one light painting for them somewhere down the road.
Backlighted Engagement Portraits
One of my absolute favorite lighting situations for portraits and weddings is when a scene is backlit. Backlighting is especially pretty when the sun is low in the sky and filtering through the trees. I have been known to create my own backlighting by using our high powered strobes to make it look like the sun is back there. For Shayne and Lindsey, Mother Nature did the job for me so I didn’t have to do that on this occasion. I think that my favorite images from their entire session are probably the ones that are backlit.
Shayne and Lyndsey in the stunning fall colors at Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton, MN.
Unless you’re trying to create a silhouette, in order for backlighting to work in a portrait, you have to put some light on your subject. Lightning McQueen was with me, and Lightning was equipped with one of our very powerful WITSTRO MoLight AD360II‘s. I also had two more light stands, with two of our MoLight V860II-Canon Speedlights along, so lighting these guys was no problem.
Fun in the leaves!
I’ve created another one of our fun highlight music videos with some of my favorite images from Shayne and Lindsey’s Long Lake Regional Park engagement portraits. I hope you enjoy it and I thank you for reading our post. –M&J