When Terra reached out about wedding portraits, we discussed Lamoureux Park and I had to stop myself from only focusing on the pitfalls of this location: it’s so heavily photographed – there was a time when everyone had their portraits done there – and it can be very busy relative to other places in town. Instead, I gave myself the challenge of making wedding portraits in Lamoureux Park that stray off the beaten path (sometimes literally) and show the scenery in a way that it isn’t normally seen.
Trash the Dress sessions were all the rage about 10 years ago. Women used it as an excuse to get back into their dress and do non-traditional portraits that might involve getting their dress dirty or even ruined. The thing is, you don’t have to trash your dress to get back into it and get some gorgeous wedding portraits. Terra was reaching out because they’d had an intimate wedding ceremony the previous weekend and she was hoping that they’d be able to create a great collection of photos from guests, but she knew that she was missing some beautiful portraits. Her dress was clean and her flowers were still in great shape, so she was hoping for a session before the blooms wilted. Luckily enough, I had an opening the following evening and the forecast was in our favour, so we made a plan and set a time.
The really great thing about doing portraits outside the timeline of your wedding day is that you have complete control over the timing. Wedding day portraits – particularly those with early-summer dates – often happen in some of the harshest light of the day. Yes, any good photographer will great creative with light and shadow to make the most of what they have to work with, but you’re still working with light that is harder and harsher than what you might like (and this is coming from someone who loves playing with harsh light). For these wedding portraits, we wanted soft light, so we started just before golden hour and worked straight through until the dusky blue hour light was settling in. If you watch the slideshow, you’ll see the transition from regular evening daylight through golden hour and then the blue tones settling in, and that blue hour light is such soft, intimate light to play in.
Muhammad and Terra share such a beautiful connection that it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement of photographing them. They were game for anything, willingly went along with requests to access some slightly challenging spots just so that I could test out an idea, and hardly took their eyes off of one another. In a year where I’ve been pushing myself to be more experimental, I loved that this session included so many moments of “what happens if….?” Not only did we come away from this session laughing and feeling the creative high that comes from a great collaboration, but these two helped me see a familiar location in a new way so that I can look forward to the next time I get to challenge myself to see it differently yet again.
Here’s a look into our evening of exploring the park:
I’m Ang. I’m an inclusive, Cornwall, Ontario-based photographer offering wedding and documentary family coverage to families of all kinds locally and worldwide. Visual storytelling is what I do best, so laughter and connection are important in my work. I love working with couples who are emotionally present with each other – no matter how many other people are with you – and who love spending time laughing together. Sessions like this opportunity to create Lamoureux Park wedding portraits for Terra & Muhammad are a great example of the kind of approach I take to portraiture. If you’d like to see another example of how I approached a portrait-focused St Raphael’s elopement, start here.
