Elaina & Eric

Last Sunday, I photographed my cousin's sister-in-law and her boyfriend. They are starting to make plans for their future nuptuals, and I asked them to do a shoot in case they needed some images in the near future.

For the first time ever, I brought along an assistant, Irene. Irene is one of my former students. I had promised to pay her and show her a few things about shooting. I was even going to let her take my camera and shoot at some point.

Well as it turned out, that point was much sooner than I anticipated...
We were shooting in a public park in lower Manhattan, and the couple wasn't really getting into the lovey-dovey mindset that they would need to be in to make the shots work. So I handed the camera over to Irene and I took hold of the light. This gave me the chance to put our couple at ease. I started talking to them about their future plans of how he might eventually propose and what their fairy-tale wedding would look like. All the while, my inexperienced assistant was snapping away.

Considering this was my first time having an assistant, I think I let things get away from me a little too much. I actually only shot for about 10 minutes out of the entire 3 hour shoot. Irene shot for the rest of the time. To make matters worse, I barely reviewed her images and only gave her about 4 sentences of advice.

Thankfully, beginner's luck was on Irene's side. She probably took about 250 shots and came out with 10 or so that were up to par as far as technical details went. I took some creative leniency while editing and came up with about 3 shots that I loved and another 5 or so that the couple approved of.

All in all, I would say it was very successful for Irene's first shoot. There were some shots that I feel are poster-worthy, and that is a big achievement so early on. Bravo Irene, Bravo.


See all the pictures here.