Pick of the week // One

Cole and I do a number of photo shoots every week. That means browsing through tons of photos, pretty much daily. Some of the photos make it to our blog posts, most of them don’t.

From those thousands of pictures, I thought I’d pick one personal favourite a week and do a short review of it. Choose a photo from one of our sessions and explain why I like it.

So for this first weekly pick, I’m going with a photo that Cole snapped. A picture that I like for a couple of reasons and one that I think clearly shows why being two photographers is a good thing.

The shot is from our engagement session with Hannah and Mike inside the Vogue Theatre downtown Vancouver. We found some awesome changing rooms in the basement of the old theatre, and decided to drag the two of them in there for few shots.

At the time of this photo, I’m standing right behind Hannah and Mike telling them to lean in together for a kiss. I’m getting the symmetrical shot of the two mirrors and the three set of lights (there’s one more on the left, not visible in this picture). So in this case, I’m the one getting ‘the shot’, whereas Cole is lurking around on their left looking for different angles (and using his acrobatic skills to stay out of my shot – the room was tiny).

The straight-behind shot turned out nice too, but this one was my favourite. It feels a bit more candid, making it look more natural. This could of course be achieved with one single photographer as well, but being two definitely makes it easier to be able to take the time to find that other, different angle.

The composition of the photo, leading the eye from one side of the picture to the other, makes it interesting to look at and the mirrors lights add another level to the photo, as they light up Hannah and Mike’s faces (reflected in the mirror), but leave the other side dark. They are the only light source in this shot, thus creating the silhouette effect on the right.

All in all we were really happy with the shoot in the Vogue, but this particular photo was a personal favourite of mine. Mirrors are fun to play with and lights like that always look pretty badass, so the conditions were solid to get a good shot.

Here’s the full Vogue Theatre post, if you missed it.

/Jakob