So often we are shooting our engagement sessions out in nature. Atop a mountain or in a field with wide open spaces and no one around as the sun is setting. Although every once in a while, either time or space does not allow us to explore the great outdoors, or maybe it is the urban, steely skyscrapers that better represent the couple. Both are true, especially when you’re couple lives in Chicago! Last year I ran around downtown with city residents Sawyer and Courtney trying to capture them in a more urban setting which better matches their personality and captures where they live while allowing us to work within their schedule a bit better. Plus, they had a few secret spots they wanted to show me!
First thing that made this session difficult was that it was right in the middle of the day. We had the session from about 2 to 3 in the afternoon. This breaks my most fundamental rule of shooting during golden hour to get very soft and magical light. However, this is offset because in an urban setting with some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, like Chicago, shade can easily be found amongst the cities grid-like blocks. And, if you cant use the soft glow of the setting sun, using shade is the next best thing. It is very important when shooting people to avoid harsh lighting at all costs, especially on their faces. So as I was location scouting for the session, I made sure to take note of which direction the sun was filtering through the buildings to know which blocks were going to offer the softest light and when. The second major challenge when doing an urban session is trying to avoid other people in your frame. Chicago has millions of people walking around downtown all throughout the day, so finding a quiet city block is next to impossible. This took a lot of patience for me and my couple as I directed them. On some of the busier streets, I would set up a prompt for my couple but then had to tell them to wait until there was a gap in traffic and time that with their movement. Another trick would be to find a city park or wider block that still fell within the shade of a building, but gave us a little more room to move around and avoid pedestrians. In order to avoid people cluttering the background and to show off the tall skyscrapers in the background a bit more, it is also helpful to take a lower vantage point and shoot up at the couple. With this technique, it is very important to not be too close so you are capturing an unflattering angle of your couples face, so also give them a gentle reminder to keep their chins down a bit more than normal. One last secret and possibly my favorite part of doing an urban session is finding a rooftop! That takes care of any traffic or pedestrians that could get in the way and takes you high above the city giving us the best angle to capture our couple and puts them right in the scene of the city. Fortunately for me, Sawyer and Courtney are some of the cities best explorers and are photographers themselves so they were well aware of some of downtowns best spots and let me in on these secrets. Defintiely the highlight of this shoot was this secret rooftop with an exclusive view of the Willis Tower.
