Cassie & Dustin {A Look Into How We Did It}

In this blog, we are going to dive into Cassie and Dustin’s gorgeous photo shoot.

Fortunately, the evening that we picked for the shoot was perfect… amazing blue sky, warm fall weather and a few clouds off towards the sunset horizon. But the time of day was the key to this successful session with this beautiful couple. Cassie and Dustin were flexible with the time and so we aimed for a sunset shoot over the Red Deer River near Morrin, Alberta.

Like most people, Cassie and Dustin were not 100% comfortable in front of the camera, nor were they awkward might I add. So I started with my 70-200mm lens to give them plenty of room. Honestly, not many people are immediately comfortable with a camera just a few meters from their face. In the first photo below, as Cassie, Dustin and Rachel started up the hill, I stayed down and took that time to set my cameras, exposing for the sky. This gave Rachel time to work with Cassie and Dustin, getting them comfortable with posing. When they were ready, Rachel stepped back just out of the frame and positioned two Canon 600EX-RT speedlites on them, which I am able to remote fire using Canon’s ST-E3-RT speedlite transmitter.

I set the flashes to manual, take a test shot, and adjust them up or down to ensure that Cassie and Dustin were properly exposed against the blue sky. Once I knew that I had a proper exposure, I started clicking away, moving to change my perspective while Rachel continues to hold the speedlites, encouraging Cassie and Dustin and changing up their poses. Once I’m happy that we have a number of great photos to choose from, we moved to another location. In this case, I came up the hill to work more closely with them. Every time I move to another location, I always check and adjust my exposure on both the camera and the speedlites.

We would like to thank Cassie and Dustin for not only being awesome in front of the camera but also for being willing to spend the evening with us.