Surprise Proposal During a Perdido Key Family Session

October 14, 2019 • Leave a Comment

This family session took place in Perdido Key, Florida. The client wanted a real family beach session, but the goal was to preserve the moment their son proposed to his girlfriend. This worked out well as I am usually trying to hide or pretend to be photographing birds or the sunset while trying to avoid looking like a stalker for surprise proposals.

We didn't include the girlfriend at the start of the session in the family portraits to keep the suspicion down. She did help out noticing little details during the session so she was acting as my assistant. It was raining in the Orange Beach, Gulf Shores area and we could see it from Perdido Key. The family liked the look of the clouds so we moved closer to the beach. I also started to incorporate the girlfriend into the portraits as well. The cue for him to propose is when I started to take pictures of just them.

I used a combination of natural light and studio lighting to give them a variety of looks. We had perfect conditions during this session and they liked how the clouds and rain looks in the background. Shooting just natural light would lose some of the details in the background.