An Essex engagement shoot in Hainault Forest Country Park with Shaline & Jasbir. Shaline and Jas were great fun to work with and added a bit of spontaneity to the shoot. I really love this piggyback shot as it wasn’t posed, rather Jas offered the piggyback to Shaline and then I captured a few shots as they walked towards me. We also got a few other walking shots around a small lake in the middle of the country park.

There were a few spots of colour amongst the woodland and shrub of the country park. This photo focused on the wild flowers growing around the edge of the lake, using the long lens to focus in on this detail.

Although I’ve shot a few different times in woodland, Something I haven’t ever really shot before is walking along a fallen log in the woods. There was a small ditch running through the woodland that the log bridged over, so I was able to get quite low to get these shots. I like the narrative that comes with this style of photograph with the metaphor of a journey whilst walking along the log.

It is started to get quite dark within the woodland as the light started to fade. I used flash to set up a variety of different photographs, and lighting situations that still felt natural and not too artificial. My favourite though is the shot below, which uses natural light, but I used my lighting stand as an impromptu tripod in order to use a slow enough shutter speed to get a clear shot in quite dark woodland.

Once we were out of the woods, I was able to use a bit more of the natural light in some shots on the common, but I also set up the flash again to add some lights to the soft sunset behind the clouds. The light highlighted the summer flies, illuminating them in a magical way and making them look like specs of dust or fireflies when caught by the flash.