Chris & Jessica Engagement - Falling

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This was the first engagement shoot that I have done and I was excited that I got to do it with two of my long-time friends: Chris and Jessica. They're really cool people. Chris popped the question earlier in the summer and they called me right away to ask if I would go up to Oregon City to do some engagement shoots for them. They also wanted me to do their wedding, but I told them I wanted to enjoy the wedding, not have to photograph it. I think Jessica believes she can still find a way to convince me to do it.

Half the shoot was done at Hillendale Park, which is where he proposed (and right near the house where I spent 18 years of my life). The other half was in the backyard of Chris' parent's house. They were great to shoot with and the weather was awesome. I must confess, I did browse flickr for a while on poses I could use, so not all of these poses are my own making.

How to recreate this photo:
I'm a huge fan of sharing and creative commons. I also wanted to share how this photo was created.

1) Find a place with a still background. Wind moving bushes can make this hard.
2) Put your camera on a tripod.
3) Place your subjects at the edge of your frame.
4) Have one subject take decently sizes steps. Have them pause as they complete each step. Take a photo as they pause. Have them take another until they get to the middle.
5) Now repeat for the other subject until they are in the middle.
6) Have them kiss or do something fun in the middle and take a photo of that. You can try a few different poses her and decide which one you want to use later.
7) Bring all these photos into one photoshop document. Keep one photo as background. Keep each different "copy" of the person on a different layer
8) On each layer that is not serving as the background to the image, erase everything except the person. Make sure you don't erase shadows. They are important as well.
9) Change the opacity of the layers that aren't the ends or the middle 50%. They will blend into the background.