London Destination Photoshoot || Erin's Travel Portrait Session
When I called Erin on December 28th to frantically select our travel dates only 30 minutes before the 50% off WOW Air deal expired, the only plan we had in mind was that we wanted to use this as a leisurely work trip. By that I mean I wanted to spend the majority of my time location scouting, shooting 35mm street photos for print sales and making portraits, both for creative exploration and to add another city to my list of destination photoshoot offerings. Luckily, on that last piece, bringing my best friend along also meant bringing my favorite model! For the 4 days we spent in London, we took turns stopping in the middle of the street as inspiration hit, directing the other to pose for the images we'd created in our minds.
As I expand into travel and destination photography, I wanted to not only capture Erin in beautifully-lit poses, but document her in action as well so as to truly memorialize our memories from the trip. Any photo you see of her laughing is a reflection of this idea as we spent quite some time giggling over silly jokes; these perfectly contrast the more serious tone of the modeled images in created a balanced London portfolio.
The most challenging aspect of documenting a vacation isn't watching for the moments or framing the scene, it is (by far) working with the available light even at 2pm on a bright and sunny day. However, this is precisely why I enjoy this type of session! Working in countless less-than-ideal lighting conditions in my wedding work has instilled in me a deep appreciation for harsh lighting, particularly in making use of natural spotlights to dramatically highlight my subjects' face and little else. Although, occasionally, a bright backlight leaving the face in shadow is equally as pleasing to me, at least when my subject is running through a field of wildflowers.
As we only brought one backpack for gear and one for clothes, we didn't exactly have an expansive wardrobe to choose from. However, London's colorful streets, wealth of bright buildings and beautiful foliage meant that we wanted nothing more than simple, solid colored dresses anyways. My goal in each travel portrait image is to weave the story of the trip, the subject(s)' personality and the character of the destination all into one photo. This gallery of Erin (a creative badass) is meant to tell the story of our difficult yet nonetheless artistically inspiring adventure in a place filled with history. I've only gotten a brief taste of London thus far, but I have a feeling that I'll be back soon to make even more use of its variety of vivid backdrops!
