spryng | A Weekend of Fullness

This weekend started Friday after work with a happy hour rant-fest and ended this evening limping home, legs sore from a day of walking downtown with my grandmum, aunt, and itsy bitsy cousin.

Inbetween we had a photoshoot with

the_verb and her husband. So it technically wasn't an engagement shoot, but that was the intent. Saturday more than lived up to the week-long hype of being a gorgeous, hot, sunny day, which I was more often than not hoping would not come to fruition. Even though there was nary a cloud in the sky, though, it turned out to be a boon, because I learned a lot about shooting with full sun that day. And I'll need to know that for Tucson.

We started out at the UW. I love the campus here - it has some very interesting architecture as well as gardens, green space, benches, roses, a ginormous fountain and a view of Rainier. It's also normally fairly quiet on a Saturday morning, but I hadn't counted on it being graduation weekend. Whoops.

Actually, that turned out to be a plus, because there were so many other people getting photographed there that day that I didn't feel like I was sticking out. That helped tons with my public-shooting jitters.

I took them the long way around to the fountain in order to swing through the gardens and up the path that stretches towards Rainier.

That way also brought us to a quiet grassy spot. I have to admit, they did most of the work themselves. :) They hardly needed any direction and were absolutely adorable way too many times.

...such as when

theverb climbed up into the tree herself. :D

...and then attacked her husband with a spoonful of frozen yoghurt.

After some time back at the apartment with a pot of tea, we headed off to Carkeek where everyone and their mother and their mother's dog and the ice cream man and his uncle were there. Again, graduation weekend. Never would have guessed.

I've shot at the beach a number of times now, but this was the first time with full sun. Usually it's either close to sunset or cloudy, and full sun presented all sorts of difficulties. For one thing, Hyde struggled with an exposure which would bring the whole scene into harmony and after a while of letting him deal in aperture priority, I jumped to manual and let the background go. There were flares and overexposure galore, and it was marvelous.