Amber and Chirag – Engagement Session.

Jan 19th, 2010:

The insane rains in Southern California cleared just in time for us to carry out our planned afternoon engagement session in Long Beach.  What we didn’t count on was the flooding of PCH and the consequential closure of the 710 freeway, whilst we were on it…   So Felicia and I sat there parked, when we were supposed to be meeting Amberlynne and Chirag, who I may have saved from a similar fate by giving them a traffic update before they made it to the 710.

Sitting locked on the freeway at 4:15pm watching the winter sun set while I was supposed to be shooting is a photographer’s tragedy.  All the pictures I was going to miss kept flashing through my mind like epileptic fits.

The happy couple arrived only 20 minutes late at 4:35pm and called to let me know they were walking up to the meeting spot. I said “I’ll be there in 10 minutes”, hoping I wasn’t lying to them as I finally pulled off the freeway 3 miles from the shore.  I turned a corner and found I was in luck, a street that wasn’t jammed with freeway overflow traffic.  I hit the gas (perhaps driving a little too fast) and made it out front of the Aquarium of the Pacific (in Long Beach) just about 10 minutes after Amber and Chirag.

We started moving fast and shooting fast,  and before we knew it the sun was gone and we were shooting in a spectacular purple twilight.   Amazingly the catastrophe that I imagined in my head while sitting on the freeway never happened, and I was able to leave this shoot with some images that I am quite proud of, I hope Amber and Chirag enjoy them too.