August 24th, 2012:
In our line of work, we meet lots of people on a weekly basis. But when we met with Raul and Zelena a couple months back, we just had an amazing connection with them. In fact, from the time Felicia took Zelena’s phonecall, we were already eager to meet them, and our enthusiasm was not in vain. Raul is an avid outdoorsman and even hiked the 200+ John Muir Trail a few years back (which I also did in 2007 with my mother), this love of the outdoors got us talking and bouncing emails back and forth about unique, extraordinary engagement session locations, and Joshua Tree National Park came up.
We were in the peak of summer, in the midst of a scorching heat wave sweeping Southern California, so Felicia’s first reaction was “Awwww man!!! It’s going to be SOOOO hot! Can’t we do the shoot at night?!”
She was moderately joking, but it got me thinking about astrophotography and if we could somehow incorporate the clear, dark skies of Joshua Tree into this shoot. I started thinking and laying out plans of shutter speed, ISO, f-stop, and watt seconds in my head and figured we could do something totally new, and work flash into existing astro photography techniques. So I sent out an email telling Raul and Zelena about my plan and the fact they would need to be in the pitch black desert at 2am, holding ridiculously still and shoot until the sun comes up a few hours later.
Zelena’s reply: “Wow! Call this an adventure – I say yes!”
So we were in business, and the first 7 photos in this blog post are the result of a spirit of adventure!
Zelena said she hadn’t seen that many stars since visiting her grandparents’ ranch in Peru when she was a child, and for Felicia and I, it wasn’t since our 2008 trip to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile that we witnessed such cosmic awesomeness.
After the stars disappeared and the sun started coming up, we continued their session around the epic rocks and Joshua Trees from which the National Park got its name.
All in all, Raul + Zelena are a totally badass couple, and by trusting in my crazy ideas, made me an extremely happy photographer! Thanks guys and we look forward to your wedding next month!
