Golden Hour Fall Engagement Session at Discovery Park

WOW. That is all I can say when I think of this session and the love that Laney and Matt have for each other. Laney reached out to me about doing a couples session back in October to celebrate, DUH, their engagement! I found out that apparently Laney is friends and used to be coworkers with one of my friends Leah (who you’ll remember from the Mt. Rainier engagement session) and that’s one of the ways that she found me! Laney is also a nurse at the same hospital that I work at, which helped out our connection so much! What a small world it is! 🙂

When planning their engagement session, I hoped we would blessed with one of the warm and sunny fall days that seems to linger in the PNW. Luckily early October in Washington state calls for some extremely gorgeous and long golden hours, along with pops of color as the trees start to change. And we were blessed to get one of those days for their session. We ventured down to Discovery Park, where everyone and their grandma was for golden hour. As we meandered our way through the beautiful rolling fields and the old boarded up houses, we found the location for our first spot of photos by some of the abandoned houses. There was still green on these trees and some changing of the leaves to a beautiful and deep red color, which to me seems like a perfect place to start. 

Laney and Matt absolutely killed this session! Seriously – I had such a difficult time getting rid of some photos that I ended up way over delivering the final images (yikes!!). As they started to get warmed up at our first spot and get into the mood of playing through some of the prompts that I use, I really got to see their true personalities shine through. We headed over to the nearby fields, that in the summer time are filled with gorgeous purple and pink sweet pea flowers blooming, but as the heat takes over in late summer – transitions to a golden field of tall grass. AKA – the perfect spot to pop the champagne! And boy did they deliver on one of my favorite champagne shots to date!

I love incorporating a bottle of champagne into the session – it’s a good way to truly celebrate an engagement and make a true moment of the adventure of an engagement session. Plus – why not get started a bit earlier on the date night cocktails! It’s also a wonderful time to get a few up close shots of the ring, get the couple laughing, and get a lil bit loosened up! As we entered the end of their session, I wanted to head to the portion of fields where you can see the waters off the cliff below. This portion is usually filled with people (and I did have to edit a few people out of the way) so I tend to save it for last, when couples are at their most comfortable so they don’t feel awkward about having tons of people nearby! 

This part of the session had some of my favorite images from this set – the piggyback rides, the backlighting of the sun and the rays peeking through while still having some moodiness attached to them, and the water glinting in the background. Plus I remembered my circular prism for those gorgeous glowing sunset rays (the photo right below).  So what do you think – would you have your engagement session at Discovery Park on a fall day? Let me know your favorite photo below!