Nate & Kayla: Marquette Engagement

Alas!!! I'm sharing with you one of my all time favorite engagement sessions to date!

Kayla and Nate are absolutely genuine people. They hardly needed direction simply because they were comfortable with being themselves despite the presence of my camera and I. My job was made incredibly easy since they continued interacting with each other and created true, unforced emotion in every frame. When I first began photographing as a career, I could feel the unease in some of my subjects with their own heightened worries about posing. The fear of being awkward creates awkwardness. I've found the best directions I can give for my particular line of work are those that incorporate motion. I feel as though Nate and Kayla's session is exemplary in demonstrating this unmarred beauty in human to human interaction. No stress, just bellies aching from laughter... and perhaps feeling a little winded after power walking up a mountain.

Kayla is the current photo editor at Northern Michigan University's The North Wind. I work under her as one of the staff photographers. It was a pleasure venturing into the field together with Nate to relish in the art we work with on the daily! With Kayla and I both being photographers however, we ended up taking hundreds more photos than I normally would take in a single session (oops!). Narrowing down the selection was nearly impossible! We visited various locations around downtown Marquette - classic brick galore! No complaints were made for an icecream stop at Doncker's as well. Our next stop was the break wall at Lower Harbor, where Nate proposed to Kayla. The sun was still rather high by the time we arrived, but we took advantage of the harsher light in creative ways. Sugarloaf made for our final destination. The sunset, neutral tones of the yellow grass against the rocks, budding trees, and sparsely jack pines made the swift hike to the top well worth our while. 

Congrats, Nate & Kayla!