Summer Evening Walk

July began with early June weather, and Fernando and I took advantage of the beautiful temperatures by taking an evening walk at one of my favorite portrait session sites.

This bridge is located right at the parking lot, so it's a logical place to start.  There's also lots of park to the left (of this image), with fallen logs and really cool-looking trees.

Of course we stopped along the bridge to capture the river scenes.

Looking west along the DuPage River.

 Looking east along the DuPage River.

Then there's a little paved path to walk along, accompanied by bicyclists, joggers, and other walkers.

 

Without a tripod, it was a little tricky shooting in the darker interior of the woods.  I managed to get a great shot of the sun peeking through.  You can see the bridge we crossed in the extreme right of the image.

I love shooting up into trees!  It's a super cool thing to do in the winter, when there are no leaves to block the view, and the image becomes about lines and shadows against the sky.  But in summer, there are some really neat lines and shapes with branches and leaves, and the below tree was the perfect candidate for my camera lens.

We walked a ways down the path, then cut over into the field to see if we were in time to catch the sun setting.  We were.

I pretty much brought only my kit lens, which isn't the best, so I had to really work to get a good shot in the lowering light as the sun set.  Fernando was a sweetie and posed for me, too.

This one below is my favorite, since I was able to capture the sun, some rays, and some lens flare in the fields.  It looks like a nice prairie sunset!

Once the sun set, there were still opportunities for some great shots, and clouds always help make things beautiful.  They give the sky shape and form, and they do a lovely job reflecting the colors of the sun as it goes down for the night.  The below is my standard shot when the sky is really pretty like this.  I like to put the horizon low in the image to capture more of the beauty of the sky.

Note--if the sky is plain blue (which is also beautiful!), I usually put the horizon smack-dab in the middle, which isn't something you'd normally do, rule of thirds and all.  But with a plain blue sky, it can make for a very symmetrical, and therefore peaceful, image.

To change things up a bit and capture some of the foreground in my sunset image (below), I got down low to shoot.  This way, I was able to capture some of the grasses sticking up into the sky, silhouetted against the beautiful orange of the sun.  Love this shot!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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