Blog— 2023 —
Borderland State Park Engagement Photos
Kayla & Patrick
Borderland State Park, North Easton, Massachusetts
May 23rd, 2023
I'm very much a photographer who likes to take engagement sessions nice and easy. The entire purpose of these shoots is to put a bride and groom at ease before their wedding day and find out what kind of photos and poses work best for them as, often, I don't have a ton of time on the actual day of their wedding to spend hours getting to know them.
Because of this, I've found a successful engagement session needs three things: A fun couple willing to roll with the punches, a beautiful day weather wise and a location with plenty to see and do. In this regard, Kayla and Patrick's May engagement session at Borderland State Park couldn't have gone better if we tried.
In the two plus hours we spent trekking one of New England's most beautiful locations, I had a chance to get to know Kayla and Patrick a little better than our initial consultation allowed and, afterward, I left with one indisputable fact: This is my kind of couple and their wedding this fall is one I simply can not wait for.
My time with Kayla and Patrick started as most of my engagement sessions do ... picking a random spot to do some test posing that I really didn't care about. The funny thing about these shots in an area near the Borderland State Park parking lot was ... unlike most "test shots" I start an engagement session with, I really loved Kayla and Patrick's energy and posing right from the very first photos.
I didn't necessarily intend on keeping any of these random shots photographed on dirt but, hey, if it works it works, right?
Luckily, it seems like everywhere we went on this day was beautiful and perfect and I think that all comes down to the couple themselves.
For the first half of Kayla and Patrick's engagement session, we decided to keep them near Ames Mansion and even the little walk from the parking lot to one of the marquee spots in the park offered a ton of places to stop and take photos.
For the second half of the shoot, though, I had one goal in mind: Find the beautiful bridge I've photographed a ton of times in this park.
We never did manage to pull that off — admittedly, this park is simply too big to hit all of the locations you want to hit in one session — but even that didn't matter because just walking around spot to spot yielded incredibly scenic backgrounds everywhere we looked.
This included my favorite spot of the entire day: A small elevated platform in the middle of the woods that was just a perfect place to stop and rest on our hike ... err, I mean a spot I definitely planned to use for photos. :)
With the sun starting to slowly come down, Kayla, Patrick and I decided to give up on our quest to find the main bridge I wanted to shoot at and make our way back to Ames Mansion before sunset.
And even that little pivot worked out perfectly as when we made it back to the Mansion, the light had finally settled a bit and we were able to cap their session with a few nice shots at the beautiful building that in many ways inspired them to try this park out in the first place.
By the end of Kayla and Patrick's engagement session, I was flat out wiped out. It turns out walking around a giant park for two hours with all kinds of gear and lighting can wear you down.
But, at the same time, I was also PUMPED to get home and check out the photos we captured because working with these two was an awesome time and one of my favorite engagement sessions in quite a while.
So thank you Kayla and Patrick for a wonderful afternoon and I genuinely can't wait to do it all over again in a couple of months when you two are finally ready to walk down the aisle and say "I do." See you in the fall!
-Paul J. Spetrini
