Josh & Jill
Goddard Park in East Greenwich, Rhode Island
November 4th, 2018
Late fall in New England is one of the most unpredictable times of the year in terms of weather. You can have a beautiful, summer-like morning, followed by a brisk afternoon full of beautiful sunshine and foliage and cap it all off with a snowstorm that evening.
There's just no way to know until you're out there in the elements looking at nature in person.
As I've been through this as a wedding photographer a few times now, I always try to prepare my clients for the potential of rough weather and thankfully Josh and Jill, whose engagement session at Goddard Park got pushed back a day because of nonstop rain, were just the type of go-with-the-flow clients I needed during this tough time of year.
And their reward? Instead of an awful Saturday engagement session in the rain, they lucked out and we got to shoot one of the most beautiful days of the year in one of my favorite parks in all of Rhode Island.
Josh and Jill chose Goddard Park for their engagement session and I'm so glad they did. While we had initially planned to shoot near the water in Narragansett, Goddard Park was a great option to pivot to as the park is beautiful in the fall and had a ton of awesome locations for us to really bring out the foliage in their photos.
And we weren't alone. On this morning shoot alone, we saw at least six other photographers and engaged couples or families trying to do the same thing we were.
I'd venture to say none of their shoots came out nearly as cute, though, as Josh and Jill brought their daughter along for some of the photos we took and she absolutely stole the show.
What I loved about Josh and Jill is how important it was for them to include their daughter in some photos ... while at the same time keeping the session an engagement session focused on their relationship first.
The pair were super easygoing and fully up to whatever ridiculous ideas I had so whether it was walking along some tough, tall grass or taking a dip in the middle of a well-worn horse path, there weren't many ideas I felt these two couldn't pull off and that bodes well for their wedding next June in North Kingstown at one of my favorite venues.
I especially loved how patient this bride and groom were as we wrapped up our session and I got the silly idea to have them pose in the middle of busy Ives Road for what I truly think is one of the best shots of their entire session.
This photo required a lot of standing around as we waited for traffic to clear and a lot of flexibility as I knew we would only have seconds to make it all work.
Thankfully, these two were pros and we nailed it.
All in all, I adored working with Josh and Jill and left their engagement session feeling like we made a great connection which will pay off huge in 2019 when they walk down the aisle to say "I do."
And who would have thought all we'd need is Mother Nature to completely mess our plans up for our backup plan to kick in and result in one of my favorite engagement sessions of the year.
It's that's not a great sign of things to come next summer for their big day, I don't know what is.
-PJS
