Hey there! Luke from Agape here. One day as I was pulling in from my day job at Progressive, I opened up my garage door and saw this pile of crap (the garage). A normal person who opens up their garage door, probably just pulls into the garage, sees the disappointment and goes on with their lives. Not me. I see an opportunity. That day I was feeling a little inspired and I felt like Mikayla and I needed to do something creative so we can get over this slow part of the season. So I opened the door and saw this light. I pulled in and was like, holy freaking crap how gorgeous is this light coming into my garage right now. I quickly shoved that thing in reverse and ran into the house. I yelled for Mikayla and said WOMAN! you have three minutes, put some clothes on for gosh sake. FIVE minutes later (two minutes is serious when dealing with good light, KAYLA) we ran outside in the cold and started to shoot.
We see light in a whole new perspective. It doesn’t matter how crappy the venue is, how awful the decor is. If we have some sort of light source, we can bend it and make it work. I guarantee if you didn’t see the first couple of pictures showing the before, you would have no idea that I was shooting in a poorly lit, awful looking garage.
We believe that living in Ohio has been a blessing (and a curse, Ohioans know). Without mountains, huge hills, deserts, anything cool besides our national park that we overshoot in, it has forced us to really learn how to bend light and focus on the couples more and not relying on the scenery itself. Some photographers call scenery a crutch. We experienced that in full when we visited California. We COULD NOT take a bad picture. We had no idea what to do with ourselves. It was almost too easy. Ohio has forced us to focus on the emotion of couples more than just the picture itself. We really hope that it’s translating into our work with amazing scenery and with not so amazing scenery. So enjoy this ugly garaged amazing lit photo series of the most beautiful girl in the world.
Oh? You thought I was done talking? First off, how dare you?
We have to give a HUGE special thanks to one of our favorite photography husband and wife teams, Rosey Red Photography. We took on one of their mentoring sessions and they helped us see the light in a whole new perspective. Ashley + Ben taught us how to control, how to utilize and how to see light in a different way. Ben asked us what we wanted to learn about. My question was, “how do we shoot without good light?” He says any light, is good light.
During the live shoot, I asked him to push his limits in shooting in a non-ideal shooting situation. We walked into this horribly lit ugly hallway (we’re talking The Shining vibes here), and we started shooting. I’d have to say, the best advice I got from Ben was this: “Sometimes, you just have to shoot for black and white.” Sometimes the light is super ugly and not ideal, but if you change the way you see the world and look at in black and white, all light is beautiful. This light source was dead center in the hallway and was giving off this ugly orange light. We saw that light was bouncing off the wall in just the right way, so we positioned and directed our models to work with the light that we had. We’re gonna share more of our thoughts and what we’ve learned from Ashley + Ben in the near future, but for now, take a look at this magic (Fran + Kurt were the best models ever, btw)!
Agape Photography is a Northeast Ohio husband and wife team who photograph elopements, engagements, lifestyle, and wedding photography. Though based in Ohio, they are available for adventure worldwide.