Photographing friends is quickly becoming one of my favorite things! I mentioned this a few months ago when I wrote about shooting a cherry blossom portrait session with my friends Logan and Megan as well – I always get a little nervous, feeling like there’s extra pressure when I have a personal relationship with the subject of my photography. The good news is that this session with Gabe and Megan was a super casual test shoot with very little pressure and, in the end, lots of fun!

I’ve been friends with Gabe for about four years now. We met in college, and because we attended Marymount University which is a small school with an even smaller population living on campus, we naturally crossed paths on occasion. We started becoming friends when we both took a theology course that included a spring break trip to Rome, as we ended up both being in a group that spent the majority of our down time together that week. It also happens that our circle of friends overlapped the following summer when we both lived and worked on campus, so we ended up hanging out even more – enjoying small parties in the dorms and celebrating the 4th of July on the campus practice field where fireworks were set off each year.

It wasn’t until after I had graduated and Gabe went on to grad school that he met Megan and let me tell you, based on our time together during this session they are a perfect match! They were in the same Master’s degree program at Marymount and met in class. Mostly, Megan puts up with Gabe’s crap (sorry, it’s true, everyone who knows Gabe including Gabe will agree with me). But she’s right there with him in sharing their sense of humor, and you can just tell that they’re serious about their relationship but don’t take things too seriously. In fact, they’re so serious about their relationship that when they posted these photos on social media, they got more than a couple responses from people waiting for an engagement announcement to drop too!

I had offered to do this shoot for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve had my hands on a Canon AE-1 film camera for a couple years now but never got around to trying it out because, honestly, film is scary to me. But I wanted to test it out for the first time in an environment that was low pressure and not spend a paying client’s valuable session time trying to figure out my exposure and manual focusing. No, the photos below were not taken on the film camera but once I finish off my most recent roll of film I’ll likely blog about the experience so stay tuned there! I also happened to be dying to return to Great Falls National Park after having shot there for the first time with Grace and Trae earlier this year and when I suggested it as a session location, Gabe said they love visiting the park and it would be a great place for them to have photos taken. I’m thrilled because two sessions is just enough for me to put together a Northern Virginia location spotlight blog post similar to my spotlight on Alexandria so that will be in the works soon as well…

Finally, I just have to say that I was also very excited that our session included Gabe’s gorgeous red acoustic guitar (and definitely influenced the vibe of the shoot and our decision to shoot at Great Falls). I knew Gabe plays guitar in part because he formed a band with some friends from college, and when I asked him to send over photos of any guitars he owns I didn’t even have to look at any others when his first photo was of this red acoustic! I mean, this is the stuff of styled shoots, people! All in all, the location and the guitar and a couple in love are all we needed for a gorgeous summer portrait session at Great Falls National Park.