My first official engagement shoot :-)

So I don't know if this is supposed to go in weddings or portraits. *shrug*

This is my brother and his fiancé. We took about 400 pictures completely exhausted the location. It was a lot of fun, and not only are they happy with the results, but her mom is too.

The last one is my favorite. I would like the first one more, but the blown highlights bother me.
I am noticing a blue cast in the first and last picture. I might try warming them up a little. Most people seem to like warm pictures, cool tones look... well, cold.
Where did you shoot at? I like the door and the brick on the ground.

The Garden Park ward in Holladay? I think you need to make a reservation (free) to shoot there. Just be aware of that if it's the same place.

Do you have a light meter? I have a newfound love of shooting manual for a whole session where your light isn't going to change much.
If not, what are you shooting with? My Nikon has a "highligh" feature in the preview where anything blown will blink so you know right away if you blew something out on the first shot. Do you have a grey card? Take a picture of it with your camera, check the settings and set it to that in manual.
There are lots of options. I don't trust looking at the back of the camera to know if I nailed the exposure. My Nikon always looks brighter than the actual picture and my last camera looked darker. So who knows if the display will be what you are going to see in the final image.

Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense and I'll explain better.

P.S. you can rent a light meter for $15 at Pictureline. Although I suggest buying one the moment you have the funds.

I'd use lovely and Ethreal and lower the opacity, the other one does weird stuff to her eyes.

Grey cards are super cheap, a few dollars. I bet you could get one at Allen's Photo, they are on State Street and somewhere North of 800N. in Orem on the East side of the road. They might be as far as 1600 N. I don't remember. They have a store in Provo too, I don't know where you are.

The last time I shot at the Garden Park Ward was in 2005. They closed it down right after that to remodel it and do a bunch of stuff to the grounds, I think they had to put in some sort of infrastructure (pipes) because they dug a lot of holes.
Do they still have the pond?  What about all the cool architecture things and bridges?
I haven't bothered to shoot there since they implemented the reservation thing, so you probably know more about it than I do. I am sure you were fine.

Have you ever shot at the International Peace Gardens? They were just in the news because someone stole the Copenhagen Little Mermaid statue. But there are some Awesome places to shoot there. It's free, but it's in a sketchy neighborhood oddly enough.

I have seen Allen's Photo before, so I'm sure I can find it. :-)

We were actually planning on going to the International Peace Gardens after the Garden Park Building, but the night before I read on their website that they are only open from May until September. So we were thinking that we might try to go there for her Bridals. I think that Garden Park Ward just barely opened. The woman that told me about it said she had gone to check to make sure that it was open before telling us about it. We were there early in the morning. We saw a few people, but nobody seemed bothered that we were there. They do still have the pond and the bridges, and the cool architecture thing is where the brick is. There is also a pathway with columns along it that are pretty cool too. Here is a picture that shows a lot of it. Its not one of my favorites of them, but at least you can see a lot of the Garden.

That's really sad about the statue. That could have been why it was closed. After I saw the website, we didn't even go there to look and see if it was open. I'll probably call next time to see if they are. Being asked to leave somewhere is a concern of mine. I like keeping rules. Lol