It seems like this is going to be a tradition now, as my good friend and I hung out and had a portrait shoot this Winter Break while she was back home from U of A (ew). Because she brought her qipao while she was in Taiwan, we decided to go take pictures in the Chinese Cultural Center since the Chinese theme would carry over into the environment. Of course, we had to take pictures of her in her dress though, so that came first. Lighting wasn't ideal in the garden because neither of us realized that the buildings nearby blocked a lot of the sun out, and we only had around an hour before sunset to shoot. Since there was still some pretty strong sunlight towards the walkway to the lake in the garden, I decided to try to take some shots where the sunlight would naturally create a lens flare and kind of wash out the image. It.... kinda worked, some instances better than others.
With all of the imitation architecture nearby though,we shifted taking photos to here. The windows allowed for those classic window poses, including looking out the window and sitting in the window frame. I had a few more shots, but they were too overexposed for me to save without the colors looking horrendously unnatural. As you can see, we had a lot of fun.
We couldn't ignore the pond with the koi though, so we took the first picture here. However, the sunset and reflection off the water made the sunlit parts in the original picture way overexposed and everything else way underexposed; I tried my best to correct for it. And, since I had my friend sitting on the railing and the sun was still up, I tried to get those dramatic pictures where the subject's head is right in front of the light source. I think it worked well.
Going back to the bridge and pondside, I thought a "attitude" shot was in order since she was wearing boots. But also, since she was also wearing a dress and I thought it would suit the environment we were shooting in, I thought that getting shots without any footwear on would be appropriate, too, as if one is kicking off their shoes to relax in a nice place like this.
There are still some photos left from this shoot I need to edit, so stick around for them soon!