There is a kind of love that doesn’t ever really go away, that lingers in the background through the years and emerges once again to surprise and delight you and change the course of the rest of your life. That’s the kind of love Beth and Rick have. They were together in high school, and spent a lot of time together at the Boardwalk. Beth says there are still tire marks in front of the house where she lived then, from Rick’s rebellious screeching spirals when he dropped her off after their dates. I love the idea of those marks, the past still visible in the present. Their engagement session started on the trestle bridge, meandered up to the river mouth, and ended up at the Boardwalk. We watched the years lift away as these two became teenagers again. Only now Beth doesn’t have to sneak in if she misses curfew.

Sara and Chad won a free Red Bat Photography engagement shoot at the 2010 Bridal Expo at Cocoanut Grove. You might win one too, if you visit our booth at the 2011 Bridal Expo, so please stop by if you attend. We give away a few free engagement shoots each year. There’s no obligation to book with us for your wedding when you enter the engagement shoot raffle. It’s simply a scheme to bring fresh energy and new faces in front of our cameras.

When we met with Sara and Chad to plan their shoot, the four of us put our minds together and a light bulb rose up above our heads and thus we came up with the idea of taking pictures at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Both Sarah and Chad love the aquarium and marine life in general. As for the Red Bats, we were excited about the challenge of shooting in a place where the light comes from fishtanks and most of the time you can’t use a flash.

What this story should be demonstrating to you: the Red Bats will do your portrait or engagement shoot anywhere it’s even remotely legal to take pictures.

The aquarium turned out to be very romantic. Lots of kissing happened in the course of this shoot (Sara and Chad kissed, NOT the Red Bats- and let me take this opportunity to remind our readers that we are not, and never have been, a couple of the romantic variety.) Seahorses kissed, and the males got pregnant. It was magical. As so many photographic situations in my life seem to do, it made me think of a famous love poem.

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

Love’s Philosophy – Percy Bysshe Shelley