I first met Jackie over drinks with a mutual friend (Hi, Peter!), and I remember immediately thinking she was cool. It was one of those moments when I got a strong sense of the person I was talking to without knowing much about her life. She was witty, friendly, at ease with herself. When it came time to leave the bar, she mentioned a boyfriend and I thought: whoever he is, he’s probably fantastic. Someone this cool must be in a great relationship.

So I wasn’t really surprised when I heard that she was engaged. When we met the couple to talk about photographing their wedding, my suspicion was confirmed: she’s found herself a gem. And so has he, of course. I got that warm glow I get when I meet two people who are utterly comfortable with each other and considerate of each other, who are about to make a permanent deal out of it.

The Jackie and Marcus photo shoot began, as all good days should, with a hearty brunch, then proceeded to The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Despite how stuffed to the gills we all were, these two did not hesitate to climb on every redwood stump we pointed to, and they perched on many a mossy log at our request. This shoot involved more hiking than any previous one, more yogic poses, more fording of woodland streams. I was grateful for their willingness to try so many of our ridiculous ideas, and impressed with their ability to make them work.

I found myself falling under the spell of their sweet, easy romance, their obvious chemistry. They looked so right together, and whenever we left them alone for a minute, they flirted with each other. It was pretend flirting that quickly became real, if you can picture that. There was a moment when they were standing on a bridge looking at each other when I thought of a quote from a great work of literature (though I couldn’t remember which work until later): Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

Turns out that line is from Wuthering Heights. Which was a funny association to make, because Jackie and Marcus are not wild children like Catherine and Heathcliff, running around the moors getting drenched, experiencing fateful dog bites and plotting revenge on several generations of people. I believe their plans for the evening involved watching Lost with some friends. But you don’t have to live a life of drama and intrigue between the covers of a book to have a true union of souls.

Having already expressed my profound approval of their relationship to them in an email, and now having written this post, I think I should now hire myself out to anyone who will be giving a toast at their wedding. Loved ones of Jackie and Marcus, just send your rough drafts to me. I’ll have ‘em polished and ready for October.

When we set the date for Scott and Lindsey to have their engagement shoot in late March, I was worried about the weather. (I’m the half of this team that worries about things like that. I also worry about file naming conventions being followed, and a hundred other obnoxiously petty details.) Scott and Lindsey were coming from out of town for their shoot, and had a limited amount of time in Santa Cruz. The weather had been rainy and cold at least part of every day for weeks. If it rained, where would we shoot?

This question led us to the Felton Covered Bridge, the tallest covered bridge in the country. You can read more about the Felton Covered Bridge by clicking here. That wikipedia entry, in turn, led me to read about other covered bridges, which led me down a pathway of my personal history I’d almost forgotten about. This story has nothing to do with Scott and Lindsey and their engagement shoot, but it will give you something to read while you wait for over 30 photos to load.

The summer I turned seventeen, before I went off to college in the cold northeast, I worked at a bookstore in the mall. That summer, a book called The Bridges of Madison County by Robert J. Waller was all the rage. Here is a description of the book from Library Journal, found at Amazon:

This is the story of four days that change forever the lives of two lonely people. Robert Kincaid is a roving photographer for National Geographic and Francesca Johnson is a housewife whose marriage suffers from a lack of romance. Francesca’s family is out of town when Kincaid arrives on the scene, and the pair are instantly attracted. They soon become lovers, and Kincaid asks Francesca to run away with him, but she refuses. Francesca stays loyal to her family, and memories of Kincaid are all that remain. Contrived, unrealistic dialog detracts from a well-plotted, quick, and pleasant read.

All summer long, people came in asking about that book, wanting to talk about it, sighing when they remembered parts of it, and wondering what we, the bookstore employees, loved most about it. The Bridges of Madison County seemed to have a strong effect on a lot of people, and they were urgent in their enthusiasm for it, their desire to make me understand how they felt. You’ve read it, haven’t you? they’d say. What?! You haven’t? Ohhhh, you are missing out! Read it tonight!!

My bookstore coworkers had read the book, and they all despised it. They despised it with vigor and glee. Everyone added to an ongoing list of what they hated about it, with page numbers and quotations. A copy of The Bridges of Madison County was passed from one employee to another, and each person was welcome to add his or her own annotations in the margins. I can’t remember if I actually participated in this bonding-through-shared-scorn; I was probably too young and naive to rip the text apart with convincing brutality. I do recall being absolutely slayed by the extreme harshness of their criticism when I overheard them talking about it and read their marginal notes. They were so funny! And clever! Would college make me like that, I wondered? Would it teach me to find The Bridges of Madison County intellectually revolting, rather than simply romantic (and extremely cheesy)?

College would, and college did. But the romantic could not be squashed for good, and with every engagement shoot like this one, it grows back a little bit more.

And so we’re back to our covered bridge in Felton. We checked it out in advance, did some testing with lights, but in the end we only had to use the covered bridge for the second half of our shoot. The first half happened at Natural Bridges State Park, and we got our best shots there before the rain began to fall. Scott and Lindsey were great creative collaborators, willing to do the hiking/jumping/making silly faces that often goes into a Red Bat shoot. Plus they were (and still are) truly in love, which is just how we like our couples to be.