I've written enough about the end of 2012 and how much Sandi and I are looking forward to 2013 with Cass Imaging, so I just want to officially close out the year with sharing our best shots from the Central Park shoot. It was freezing out, snow on the ground, wind was whipping, and once we got to the park I had to think quick on how I wanted to shoot this with only about an hour or less of shooting light left. 

I had left the house at 11am that morning not realizing how long it was actually going to take me to get to the park and set up, so I left all of our off-camera lighting at the house. I was kicking myself once it hit 3:00 and we were still on a train on our way to the city, realizing that I should have at least brought one strobe with me. I love shooting during that last hour of light, but in this case I had to shoot two couples, so it would have bought me more time as it got too dark to shoot at anything higher than F1.4.

We ended up having some awesome lighting since it was a little overcast, but as the sun set it became difficult keeping images sharp as my shutterspeed slowed down to suck up every last bit of light. I have a difficult time getting sharp images sometimes in the daylight since I have a habit of shaking, but this was a whole other ballgame since the temperature was dropping just as fast as the sun was.

Besides being limited on time, the most difficult hurdle I was faced with was it being a location I had never shot at and not being able to plan the shoot out ahead of time. I had no idea what to even expect, since I we were unsure of what part of the park we were going to be starting at. I had looked up photos of it on the internet, but its a huge park and not knowing where we were starting was huge. Just like when I shoot any new location that I don't have a chance to scout out before hand, I had originally planned on walking around a little, taking my time to find a nice area to shoot, and then bounce around to a couple other spots. That turned into showing up with the sun just barely hovering over the city still, realizing there was no time to barely think about what lens I wanted to use, let alone walk around to check the place out a little. Not only that but I had another obstacle I wasnt used to....extra people. I was completely thrown off by the amount of other people in the park walking around, I had thought for sure no one else would be crazy enough to be out walking the park in 15 degree weather. Instead....it was packed. 

Well, like always....we got it done. We were able to shoot as much as we could in that last hour of light, even letting the girls change outfits once about halfway through. Sandi and I were both shooting, her with the Nikon 80-200mm F2.8, which quickly became too slow as the sunlight faded, and I bounced back and forth between the 85mm F1.4 and the new Sigma 35mm F1.4. We were able to get some great shots and most importantly, the customer was happy! Here are a few of the shots. Enjoy!