Those of you who follow my blog know that Fall is my favorite season to shoot in. Changing leaf color, manageable temperatures, and less crowded parks and streets – what more could you ask for? Enjoy these fall central park engagement photos of Becca and Matt – can’t wait to shoot their wedding in September 2014!
Search NYC engagement photos on google. Go ahead, we’ll wait…
Back? Good. I’m sure you noticed the majority of photos you see are from Central Park. There’s a reason for that. It’s basically the perfect location in NYC. Anything you would want as a backdrop is within the few miles of park that makes up Central Park. When Nikki and Peter wanted to do photos there, we were happy to oblige.
Nikki has a spunky personality that we love. Peter is more reserved and balances Nikki out. Together, they are the perfect couple! We’ll be shooting stills and video at their wedding next year. If this engagement session is any indication, it is going to be one amazing day. We can’t wait!
Central Park has become a very popular location for engagement photos for us. There’s just about every kind of ‘backdrop’ you could want in a relatively compact area. But it wasn’t the beautiful greenery or picturesque water views that had us there with Melissa and Rory, it held a much deeper meaning. Melissa and Rory met while participating in a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society charity – Team in Training. They met while doing a run through the park and their passion for the sport along with helping others has kept them inseparable every since.
We started the shoot around Belvedere Castle, a beautiful structure that was originally built to provide great views of Central Park. It has since been used by the National Weather Service for weather tracking and data collection, and also holds the Henry Luce Nature Observatory. Melissa brought along a great little prop, a heart shaped chalk board that we used to write things like their wedding date and “he’s mine.” We encourage our couples to bring along things like this – they’re fun and they make for some great candid photos since the two of them can interact with the prop.
Melissa and Rory also brought along their dog Rusty to the shoot. He’s a lab-beagle mix and was an awesome stand-in; always willing to jump in front of the camera when needed, a great attitude, positive energy, and very low maintenance. Our good buddy Brett was gracious enough to play dog-sitter (as well as assistant to us) while we walked around the area.
We strolled around the nearby Turtle Pond and over towards the eastern side of the park where Melissa and Rory broke out some celebratory champagne. We’re not sure if it was celebratory or if Rory just needed a little ‘pick-me-up’ from all the photographs we had him take. Regardless, you never really need a reason to crack open some bubbly.
Given where they met, it was only fitting we had photos taken of them in their running gear. After a quick wardrobe change, we were off to the races (very bad pun intended). There’s a particular shot we love from this part of the day. It’s one where Melissa and Rory are down near the Bethesda Fountain while we were up on the overpass shooting from above. We told them to go into a corner and pretend we weren’t there. At the same time, a random photographer taking photos of another couple decided to jet out in front of our camera. She looked up at the same time we snapped the photo. The result is a picture with a great story.
Their wedding is this November in Connecticut and we’re super excited to be there to photograph their big day!
Hoboken, much like Brooklyn, is a place that’s so incredibly close yet the amount of time we’ve spent there it might as well be China. When Dom asked us to shoot his engagement photos around the Hoboken area, we were happy to expand our horizon and take on the challenge of the unknown. We arrived via the PATH train and after a delicious salad from Rome Pizzeria & Grill, we were ready to shoot their love.
A little back story on Dom and Diane – Dom’s an extremely talented commercial film editor who’s collaborated with us on a few projects (if you haven’t watched our GiveForward film, watch it – he was a key member of our team!). Diane is a TV account executive selling advertising. They met while participating in a Ragnar Relay race – Ragnar Las Vegas to be exact. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ragnar Relay, they are a group of relay races held in different cities around the country. They span hundreds of miles with team members running close to 200 miles in 24 hours. These races are grueling and exhausting, but they promote teamwork and camaraderie and you really connect with your teammates. From what we’re told, they’re a lot of fun (although we’ll just take your word for it). Diane and Dom started the race as strangers but it wasn’t long before they became more than friends. Fast forward almost 3 years and here we are – a few weeks away from their big day.
We started the shoot in the New Jersey Transit train station – a really cool, old looking station that’s still undergoing renovations from the Sandy devastation. Incidentally, it is also a major hangout for homeless people! Besides that small annoyance, it’s a pretty awesome building that you should check out if you’re ever in the area.
Next we took advantage of the beautiful Hoboken waterfront w/ panoramic Manhattan skyline views.
We capped off the shoot on some of Hoboken’s old-school cobblestone streets just after sunset with streetlights and headlights giving off some great bokeh.
It was a fun session and it was great hanging out w/ such an awesome couple.
It’s safe to say New York City has some of the most iconic buildings and structures in the world. We are so lucky to live in the heart of it and only be a short subway or car ride from them all. It may be surprising then to know that although we’ve lived in or around NYC almost all our lives, we’ve never been to the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes being in such close proximity to something results in a “we’ll do that another day” mentality. We’ve driven over it, seen it from afar, but never actually walked it.
Cue Danielle and Will!
Danielle and Will are the wonderful couple who we’ll have the pleasure of photographing and filming next June. We like to advise our couples to select engagement photo locations that have special meaning and will produce different imagery than their wedding photos. They decided on Brooklyn since Will’s a Brooklyn boy and their wedding venue is more of a country-club setting. These photos allowed them to stay true to Will’s roots and have some awesome urban photos to hang up in their home.
We started the shoot in an area where we knew of this gigantic, bright colored mural painted on the side of a building. Only when we got there, we found it had been painted over solid teal blue. It was a little disappointing but we noticed Danielle’s dress and tan really popped when she stood in front of it. We got a few solo shots of her and moved on.
We headed towards the park that hangs just under the bridge but soon found out that unless you have a permit, you can’t take photographs in the area. We found this pretty hilarious since every 20 feet there was another engaged couple or model being photographed by a professional – yet we were the ones who were approached by the police. The rest of the photos that we took in the area were on the DL. Taylor, our wonderful intern, was a huge help that day and played ‘watch dog,’ looking out for approaching cops and staying w/ our gear.
One thing they don’t tell you about when trying to cross the Brooklyn Bridge is, it’s a loooooooooooooooooooong walk. Poor Danielle wore shoes that weren’t made for walking long distances. She was a great sport but after suffering for too long, Will offered her his extra pair of shoes – which she gladly accepted. It turned out to be a pretty funny photo seeing her in a trendy dress and men’s moccasins!
We learned something else about the Brooklyn Bridge that day – beware of BIKERS. We’re not sure who had the grand idea to put both bike and pedestrian paths in the same congested area, but we’d like to find that person and give them a talking to. There were many occasions where someone nearly was run over by a buzzing biker. The bridge was undergoing some work so unfortunately we weren’t able to take full advantage of its beauty. But after some creative camera placement and some photoshop work, we were able to make some pretty fantastic photographs.
We ended the shoot sweaty, blistered, but overall extremely satisfied w/ the engagement photos. Danielle and Will were rockstars who battled the elements. We can’t wait for next June when we get to capture their beautiful wedding day!
Brooklyn Engagement Photos by Michael Justin Films
It was a gorgeous day in Manhattan’s Central Park for this engagement session w/ Maureen and Jeff. Having our studio so close to Central Park, we had so many awesome locations we wanted to hit and only a few hours to do so. Maureen and Jeff were up to the challenge and were great sports while we dragged them around the area. There are only a handful of images we caught that day but does a great job recapping the session. Their wedding is later this year and we’ll be doing both wedding photos and wedding cinematography – we can’t wait!!!
Last week we ran a contest to get to 1,000 facebook fanpage likes by February 8th 11:59pm. If we hit the mark we’d offer one lucky winner a free photoshoot of their choosing. Although we came up just shy of our goal (924 as of this blog post), we decided to give away the prize anyway. We took all 924 fans of ours and using a random generator selected our winner, Lori!
Sometimes things work out as you hope – this was one of those times. Lori lives in Manhattan and was available to shoot this past Sunday – one of the only dates we had available until later this summer. She’s also extremely beautiful, which made my job way easier. She has no modeling background but as you’re about to see, she got the hang of it and did a fantastic job!
We walked into central park around 3:30p and I immediately saw a great area that had beautiful light peaking through some of the distant buildings. We set up there for the first hour. Here are some of my favorites from this part of the day:
Are you kidding me with this one? I can see this on the cover of a magazine!
We noticed a father and son playing catch nearby – we politely asked if Lori could join. They were happy to have another person to toss to.
OK, it’s official – I’m OBSESSED with trees…including this one. I love the engravings on the bark. I think it gives the tree so much character, like scars from a long life of battle. Here’s Lori relaxing against it as the sun starts to set.
At around 5pm Lori’s boyfriend Eric was able to join us. Taking photos like these are never easy, especially for a guy. Eric was a great sport and after the session I think I even heard him say he had fun! 
This is probably my favorite photo of the two of them!
Yalissa & Gio wanted a fun save the date around lower manhattan. We chose the Highline, one of their favorite bake shops, a cafe, and a good old-fashioned NYC taxi ride. They were interested in putting subtle images of their date 10/19 throughout the film – see if you can spot them!
Alyssa and Ed met while attending Villanova University – she a freshman, he a sophomore. Fast forward 8 years, and here we were, back on campus to take engagement photos. I’ve known Alyssa literally all my life…well, since I was two, so maybe not all my life. Growing up with a little sister has been great and as we’ve grown older, we’ve become closer. I was so happy I was able to shoot her engagement photos and capture the love she and Ed have for one another. Since they are both insanely good looking, it made my job much much easier.
The sunflowers added a great prop to the shoot and the color coordination was spot on – good job Alyssa! Next up was Ed’s finance building where he spent the majority of his time while getting his degree. I wanted a more hardcore look for this photo so I had Alyssa and Ed give me some sass and blasted them with a Canon 600 EXRT flash with a small soft box. Very happy with the way this photo came out.
After shooting outside we headed indoors to take some photos in a classroom and then one of the coffee stands Alyssa used to get coffee from pretty regularly.
Ed’s a huge basketball fan and still plays today – one of the shots he wanted was on the court he used to play on for hours. I like these photos b/c it was the only time during our shoot that the sun peaked out from behind the clouds – made for some nice dramatic shots!
The rest of the shoot was spent around Villanova’s beautiful Chapel and lawn area.
These are my three favorite shots of the day.
We had them roll around in the grass which ended up producing some really fun images!
This photo is very “Twilight” – or so I’ve been told.
Took a few takes to get the lighting just right, but I’m very happy with this image!!
Tara and Adam’s video save the date video for their June 8th, 2013 wedding in Ocean City, NJ. Shot in Central Park in New York City on January 21st, 2012. This was not the version the couple received – they opted for this version: http://flo.michaeljustinstudios.com/tara-adams-snowy-central-park-save-the-date/, which incorporates audio from a Q&A session we did with them. The version you are about to watch uses just the lyrics of the song and the visuals we captured to tell the story. Enjoy.