Mari and Osmel are a loving couple who are expecting twin boys later this year (check out my blog post about the gender reveal). I recently had the opportunity to take their early maternity photos in beautiful Haulover Beach in Sunny Isles, Florida.

We decided on this location because the sun sets opposite the water, giving us that beautiful sunset glow, while having excellent backgrounds for our photos. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, we only got started at 7pm! What followed was a ton of fun but also very hectic, as we took all our photos in less than 90 minutes, fighting the setting sun.

I used the Canon 6D for these photos, paired with a few lenses. For most portraits, I used the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS at or near 200mm so we could isolate Mari and Osmel from the background. For some of the close up images, I used the excellent Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro. Once the sun was almost done setting, we took some silhouette photos using Canon’s 50mm f/1.4 lens. For all the photos except the silhouettes, I used a Yongnuo flash unit attached to camera with a large diffuser for fill, along with the assistance of my lovely wife with a reflector.

There was some Photoshop involved here and there. They wanted a cute way to say they were expecting twins, so this was one way we did that.

The happy father.

This one was shot with the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro. The use of the reflector here helped to get some of that beautiful light directed at Mari’s hands.

In theory, we were going to write various messages on the sand. Once we were there, we quickly realized that it would take impossibly too long, and since we were racing against the setting sun, we opted to Photoshop in some of what we would otherwise have done in person. I’m not advocating this – I find it’s always better to do things on location rather than fake them with Photoshop – but in a pinch, it works.

One interesting tidbit here: we shot these photos during the last hour before sunset. We had beautiful golden glowing light coming in directly from behind my camera, and you can see that on Mari and Osmel’s faces. Yet, the background (sky, water), was somehow cast in these blue-ish light that made color correcting an arduous task. We settled on what you see here, I’m still debating whether that’s the optimal color temperature for these photos. But in the end, I’m happy if my clients are happy, and Mari and Osmel loved the photos.

Even though we only had about 90 minutes of shooting, we took a ton of photos – far too many to post here! Head over to our Facebook page to check out the rest of the photos from that day.

Make sure to like our page and follow us to get notifications when we post new photos!