An hour before the rain

We had booked golden hour. What arrived instead was a flat grey ceiling and a wind off the gulf that pushed the temperature down four degrees in the time it took to park. The sun made one appearance, low and sideways, for about eleven minutes.

So we changed the plan on the footpath. Instead of chasing warm light across open parkland, we went looking for hard edges and shelter — sandstone, colonnades, doorways deep enough to hold two people and keep the rain off the front element.

The first quarter of any session is spent getting the camera out of the way. No poses, no direction beyond where to stand. I ask what they argue about. They walk, they talk over each other, they forget the lens is there.

The frame below is the moment it turned. Nothing was called for — she said something under her breath and he laughed properly for the first time. That is the frame I would have missed if we had started shooting on schedule.

The break in cloud came at 17:44. We ran — genuinely ran — two hundred metres to open grass and worked the gap until it closed. Backlit, wide open, exposing for the highlight and letting the shadows fall where they wanted to.

The rain started while I was changing cards. We finished under a tree, shooting details, and were done at 17:55.