On to Week 3 of the Love In Essex project and we have Tony and Coni from Pilgrims Hatch. Tony and Coni have been together for 22 years and been married for 19 of those. They’re also the Mum and Dad of Josh from last weeks Love In Essex shoot and have another teenage son.

They originally met through the police force where they worked in the Plaistow area in different departments, but have since both left the force and work as teachers in a local school.

This weeks shoot started in the beautiful grounds of Ingatestone Hall but this was closed for the winter and so we moved onto Mountnessing Windmill for the remainder of the shoot.  The weather was on our side with a glorious sunny afternoon dispite some heavy rain showers in the morning.

Tony and Coni were really fun to work with and even though Tony confessed to hating his picture being taken they both really enjoyed the shoot and said they loved the concept of the project.

Week 2 of my Love In Essex project introduced me to my youngest couple currently booked onto the project, Josh and Justine of Brentwood. Josh at 17 and Justine at 16 signed up to the project right at the beginning and helped to spread my age range from 16-90!

They met through school sharing a Geography class for a few months in their last year of GCSE’s at Shenfield High School. After getting t0 know each other Josh built up the courage to ask Justine to the School Prom, held at Stock Brook Manor. She said yes and this was their first date! Now into the sixth form at Shenfield School, with Josh doing a  BTEC and Justine taking A-Levels, they’ve been together for just over 6 months.

I decided to take them for a shoot at Hylands House in Chelmsford as I’ve shot weddings there and there are loads of little places t0 shoot hidden away from the other park dwellers. I thought this would be an advantage as a younger couple can be a little self concious having portraits taken in a public park and I could ease them into it away from the masses!  This worked well and as we worked our way through Hylands House’s beautiful gardens I could sense (and see) them relaxing into the shoot and becoming more comfortable having their pictures taken

I had the very first couples location portrait shoot for my Love In Essex project today. My first couple was Dawn and Sean who came in the studio for a portrait photography shoot a few months ago and I think it was working with them that gave me the insiration for the project. Dawn and Sean actually live in South Weald Country Park in Brentwood as Sean manages the maintanance of the park as well as other country parks across Essex. Dawn also works for the council  managing country parks and so they seemed a perfect start for a project showing the beauty of Essex!

Not only this but it’s very obvious in Dawn and Sean’s company how very much in love they are and they’re a pleasure to photograph and we had a good laugh during the shoot.

Here are a few of the shots from the session and as you can see we started at around 5pm which might have been a touch late as by the end we were shooting in pitch black! Lesson learned there and I’ll get the future shoots underway a bit earlier I think!

So week one is done and I look forward to the following 51 weeks…