Call it luck, call it experience, call it the 6th sense, but so far I’ve been able to work around the most difficult situations at the City Hall to get great shots. And we didn’t need hours to do this. Lillian & Bowen booked me for 1 hour on a Friday. The City Hall gets normally very packed, but in this case the Grand Stairwell area was getting blocked off as the crew was setting up for an upcoming event.
I always arrive earlier to the City Hall as I wait for my couples. And I’m watching the Grand Stairwell area slowly getting blocked off from all sides except from the center. I see Lillian and Bowen (as they arrived early too) and after a quick introduction, rush over to the Grand Stairwell, where i get stopped by the manager overseeing the setup. He goes “sorry this area is closed”. It just got blocked off fully and so I ask him for just a few minutes to take my couples’ photos. He was nice even to let us do it. There were a few more couples with photographers rushing to get a few shots, so I quickly set up my lights and got some great photos of my couple. 2 minutes later the Grand Stairwell was completely blocked off to the general public.
As we proceeded after the ceremony to the 4th floor, it was packed, but we were lucky to get a very cute shots then and then moved to the 2nd floor Mayor’s Balcony which happened to be empty. And since the stairwell was empty too, we got some great shots from the Mayor’s Balcony.
When couples reach out to me asking what kind of photos I usually take within a certain amount of time, I promise them to make the best use of that time.
