“Hey, Adam. What are you doing in an hour?” I mean… I get that a lot. The window is sometimes small for opportunistic things like wakeboarding, a last minute road-trip, a sauna, and in this case – taking a 1950’s de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver out to scope a location for an engagement shoot. My response to Marina, “see you in 30.” I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Marina and Tomás a number of times on Isle Royale, where Tomás pilots the seaplanes for Isle Royale Seaplanes and Marina operates a charter service and runs the Rock Harbor Lodge. Besides finding them to be some of the most pleasant people I’ve ever met, they’re also romantically in love with the Island, with flying, and with each other. So it was only appropriate that we shoot their engagement via seaplane. Photo assistant / daughter / partner-in-crime Kora Melia joined me to not only help manage equipment, but to literally hold the seaplane to the shore – because similar to a beached canoe, a seaplane will indeed float away! We were graced with a highly unusual flat Lake Superior, so once we flew down the canal, finding a landing spot on the big lake was far easier than we thought and much more fitting for the occasion than an inland lake. We made a low pass, circled, then came back and beached the Beaver in the stampsand just south of the north entry. Marina and Tomás were naturals, and we just let them engage with each other, using the plane as a prop. The flat lake was unusual, but fleeting. Whitecaps quickly formed as the sun set so we grabbed the bags, sandals, and hopped back in the plane and flew back home. Enjoy their photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.
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