Tracy and Eddie are a blast. For their engagement session, we bounced around Mission Beach for a bit. None of us had been down there in quite some time, but it’s more or less how we remembered it. Lots of fun stuff to check out. We stuffed them in a cab, played on the swings, introduced them to shaved ice with ice cream at the bottom (amazing), and generally had a wacky time.

We generally make it a point to avoid using the beach for portrait sessions. As much as we love working barefoot in the breeze, the beach has been done when it comes to portraits. It can be tough to find new ways to use your environment, and lots of our usual location tricks for dodging hard sunlight won’t fly…

But sometimes… it all works out.

The Hatten family moved to town a few months ago from Australia, stumbled upon our site, and dropped us a line. They wanted portraits and seemed keen on the beach, so we gave it a go. We really couldn’t have asked for better subjects. Look at them! Incredible people, beautiful, and lots of fun.

We love shooting one-on-one portraits. We always try to do these before the group shots; it makes it more comfortable to assemble everyone when you know their names and had a chance to warm them up individually! Here are the kids, who are soooo easy to shoot. They just can’t be made to look less than awesome:

We shot at Cardiff State Beach, behind the restaurants. This time of year, we usually have plenty of marine layer to soften up the light, but on this particular morning, it literally chose to avoid us by about a quarter mile in each direction! For the single portraits, we chose to sort that out by shooting straight into the sun, from down low. The sun is sitting behind the kids’ heads in each of the above frames. Makes a serious impact… blows out the sky, really makes the subject ‘pop,’ and lights up their hair in a really neat way. Best of all, no hard shadows on the faces!

After that, we took advantage of the fact that Charlie’s (an eatery we quite liked!) has closed down, and we shot a bunch of stuff on their now-abandoned patio. The building had some really neat colors and worn-down wood.

At any rate, big thanks to the Hatten family for finding us and for suggesting the beach. The location couldn’t have been better! We had a great time and really loved spending the morning with all of them!

Goodnickels is a pretty-darned-spanking-new photography studio. That said, our disregard for the rules appears to have been incubating for decades.

Here are the oldest known images made by either of the Goodnickels (Mr. Goodnickels, age 9):

And here’s Mr. and Mrs. Goodnickels, present day:

Special prize to anyone who can comment with the location of the vintage photos. Serious San Diego natives ought to know!

Also, anyone nerdy enough to care about what equipment Mr. Goodnickels was shooting with? Wasn’t Canon or Nikon. First camera was a Kodak disc film number. The nuttiest looking negatives you’ve likely had the pleasure of laying eyes on.

.

One camera we won’t be looking for on ebay…