A couples session on the lake
Couples · Muskoka · Summer 2026
Their first shoot together — so we spent it the way they spend every weekend anyway, outside until the light gave out.
The session
Gregory & Yevheniia
Gregory and Yevheniia had never done this before — never stood in front of a camera together, never been 'a couple in photographs.' You would not have known it for a second. They're the kind of people who are happiest outdoors — camping, hiking, a canoe strapped to the roof and a cottage at the end of the drive. So instead of a studio we borrowed a lake in Muskoka, and I mostly just followed the two of them around it.
We started on the deck around half past seven, the sun already coming low and gold through the pines, and worked our way down to the dock and then out onto the water as the whole lake went to copper. They have an enormous amount of energy between them — laughing, pointing things out, pulling each other around — and none of it needed directing. I'd set a frame and they'd fill it with something real before I could even ask.
By the last hour we had them in a red canoe out on flat, open water, the far shore going blue behind them and the surface holding the last of the sky. That's the frame I keep coming back to — the two of them turned toward each other in the middle of the lake, small against all that forest and light, performing none of it. It's a portrait of them and it's a portrait of a Canadian summer evening, and honestly I'm not sure where one ends and the other begins.
It was the first time they'd ever been photographed together. You would never have guessed it.
They'd rather be outside than anywhere — so we put a whole lake between them and the rest of the world.
A cottage on a lake in Muskoka
Cottage country a couple of hours north — deep clean lakes, granite and pine, and a light that goes gold late and lingers on the water. Best in the last two hours before sunset in July, when the lake flattens right off and the far hills turn blue. If you're shooting on the water, bring a second person to steady the canoe and keep the gear dry, wear bug spray for the evening mosquitoes, and don't rush the paddle out — the best of it comes right at the end, when the sun is nearly down.