Photo of the Day


Meaningful Embrace

March 5, 2019

By Jacqueline Tobin

The whole world seems to stop turning for a moment in this frame as couple Luiza and Egli share an intimate embrace in a quiet corner of Florence. “They both come from different places—Luiza from Brazil and Egli from Albania—but they call Florence home together,” explains photographer Courtney Lee Miener of Courtney Lee Photography in St. Louis.

She adds: “For me, there can be a unique beauty when photographing a couple in a place that means something to them. While it’s a kind of adventure for me, there must be a respect for the importance of the place to the people I’m capturing. This little corner of the city could be a place they’ve walked passed many times before. Maybe they’ve stopped and shared a kiss, or come across friends while having a stroll. You just never know. And so the process of photographing is less about what it means for me and more about paying homage to what I can’t know but can imagine.”

(Shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV and Sigma 35mm 1.4 lens at f/11, 1/320 of a second and ISO 200.)

Photo © Courtney Lee Photography