The summer was very quick this year in Belgium, and very busy: I only now can find time to post about this expat couple photo session at Gare Maritime.

Leena and Lassi are from Finland, but Leena lives and works in Brussels. They live their love story between Belgium and Finland and they found their perfect balance, since they love traveling around Europe.

When Leena contacted me, she was worried about the weather: it was very likely to have a rainy day on that Friday in February. So I proposed to shoot their couple session at Gare Maritime.

Gare Maritime is one of my favorite locations in Brussels for shooting, mostly when the weather is not promising and we don’t feel at ease with taking photos under the rain. The building has amazing light, warm wooden colors, stairs, glasses and reflections, plants in the inside… There are so many potential photos to be taken there.

Even if Leena was in line with not having her couple photo session at some Brussels well known monument or common location, she wasn’t 100% convinced by the Gare Maritime. At the beginning -  she confessed afterwards - she had a lot of doubts and wasn’t sure at all about the result of the shoot.

But instead it was perfect: not only we scouted together for nice spots inside, we also had a pause with no rain and we could go outside, where the new artificial ponds and some red-bricked buildings gave us the final inspiration for some double exposure pictures and a little jogging!

When I sent the pictures of Leena, she was really really happy. Here’s what she wrote me:

Hi Elena, I just wanted to say (since I believe that you’d be happy to hear these thoughts) that I’m so excited about these pictures! When we’ll see each other with Lassi this weekend, we will surely try and decide which ones we’d like to have on our walls/desks - but for the moment I feel like there are so so many of them that I really love! It’s amazing how beautiful these are ❤️ While taking the pictures, I remember feeling slightly skeptical about some of the spots where we were shooting - and of course they look absolutely beautiful in these skillfully taken pictures 😍 Thanks again, Elena - I’m so happy and can’t wait to hear Lassi’s thoughts about these too.

This is what makes me happy, about my job: making my couples happy. I did it, for this couple photo session at Gare Maritime.

Ps. Lassi was very happy too! 😉