Engagement photography is a very important prelude to any wedding, which is why I always encourage couples to book an engagement session. There are two main reasons for this:
First of all, it will yield a bunch of nice photos – around thirty or more. We will go for a nice walk to a place that means something to you both and spend two hours or so reliving that important question and the even more important answer. A week later you’ll have a whole lot of lovely pictures that will look great on your wall, your desk, or your profile page.
The second reason is less obvious, yet much more important.
A wedding is an extremely important day in the life of anyone – a day when powerful emotions are at play, and twined with anticipation. The awareness of the awesome yet abrupt change in your life alone is quite stupendous. There isn’t really anything scary or unpleasant about it, still there is a couple of points during the day when the tension peaks off-chart. Having a photographer whom you’ve never seen before hover around with a big camera pointed at you can potentially add to this tension, throwing you off balance and causing some stress. We don’t want that, as it will make you feel uncomfortable, and will most positively show on the photos.
This is when the engagement photography session comes into play.
It will allow you, your partner and me to get to know each other in our element, mine being photography and yours – being yourselves, and in love. It will familiarise you with my voice and the sound my camera makes, my presence, the way I look and the way I walk. At the same time it will allow me to learn how you react and respond, to tailor my methods and my technique to make you most comfortable and relaxed, to plan things ahead. We will have a chat, exchange a few jokes, try out this and that, see what works best, come up with a few questions and a few answers.
And when the big day comes, we will be walking an already trodden path, and it will be a breeze.
For more engagement session photos, visit my engagement gallery.