Engagement Sessions: Pave The Way To Your Wedding Day Success
Photographers are going to be one of a few ‘strangers’ that you will spend the most time with on your wedding day (the other stranger you spend a lot of your day with is your wedding planner.) The more time you spend with your photographer prior to the wedding day, the more comfortable you’ll be with them. Our goal as photographers is to document your wedding day in a mostly unobtrusive manner and to let most of the moments unfold naturally. Having you be comfortable and relaxed around us makes that flow more naturally and it is less likely there will be awkward or uncomfortable photos.
Getting to know your photographers at an engagement session allows you to get familiar with them and their personalities. You want to make sure you mesh well with them and they are not awkward or annoying around you. The last thing you want is to find out on the day of your wedding is that the photographer isn’t a good fit for you. That will add additional stress to an already packed and busy d
Unlike in years past, where a photo studio stands on every other street corner and inside every shopping mall, most people nowadays have never had professional photography done. That means most people find having a big camera pointed at them uncomfortable or awkward. Many people have spent years having photos taken by cellphone cameras and seeing an actual camera with a giant lens pointed at them may seem intimidating. Having an engagement shoot helps to alleviate some of that by getting you comfortable with having the cameras and photographers around.
In addition to getting you comfortable in front of the camera, the engagement session also helps us provide some pointers for you both on posing and will familiarize you with strategies that we may use on the wedding day.
For example, a quick peck kiss is over too soon to be captured by most cameras. We normally ask the couple to hold it for about 5 seconds or so. A longer kiss helps to guarantee the moment isn’t missed and also helps you to slow down and enjoy the moment as well. We may also ask you to pose in certain ways during the engagement shoot, and having that posing experience and prior experience and communication before the wedding mean that on the wedding day when the timing is critical, there’s less time we need to explain something and more time capturing photographs!
Engagement sessions normally last an hour to an hour and a half long for us. That’s a lot of time to get familiar with your photographers, to get to know us as we get to know more about you during the shoot and to get familiar with how we work so you know what to expect on your wedding day. The engagement session also allows you to express your unique personalities and interests. We’ve done an engagement shoot in a Target for a couple who loves shopping at Target. In another we did, the couple had met each other at an OrangeTheory Fitness, so we went back there for engagement photos. Doing this gives you more opportunities to tell your story and express your individuality outside of the confines of your wedding venue.
One last thing an engagement photoshoot will provide is confidence. The engagement session gives you an opportunity to watch us work and craft your photos. There are news reports all the time of photographers out there who steal images as their own for advertising, and it’s only later that couples realize they weren’t a real photographer at all, and the quality and style they receive is much different, and often inferior to what was advertised. And unfortunately, it’s too late at that point. Having us do your engagement session shows our capability, with you in the image, so you can be confident that the images we create are genuine and legitimate. This gives you confidence on your wedding day that your photos will be everything you want and more. You can go into your big day without fear of the unexpected.
