Ideas for your engagement photo session
Getting engaged is one of the best feelings and fabulous moments of your life. I won’t be surprised if you want to save this happy time in a form of portraits and add to your lifelong memories.
This is where I come in, your engagement and wedding photographer!
From my experience, brides mostly decide to try well-known locations and trending poses for their engagement sessions. There is obviously no harm in going with the trend and adopt what’s already proven to be working great for others! At the same time, what I recommend you to do is to rely on your intuition, hobbies, and passion to come up with something that’s personal to your couple, and reveals the characters of the two of you.
To help you out, I have listed down some possible ideas on how to make your photos unique and truly yours.
1. What are your favorite activities?
Before deciding the location or poses, the first thing worth considering is your passion and hobbies. Is it sports or books you love, or modern architecture or historic buildings you really enjoy together, lakes and parks, birds and bees, beaches and mountains, country and city, etc.? And once you have explored your passion, you could set a theme for unique photos. For example, if you are a reader, and can’t live without books, we could go to your favorite library for a photoshoot, or create a book theme in your house (if you feel like it represents your couple better).
2. If your couple were a Location 🙂
As already mentioned, it is a good idea to choose a location based on your passion. Think about what place could personify who you are as a couple the best. Here are the ideas about choosing the photography location.
Favorite spot. If you have a favorite restaurant that is frequently visited and loved by you two, and where the servers know your favorite dishes, it is worth giving a shot. Or maybe a coffee shop or a bar where you and your partner spend and share lovely moments. And I already mentioned the library (a great place to take photos, by the way!). This way you will be also saving the memories associated with these places.
Where you first met, or place of the first date. Returning to the location where you first met or where you went on a first date is nostalgic. The feeling of that place, flashback to emotions you had there will surely bring uniqueness in your photos which my camera would definitely notice. 🙂 Is it your first apartment together? Or street you both grew up on? Or is it that place on Broadway where you two enjoyed your first dessert as a couple?
Hold that pose! Or thoughts on what to do with your hands during the photoshoot
I admit it might be difficult for a couple to pose if you never did that before. Some couples feel awkward while expressing emotions, like kissing, in front of a photographer. Being an introverted person myself, I can relate. It’s totally up to you to decide the limits and comfort level of your expressions. Undeniably, more emotions lead to exuberant photos, but ultimately, just being on those photos being yourself matters the most, and no staged posing is necessary for great photos.
Just remember: the trick in posing is simple – just be yourself, and forget about the photographer around. Just do your thing: talk, like you, usually do, walk, look around, hug or kiss. So here you go – your hands shouldn’t feel pressure to act extraordinarily in front of the camera. 🙂 Just do what you usually do – and I will ease it up even more with some fun simple activities for you two!
As part of your posing, if you are a pet lover or a bookworm, you can incorporate your fur baby or a favorite book into photos. Adding your pets or hobbies will definitely bring originality and uniqueness to your shots, and what’s more important, it would serve as a very special memory for you, and only you.
If none of the above-mentioned ideas have clicked with you, we can always start with selecting a great location (I have plenty for your choice!), and take some cute and memorable photos of you two. I will be happy to guide you through the photoshoot. Here in Vancouver, we have a plethora of beautiful places waiting to be a great backdrop for your couple. Because at the end of the day, it’s you two who matter.
What I usually start with, is creating a personalized Pinterest moodboard for my clients based on your preferences.
However, to get you up to speed with ideas of how it might look like, I created a public Pinterest board so you could save some inspiration for your own photoshoot.
Disclaimer: not all the photos in this Pinterest board are mine but rather an inspiration from all over the internet.
Let’s discuss your engagement photos!
