This morning I woke up, and in my pajamas’s walked the 20 feet from my room to my office to begin getting my daily fix from my Google Reader. Everyday I read somewhere around 50-60 articles online from my favorite blogs. I read local business blogs, photographer blogs, wedding decor blogs, interior design blogs, local news blogs, The Globe and Mail, A-Channel news, The Barrie Examiner, and travel blogs. Today I stumbled across a photography related article in the Globe. The Globe has always been my favorite paper to read, but today they wrote an article about engagement photography that I felt not only went too far but was far from professional to say the least.
Here is a link to the article, have a read and form your own opinion. But for the photographers out there and the newly engaged couples, and any couples who has had engagement photos taken try not to take it too seriously.
This article prompted us to write a blog not as a retaliation to a silly opinion piece, but as more of a call to action for photographers and couples. We believe that photographers hold a huge responsibility, we are (in the most dramatic form) keepers of time. We freeze moments of life, and we document and collect the image of people living in our time. How we do it is totally up to us, and there is no wrong way. There is no wrong time to start documenting a life, a love, a relationship, or an event. If you are engaged and in love and you want to express that by documenting it, then do it! You don’t need a photographer to tell you so, nor do you need an article written in a national wide newspaper to tell you that you don’t. Its your life, and if you wish to share it, who is anyone to judge. If you wish to dress up like characters from the movie “The Notebook” or have a picnic in the park, or go to a junk yard and pose in front stack of old beat up metal scraps, if that is how you see yourselves now, then do it!
Engagement photos are not for everyone, but I truly believe they should be, just like I believe family or newborn portraits are essential to a families history, engagement, pre-wedding portraits and couples photo sessions (whatever you want to call them) are essential to a relationship. Let’s think about this for a moment, if the average Canadian gets married between the ages of 25-35, and up until that point the last photos they had taken professionally were from their school days and they have wedding photos taken. How old will they be before they are photographed professionally again? My guess is somewhere around age 40! Chances are it won’t be until they have their first child, and if they love photography probably every 3-5 years until the child is a teenager, and then maybe once more as a family before that child gets married. So over the course of the following 25 years the chances of you and your fiance getting photos taken together again are slim. The only photos you will have at this point as a couple will be from your wedding day. That’s great, but its not enough. During the wedding planning and engagement stage, this is really the only time you can get away with having a couples photo shoot.
As a photographer, here are my top 3 reasons for getting engagement photos:
1. it gives us a chance to connect with the couple and for them to get used to our style of shooting ahead of the wedding. This gives us the opportunity to take more personal photos on the wedding day because we know you better.
2. It is an opportunity to be photographed as a couple without your wedding outfits on. You can wear your normal clothes which in turn will better represent the real you.
3. Engagement photos are great for guest signing books, slideshows at the wedding, your wedding website for your guests, and display photos at your reception. They have many purposes, especially if you are too embarrassed to show off photos from your high school and college days in a slideshow for your guests. Engagement photos can keep your slideshow classy.
As a bride to be (yes we are engaged, just in case you missed the post last year) here are my top 3 reasons for getting engagement photos:
1. Getting engaged was a huge turning point in our lives, it represents a commitment we made to publicly profess our love on our wedding day and to plan an event together that will mark the start of our new lives. Our engagement is more than just a ring, its part of our life and therefore we feel the need to document it.
2. I want our children to look back on these photos and say “That’s how I remember my mom and dad, they way they used to hug and looked at one another, what they wore.” it will be hard for our future children to imagine us at our wedding in our wedding dress and suit because they weren’t there to see it. Engagement photos will be a better representation of what our life was like.
3. This is all we have, this life! and we want to be remembered by the people who matter most to us in our lives. These photos will be part of our story.
If you agree with one of these reasons for getting engagement photos taken then set up a time with your photographer that works for you, a location that means something to you and details that help describe the people you are now. I promise you won’t regret it, even if the photos are not what you expected. Remember your photographer can only photograph what you show them, so if you want to show how much fun you have together then you have to genuinely have fun, if you want to have photos that will shock and surprise then come up with an idea and share it with your photographer.
Engagement sessions are more than just an excuse to get a photo for a newspaper announcement or an item that came in your wedding photography package, or photographic art you can place on your walls. This is who you are in this moment, and whoever that is, we hope you share it with the world in whatever way you wish.
Cheers
& Ryan
