
It becomes important to recognize when you have beautiful light, and need not do anything else.

Shooting against the sun, with open light behind me, gave beautiful lighting on the couple.

My first approach here is not to fight the ambient light. However, off-camera flash makes life easier – you have studio quality lighting pretty much anywhere. I quite often work with just the available light, with maybe a hint of fill-flash.

(The wider lens will then be in a bag on my shoulder.) This really is my work-horse lens for engagement photo sessions. Instead of just the one general-purpose lens like the 24-120 / 24-105, I might use the 70-200mm f2.8 exclusively. It really does work that way – lugging unnecessary equipment with you, dampens creativity. The more you are laden down with equipment, the less mobile you will be … and the less likely you will be to be bothered trying different angles and ideas. Not negotiable.īut still, keep it simple. So even if you don’t have your back-up gear on your person, (like you might at the wedding itself), you should have backup gear nearby, easily accessible. No apologies will cover your embarrassment, or erase the notion that you might fail in the same way on the wedding day. When that happens, the last thing you want is for your clients, who took the time to look good and dress smartly (and have paid for fuel, and parking, etc), to be disappointed because your camera went down. For example, I’ve had a Nikon D3 body have a shutter fail on me during a photo session in New York. I do have a back-up body and lens in my camera bag over my shoulder, or locked in my car nearby.Ĭameras and lenses *will* go faulty. The equivalent Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS ( affiliate), is just as versatile a lens. I often work with just the Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR ( affiliate) so that I can work with just one camera body and one lens.

The experience of the photo session with you, will be as important as the actual photos. The most obvious point of connection – talk about their wedding day. It is imperative that you keep the energy going and keep their interest. Here are my top 5 tips for a successful photo session with your clients …ĭon’t be too involved with the camera gear and lighting. There are so many advantages to doing the engagement photo session.
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It just makes your life easier then, if the couple has already spent time with you and have a feel for how to work with you during the romantic portrait session, and photographs of the bridal party. So the time that gets compressed, will inevitably be the time you have as a photographer. However, the wedding reception will start on time. Instead of being “the photographer”, and a rather anonymous one, I now get this response from the bridesmaids when I start: “Oh, you’re the photographer that took those photos! We love them! They are amazing!” With that then, I’ve already won over a large part of the bridal party, and I’ll have their friendly cooperation.Īlso, on the wedding day, there is a great chance that things will start to run late. Their friends and family will also be impressed – and this helps me when I walk into the bride’s house on the wedding day. They did sign with you because they liked your style, but it’s even better when they love the photos you took of them. The engagement photo session is also a good opportunity to impress your clients with your photography. Even more so, in that there’s much less pressure and haste during this photo session than there’d be during the wedding day. I love doing engagement photo sessions because this allows me the opportunity to connect with my clients before their big day. Top 5 tips on shooting engagement photo sessions
