Engagement Photo Hack: Play in a different season
You’ve probably heard suggestions for times of day that are best for photos – the “golden hour” before sunset, avoiding glaring mid-day sun. Those are often good guidelines, but my favorite engagement photo hack is to choose a season for your photos. Spring with the bright colors, summer with long dusk, autumn with changing colors, and winter with the stark trees and bright clean aesthetics of snowy days.
You probably chose your wedding date based on many factors – the availability of the venue, the schedules of your family, the weather that worked with your vision. The images from your wedding will be of a specific beautiful gathering. The images for your engagement can be unencumbered by the clothing and timing constraints of a wedding day. You can play in the snow, you can jump in a canoe, you can sit in your favorite brewery.
Alicia and Blake’s wedding is in January – wintery, snowy, blustery January. Its going to be gorgeous and fun and warm and intimate. But for their engagement photos, it was lovely to be able to play in the city, to see the greenery and parks and walk around on a warm summer night.
I’ve put together some of my favorite wedding photography planning tips on my website.
A preview from Alicia and Blake’s engagement photo session. We live in a giant metropolitan area, full of world class museums and fashion and concerts. Even in the middle of the city, there is green. In the summer we escape to the woods and the cabins and the lakes, but we contain it here as well, accessible all year round. It is one of the things I love most about living in Minneapolis – the incessant, abundant green-space, the park next to downtown, the stand of sumac next to the power lines.
