Downtown Dallas Engagement Session Stops Traffic!

I’ve been doing engagement photography for a long time. I’ve never had so many random people stop their cars to compliment or congratulate a couple more than I’ve witnessed on this day. To be fair, they shocked me too. This was my first time meeting them aside from a dark, late-night video chat consultation, and I’m honestly the worst at recognizing people in person after talking to them via video or seeing a photo of them. For some reason, people always look different to me in person.

Osasu arrives first, Clinton arrives second, and slowly my brain is starting to piece together what kind of session this will be. I usually expect women to be dressed nicely at these sessions, but Clinton is rocking a freshly fitted tuxedo, which shows that he didn’t come to play. You can tell by their energy, they’ve had a lot of discussions about this shoot prior to this moment which is what I always encourage my couples to do. I can understand why most couples are hesitant to get their hopes up about working with a new photographer, but even with the worst photographer, the better your energy is, the better the photos will be. You want a photographer that knows what he’s doing for sure, but in the end, we are all there to capture YOUR story and your love for one another. The best thing any couple can do that is camera-shy or nervous is to focus all of their emotional and physical attention on the person who makes them the most comfortable. Which is likely the person conveniently taking a photo with you. And BOY was this couple super comfortable with one another!

To help build trust and allow the couple to relax a little, I like to show the couple a few photos as I’m taking to them. I could feel the energy radiating off the back of my camera immediately after taking this shot. They big-upped one another with a special handshake that I almost didn’t capture. These two are best friends, and not only that, they are models! At least that’s what I thought to myself because of the way that their hands constantly fell into the right place, how quickly they jumped into character, and how easy they were to pose. There’s no way I can take credit for any photo coming out amazing during this shoot, they MUST be professional models. This entire shoot was all them, and about them.

Engagement sessions are great for building trust between the soon-to-be weds and the photographer. The wedding day is one of the most important days in every couples’ lives and you don’t want to spend a second of it wondering about the capability of your photographer. But it’s also great for the photographer to get familiar with the couple’s energy. Even though I am VERY happy with how all of these photos came out, almost immediately after the shoot I was already kicking myself in the rear as I thought of a handful of other poses I wish I would’ve captured. But as Clinton assured me, this is just the engagement shoot. There will be plenty time and opportunity pull out all steps at the wedding and I can’t wait!