Thinking of Skipping the Engagement Photo Shoot? 3 Reasons Why You Should Reconsider

 

Let’s face it, your wedding photography is an investment and one of the few items from your day that you can go back to, to re-live/remember your day. Long after the food is eaten, the flowers have wilted, your dress dry cleaned and sealed up and the decorations packed away; the images your photographer captures on your special day will remain…

So you’ve contacted several wedding photographers; some include an engagement session and some charge an additional amount to include one. But what exactly is an engagement session? An engagement session is a short photo shoot, usually lasting 1-2 hours. The aim of the session is to produce portrait images of you and your partner both individually and as a couple before your wedding day.

You might think it’s not something you’d be into as a couple, or perhaps you’re both just so busy that you’re thinking of giving it a pass. You probably also don’t want a big camera and lens pointed at you until absolutely necessary (like when you’re actually getting married). But before you completely dismiss the idea, here are 3 reasons why you may want to reconsider:

1. Your photographer can teach you all the ‘poses’

A wedding day is an extremely fast paced day and sometimes the timeline can start to slip. The time for photography is usually what gets sacrificed; so instead of 45 minutes for wedding portraits, you may only get 20 minutes. How on earth do you get all the shots allocated to a 45 minute session in only 20 minutes? Well the good news is, it’s NOT your job to figure this out… it’s your photographer’s job. He/she is responsible for capturing the images for your overall wedding gallery.

That being said, someone once said If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, it has a certain logic to it.. and one of the key benefits of doing an engagement session is that it will give you an opportunity to work with your photographer in a low pressure environment. Your photographer will show you some of their key poses for your photography and you may even find that you and your fiance enjoy the process.

2. You’ll know what to expect on your wedding day

During the engagement session, you’ll also begin to understand what your photographer is like to work with, his/her shooting style, etc. It’s an opportunity for you and your fiance to ‘warm up’ and hopefully, having a big camera and lens pointed at you becomes less nerve wracking.

By the end of the session, you should know what to expect on your wedding day, so when push comes to shove and you need to ‘bring it’ on the day, you’ll have a better understanding of what to do and what to expect. 20 minutes to shoot bridal portraits? Piece. Of. Cake. 😉

(pssttt… Brides: Use this session as an opportunity to have your hair and make up done professionally. That way you’ll be able to see how it looks in photographs and make tweaks if required before the day).

3. You’ll receive some amazing professional images

You may think that you have enough selfies and photos of yourself as a couple, but have you ever wanted to print out and display an image that was snapped on your smart phone? Sure, the cameras on our mobile phones are brilliant these days (I know because I use mine all the time!), but they don’t compare to a professionally shot image.

Here’s why…

• images shot on your phone are usually compressed into jpeg format, which means vital information in the photograph is lost and editing is limited

• images shot on your phone are smaller in megapixel size, which means you won’t be able to print them in large formats (no one wants a pixellated print!)

• images shot on your phone are mostly selfies, or shot by family friends who probably won’t know how to pose you in a natural way – say cheese??

Working with a professional photographer means he/she will know how what the light is doing and put you in a spot that will light the image beautifully. They will also know how to pose you, so that they capture the natural chemistry and emotion between you instead of a front on, posey shot.

When you opt to do an engagement session, you can expect to receive a number of beautifully captured and edited images that you will keep forever. These images will usually be delivered to you in high resolution so that you can have them printed or use them as part of your ‘save the date’ invitations or even your wedding invitations.

I hope that after reading this, you’re more inclined to book in an engagement session with your photographer and I hope you have fun doing it!