For Photographers | 5 easy ways to improve your engagement sessions!

Engagement sessions are the first interaction that you get to have with your bride and groom before the wedding day! We want to help you make the best first impression possible! Through years of photographing engagement sessions we compiled our best tips and tricks that you can implement in your business today!

#1. HELP THEM STYLE THEIR SESSION

As photographers we shoot so many engagement sessions that it’s easy to forget that this is usually our couple’s first time ever being professionally photographed. Be as helpful as you can leading up to the session! Give location suggestions and let them know who your favorite hair and makeup artists are. We recommend making a Pinterest board of outfit inspiration that you can send to them before their session. You can see what ours looks like here. The more advice that you can offer, the better your client’s experience will be!

#2. ENGAGE WITH YOUR COUPLE

Chat with them and have fun! We love to ask the Groom-to-be how he proposed to his fiancé. The guys don’t always open up right away which is why we make sure to ask that question at the beginning of the session. He tells their unique and jaw dropping proposal story, his bride-to-be stares at him adoringly, and it starts the session off with everyone feeling outgoing and comfortable! Talk about their wedding and all of the fun details that go into wedding planning. Share in their excitement! You want them to leave the session feeling more like friends and less like they paid you for a service! After their session they should have a high level of trust in you and be jumping up and down excited that you are photographing their wedding!

#3. GOLDEN HOUR

Not only will your couple LOVE their stunning images filled with golden light, but this will help you later when editing! The best time of day to photograph is one hour before sunset! When you schedule your sessions during this time of day it will help your images be bright, beautiful, and consistent. You will be able to deliver a gorgeous product that was edited effortlessly. If your couple isn’t available during this time of day due to work or other circumstances we recommend photographing around sunrise; but if you can get that evening time slot we highly recommend it!

#4. ADD VARIETY

It is so important to add an array of angles, scenery, and poses! Our goal here is to deliver a gallery that makes your couple so excited that they can’t stop scrolling through every photograph! You can do this by using different lenses that allow for wide full body photos and tight close ups. You can also add variety by using different spots at your location. For example, if you are at the beach you can take your couple down to the shoreline for those classic beach photos but you can also head up to the park or walkway and use the sea grape trees as a background. Make sure that you are changing up their poses too… which leads us to #5…

#5. POSE CONFIDENTLY

When you direct your couple with confidence they will feel confident! If you say, “ummm…can you guys maybe hold hands and like just look at each other or something cute like that” we promise they will feel super uncomfortable! If you say, “Perfect, now Nick wrap your arms around Jessica’s waist and pull her in close for a kiss” they are going to feel a lot more natural and it will show in the photograph! If they feel uncomfortable, the photograph will look uncomfortable. It is SO important to have a solid posing flow so that you don’t freeze and fill the space will “umm’s” “maybe’s” and then secretly try to scroll through Pinterest for posing inspiration (don’t worry, years ago we were there too!) We will have a whole section on posing in our September workshop so stay tuned for those dates!

We hope that these simple tips help improve your engagement sessions! To you these tips may seem so simple, but even the smallest changes that you make to your client experience will make such a difference to your couple! Never forget, they trust YOU and chose YOU to capture such a special season in their lives. It is an honor and we should do our absolute best to beautifully capture the love and joy between every couple that we get to photograph!