Engagement shoot at Wicksteed Park

Wedding and engagement photography in Northamptonshire Midlans

Maybe you’re camera shy or feel like engagement photos are an unnecessary waste of time. But the truth is for most of couples it can be more than beneficial. Here’s why.

This is your biggest opportunity to become comfortable in front of the camera.

Odds are, neither you nor your partner are professional models for a living. That’s why it’s important to get a “test run” before your wedding day where the photos will likely feel more significant. By having an engagement session, you’ll learn how to relax, feel at ease and even look less tense and awkward in your real wedding photos. That’s pretty important.

Establishing a relationship with your photographer before your wedding will make a difference in the outcome of your wedding photos. I’ll take note of how you interact with each other, your individual personalities, and even your quirks. These details will help me to capture moments on the wedding day that is unique to just the two of you.

You’ll get to see professional photos of yourselves before the wedding. 

The advantage of seeing professional pics before saying “I do” is you can let me know ahead of time if there are shots or angles you don’t care for, and you can point out shots you do like too. Remember, communication is key. Tip: If possible you can have your hair and makeup trial done on the same day as your engagement session. This way, you get to see how it looks in photos and can let your stylists know if there’s anything you’d like to change. Once you see your engagement images and get excited about them, you’ll have more confidence in yourselves and in your photographer. When the time comes to tie the knot, you’ll look forward to having your pictures taken, instead of dreading the thought of having a camera pointed at you all day.

You’ll have gorgeous photos to use before the wedding. 

Once you have your engagement images, there are endless things you can do with them. They can be given as gifts to family (your parents and grandparents would especially love a copy), you can make yourselves a small album or you can order a portrait to hang in your home. The shots can also be used in your wedding program, wedding website or save-the-dates. If you do choose to self-publish your engagement images I will be more than happy as long as you ask beforehand and give me the verbal credit.

Minelli and Aaron’s engagement shoot.

To plan an engagement shoot in autumn can be quite tricky but very rewarding. Tricky, because of a very unpredictable English weather and rewarding due to those amazing autumn colours everyone loves. I have to say we have been extremely lucky once again.

We picked The Wicksteeds Park as our location. I love the versatility of this place as it offers so many awesome spots with beautiful light and backgrounds. I could literally shoot in this park all day long and still wouldn’t exhaust all the possibilities. We planned to meet up an hour before the sunsets so I could capture some natural light images as well as some more dramatic after sunset images.

Minelli and Aaron wanted to include their four-legged friend so the first 10 minutes we spent snapping images with Bailey who is, I hope you all agree as photogenic and natural in front of the camera as this lovely couple.

The sun faded super quickly and by the time we came to the lake, there was literally only one spot shining on the shores of Wicksteeds park lake with this amazing pocket of golden light.  Although we only had a few minutes before the sun disappeared from this spot completely I think we managed to squeeze quite a lot in. I especially like those images where Minelli decided to jump on Aaron’s back creating some super fun natural images.

As we followed the path around the lake I was hoping there would be some sunset gorgeousness going on in the sky. Unfortunately, the sunset was quite plain and not as dramatic as I had hoped. To take full advantage of the scene I have decided to create some super simple silhouettes with loads of negative space.

We set off back towards the carpark when I spotted that sky coming back to life again.  Even better, the beauty of the sky was reflecting beautifully in the lake. This wasn’t too obvious to the human eye but I knew that with the use of my flash I can bring lots of those gorgeous colours to life.

The only issues I had was that “The perfect spot” was fenced off. This is when Minelli and Aaron showed how much do they trust me. Before I even finished explaining how awesome the scene was and how beautiful the pictures could be Minelli was already on the other side of the gate waiting impatiently for me and Aaron. The gods of good fortune were with us! We were also treated to a flyover during the last few snaps by a flock of wild geese..BINGO !!!

I truly believe we managed to squeeze everything from our opportunities.

Once again massive thank you to Minelli and Aaron (and Bailey :)) who’ve been an absolute pleasure to work with.