Engagement photography in Philadelphia

An engagement session here is an hour, sometimes more, at a place that already means something to you. Half of it is portraits. I put you where the light is good, tell you what to do with your hands, and make the frame your parents will ask for a print of. The other half is the two of you walking, talking and forgetting I am there. That half is where the save-the-date usually comes from.

You get fifteen edited, high-resolution images, roughly half of each kind. If we are having fun at the sixty-minute mark, we keep going. There is no overtime charge. The gallery arrives in one to two weeks, not a month.

Pick a place you would go anyway. The bar where you met. The block you live on. The park where one of you got down on one knee. A place with a story photographs differently from a place with a view, and you can tell in the pictures.

If nothing comes to mind, that is fine too. I keep a working list of eighteen engagement photo locations in Philadelphia, from cobblestone in Old City to the piers on the Delaware, and I will narrow it to two or three that suit you. The first real decision is usually city or nature, and it is less about taste than it sounds. City streets work after dark, in rain and in January. A trail gives you privacy and no date stamp. Which of those matters more to you decides most of it.

Some places do double duty. Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown faces east, so it is a sunrise location that almost everyone books at sunset. And if you have not proposed yet, the spots that make a good proposal are not always the spots that make a good photograph. I have written up the Philadelphia proposal spots that manage both, and how to plan one so the photographs happen without spoiling the surprise.

Most couples pick a nice month and book. Then they find out the save-the-dates needed to go out two months before that. The deadline is not the wedding. It is the stationery. Work backwards from the mailbox and the session lands earlier than you expect. If the date has already passed, there are still ways to make it work.

Season matters less than people think. Autumn in Philadelphia is the busy one and the light is good, but a winter afternoon in Old City with the sun low all day is one of the best things I shoot. If the forecast turns, the call is mine to make, and moving the day costs you nothing.

The first ten minutes are always a little stiff. That is normal, and it is exactly when we do the posed frames, while you are still paying attention to me. After that you stop noticing the camera, and the candid half happens on its own. An hour is enough for two adults. It is not enough for two adults who are twenty minutes late, so leave a buffer.

If you want the save-the-date to work, tell me before we start. A wide, romantic frame of the two of you small against the skyline becomes two dots on a fridge magnet. Save-the-dates need tighter frames with room for the words, and it is easy to shoot a set of them once I know you want them.

Wear what you would wear on a good date. One outfit is fine. Two costs about ten minutes of the hour. Match each other’s level of dressiness, skip the big logos, and think about shoes, because a lot of Philadelphia is cobblestone. There is a longer guide to what to wear for engagement photos if you want it. If you want ring photographs, say so.

Engagement sessions start with a hello. Send a note through the contact page with your date, if you have one, and anything you already know about the place. I reply with a couple of locations and a time. Mini sessions are the one thing that books directly on the calendar.