This Weekly Wednesday we’re BACK with an educational blog post about when to get your Engagement Session. Engagement Sessions and Family Portrait Sessions are similar in that when hiring us/ high level Professional Photography Studios to capture your session On Location (i.e. not in our indoor Photography Studio), we always have our clients consider the look and feel that they’d like their Session to have. A outdoor snowy Engagement Session vastly differs from a Midwest Spring flower-y Session on location. The same goes for a classic nature-y Autumn Session in the warm oranges, reds, yellows, and browns of the season vs the classic beauty of Summer’s warm beaches, green forests, busy city streets, glow of the sunset in Chicago, and more. Below we’ll share with you some of our favorite Engagement Sessions from the past 7 out of 14 years that we’ve been capturing Engagement Sessions for our wonderful clients (with a bit of a quick explanation in each season section explaining the perks and challenges of each season).
SUMMER Engagement Sessions
What can we say…? Most folks opt for Summer Engagement Sessions because they want to feel warm and have the water, fauna, & flora popping in the background of their Session. Our area of Michiana is very dynamic in that we have Chicago city scapes, lakes, beaches at the biggest lakes in the nation, forests, hills, bogs, national parks, preserves, universities (Notre Dame, Purdue, Michigan, St. Mary’s, Holy Cross, IU, Chicago Universities, etc), country clubs, and more where nature is either wild an beautiful or perfectly manicured. There’s kind of something for every type of couple in the summer, but it definitely brings with it a certain “vibe” as us Millennials would say.
An aside: It’s not even summer yet officially and sunset in our city is already past 9 p.m. and will ramp up to 11 p.m. soon, so that makes timing a beautiful sunset Summer Engagement Session that much harder. Please make sure to book us or your Professional Photography Company for your Session as soon as possible so that we can coordinate around that craziness to fit you in on the few remaining Summer dates-!
AUTUMN Engagement Sessions
Oh, Autumn in the Midwest. Nothing can really beat Midwest/ Michiana autumns. Everyone is always clamoring for the classic Autumn Engagement Session (or Autumn Family Portrait Session, Autumn Christmas Card Session, Autumn Senior Session, Autumn Doggy Session, etc). In our area of Michiana the season of fall colors doesn’t last too long, so we always have to time everything absolutely perfectly to make sure that we don’t photograph our clients when it’s still green out through most of October, but so that we don’t accidentally hit the part of November wherein the leaves are brown, on the ground, and the trees have hit “stick season.” Autumn takes a lot of planning and we ALWAYS tell folks to book us at least 2 months early for any Autumn Sessions as the weekends and evenings fill up very, very quickly every single year without fail.
WINTER/ DESTINATION Engagement Sessions
Winter Engagement Sessions are objectively the least popular of the Engagement Session seasons. Because of Climate Change/ Global Warming, winter snow is extremely unpredictable and a couple client is lucky if we get any crazy blizzards or snows anymore. 6.5 years ago we had some fluke snow ONLY on the date that one of our Granger couples had chosen, so we lucked out then, but often there’s now either just gross frigid cold in the 30s, a below zero degree day, or rain. Because of that, we started incorporating Destination Engagement Sessions in our offerings. Winter rain can and has lead to pneumonia when photographing professionally in Chicago (for Jansport), so now we always have not only our standard Rain Date back-up dates with our clients, but also give them the option to have us photograph them in the warm indoors On Location elsewhere. Some even opt for an out-of-state romp in a warmer area/ state-!
SPRING Engagement Sessions
Ahh, Spring. The birds are chirping, the air becomes filled with the fresh scent of tree flowers and ephemerals, and the trees start to show signs of life once again as they start to grow leaves-! Folks often opt for the beauty of the flora and fauna that Spring brings for their Engagement Session. If you’re flexible, book it at least a month or two in advance, and can give us at least one to two back-up Rain Dates OR if you’re ok with utilizing some of our fun umbrella props and just going for it in the rain, then Spring is for you-! We most often in our area of Chicago/ South Bend/ Michiana keep our couples in the loop by telling them honestly that the flowers could be on the ground and trees anywhere from mid-April through mid-May. Mid-May is what we most often suggest as it gives us the relief in knowing that there will be leaves on the trees and flowers on the ground. ((What fun would a Spring Session be if the trees were bare and it started spontaneously snowing in late April…? NO fun, that’s what)).
This season can be the most difficult (in a way) as photographers because as they say, April Showers Bring May Flowers (emphasis on the showers part). It’s seemingly always raining in Spring in the Midwest, but honestly less so in the recent years wherein we’ve disturbingly been getting 90 degree weeks in early April and early May (Global Warming setting literal high temperature records during our past 2 Springs). That aside, when a Spring Engagement Session works, it really works and blows us out of the water/ reminds us why we love living somewhere with very pronounced separate seasons. It’s apparently only by making it through winter that you get to reap the benefits of Spring- a metaphor very apt for engagements, weddings, and marriages honestly.
As you can see, in most of the United States and world outside of California (and some of the Southwest U.S.A. where there are deserts), each season brings with it a different look that can dramatically effect the look and feel of the Engagement Sessions. It’s up to us consulting with you to help figure out the style that best suits you as a couple, so we do our absolute best to really suss out a season, location or locations, and time of day/ night that will be a perfect fit for your personalities and lifestyle.
Photographing in the great outdoors is one of the benefits of our career (since we love the outdoors), but it does bring with it many, many challenges that we’ve faced head-on over the past 14 years of owning a Professional Photography LLC business. From snowstorms/ blizards to Nor’Easters to downpouring rain to 103 degree days with 98% humidity (WHY) to beautiful fog (which isn’t so beautiful when you’re trying to include a lake or mountain in the background) to below zero temps where everything is covered in ice and our cameras freeze and everything in between, we’re prepared for it all (but also prepared with your rain & ice dates just in case).
Looking back on some of our favorite Engagement Sessions (all chosen from the past 7.5 years specificaly) was pretty crazy. Some of our Wedding Collections come with an Engagement Session, so it’s not every wedding couple that we get to photograph prior to photographing their wedding (though we always, always prefer it to photograph our clients’ Engagement Session prior to their wedding day). Some of the folks above hired us solely for their Engagement Session before they headed out of the country to get married at a Destination Wedding abroad, because they didn’t have their wedding date/ plans yet, or wanted a re-do because they didn’t like what their previous photographer had done for them. It’s always a blast to get to capture our couples together since every type of Professional Photography has its perks. While photographing individuals for Career Portraiture solo is fun, photographing couples is always a bit more fun because capturing the couple interacting with each other can be more heartwarming, dynamic, and since we’re also a real couple, more fun.
P.S. We’d been working on this blog post last week, but as always between Busy Season ramping up with our business capturing clients’ Sessions (as it does annually in Spring- especially as we approach Summer) and us having wedding consultations, client meetings, and scheduling even more clients for weddings one to two years from now (and additionally adding in applying to and bringing our individual fine art to juried group gallery and museum shows) we weren’t able to fully finish up this blog post on time for last week’s Weekly Wednesday. It happens. Over the years we’ve stopped working 7 days a week (thankfully) and have prioritized mental health (as much as possible when running a business), so knowing when to “call it” is something we’ve been improving at.
