Engagement Sessions

What is an engagement session and why should you do an engagement session?

There is a misconception regarding the engagement session: that the proposal occurs within the engagement session. While this can be the case, the engagement session booked during your wedding planning often does not feature the proposal. The engagement session allows you to have professional photos taken prior to your wedding day for your invites, guest books, and other details for the big day. The engagement session is a fun opportunity to get familiar with me, your photographer, prior to the day of the wedding. This also allows us to establish a common language for the your wedding session prior to the day of your wedding, relieving some of the stress of the wedding session during the wedding day.

When should you schedule an Engagement Session?

Your engagement session is ideally scheduled soon after booking your photographer for your wedding. Your photographer should be booked soon after your venue booking has been confirmed. In wedding planning, the venue is usually booked first, so having your photographer selected soon after that increases the likelihood that they will be available for that day. The further in advance the better!

Where should you shoot your engagement shoot?

While photographers often disagree on this topic, my personal preference is a location that has special connection to you. For the engagement shoot I like to focus on what brings joy to my couples. If you enjoy the water, I recommend a riverside or lakeside shoot. If you enjoy lush green spaces, I recommend a botanical garden or a park. If you prefer the great outdoors, perhaps your preference is a more rustic setting a quiet wooded area or a cabin. The important part is to ensure the setting is what brings you joy and fits your personality.

What time of day should your engagement session be?

One of the most essential duties a photographer performs is identifying good light. While the definition of good light can vary between photographers, there is a universal constant: shooting in harsh overhead lighting produces non-flattering, low quality results. For outdoor locations, this means that the best results occur when shooting at times when the light from the sun has direction. The most consistent time for directional light is at a period referred to as Golden Hour or slightly before it. During Golden Hour the exposure of the sky roughly will match the ambient light, producing dramatic and dynamic images. Additionally, the light captured produces a golden color as the name implies. Golden Hour is not always an hour, but it typically occurs about an hour prior to Sunset. In the inland northwest, Golden Hour in the summer can last as long as two hours and, in the winter, as short as 20 minutes. I recommend shooting at Golden Hour for all my outdoor sessions.

For indoor sessions, there is a bit more flexibility if the location features large windows for consistent diffuse lighting. Window light produces flattering, neutral, low contrast images. Because of the diffusion, indoor areas with natural window lighting can be shot even during the harsh midday sun. If the indoor location does not have quality light from the sun, it may become necessary to supplement the ambient lighting with off-camera flash.

Should you book an engagement session?

I’ll share a personal story: When my wife and I got married, we were very budget conscious, and photography wasn’t something we considered very highly in our budget. Looking back, I wish I had prioritized the budget for photography over having guests, including family, that were only tangentially a part of our life. We were so concerned with including everyone in both families that it caused us to exceed what we were comfortable spending on people who ultimately did not appreciate our wedding and were insulting to me and my wife. One guest even wrote a rude comment regarding our dietary choice and what we served at our wedding in our guest book, permanently ruining that memory.

This tangent is to say that you should prioritize what brings you joy on your wedding day, and don’t let me or any other person who is in this industry tell you what is important to you for your wedding. If you want to have an engagement session for a consistent theme and high-quality images for your details and invitations, then I’d be delighted to do that. If that is not what you personally value, my advice is to just save your money and don’t do it; It’s your wedding after all!

Chelsea and Lindsey had a bit of Topsy-Turvy year with their wedding plans. Originally scheduled for the bride and bride was an intimate ceremony at a rustic cabin in Lewiston Idaho. Those plans changed due to the ongoing pandemic, but that did not stop their wedding. A change was made to shift the wedding venue to Lindsey's mom's beautiful backyard.

The makeshift venue did not seem as such with all of the trimmings you'd expect from a modern wedding venue: a gazebo for the ceremony, a large backyard area for the reception, separate bridal rooms, handmade floral arrangements (by Lindsey's mom), a private room for catering, and a picturesque hedge-lined aisle for the brides to be walked down the aisle with their mothers. This is the embodiment of a DIY wedding with everything created literally in-house for their backyard wedding.

Prior to the wedding, the couple had a wedding session at a local park along the Snake River with beautiful greens and blues providing a stark contrast to their white gowns.

Following their wedding couple's shoot Lindsey suprised Chelsea by inviting Chelsea's aunt to their wedding without Chelsea being aware she was coming. This moment brought excitement, tears, and joy to both Chelsea and Lindsey.

Following the surprise, the ceremony began with the brides being walked down the aisle by their mother or aunt. The couple recited tearful vows, exchanged rings, and was sent off as wife and wife with streamers flaring by the excited guests and family members. Their love is a monument to the foundation their love was built on: steady enough to weather any storm (or pandemic).

Twin Creeks Farm

Twin Creeks Farm is located in Princeton, Idaho - just a couple miles away from Potlatch. The venue is run by Tiffany Corrao and her Husband Mark. The venue is a rustic, outdoors wedding venue with a contemporary charm. This picturesque venue has two main features, a rustic barn to be used as a reception hall and a wonderful heart shaped pond with a dock. Accompanying these features is a large bridal suite and an garden. Arriving at the venue leads you to a fork in the road. The left path takes you to the large magnificent barn and a bridal suites with lovely wood tones. The right path to a heart shaped pond suitable for an outdoors ceremony.

Bridal Suite

The bridal suite is in a building located near the barn. The bridal suite features a magnificent full wall length mirror which allows the bride and the bridal party plenty of room to get ready and inspect themselves.

Barn

The barn can host a medium sized reception with overflow into the garden behind it. Each side of the barn has large, spacious doors which adds to open airy atmosphere of the venue. The barn hosts a bar area where libations can be prepared for your guests.

Lakeside

The crowning feature of twin creeks farm is the beautiful heart shaped lake. Jetting off into the lake is a short wooden pier which gets decorated with wooden barrels and lace to fit your wedding theme. The reflection of the lake makes for an excellent spot for shooting couples and solo guest pictures. 

In Closing

Twin Creeks Farm is a wonderful rustic venue with a beautiful open aesthetic analogous to the openness of the inland northwest. If you are looking for a lovely venue in a beautiful area, I'd recommend Twin Creeks Farm.

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Why Pose for Portraits?

The first thought when people mention poses are yearbook photos or prom photos. These poses are designed to coax a certain look, but are often weird or uncomfortable. Why do I need to put my right hand over my left hand and on top of my forward knee? These directed and non-interpretative poses takes you out of your comfort zone and makes it so that everyone looks the same. Let's be honest, this is boring and doesn't capture the real you.

So, let me get this out of the way to begin with, portrait sessions are meant to capture your personality. My job, as the photographer for your session, is to ensure that you look your best and look natural. Looking natural is absolutely essential to the shoot being successful, so why even bother with poses? The easy answer is that during a shoot I am providing you and your partner a direction so that I can move you and your partner into positions that have pleasing composition. The directions are always interpretative, so that you can decide how to respond to that prompt, allowing you to put your personality into the pose naturally!

Basics for the Entire Session

For the session there are three major things that I will direct you and your partner on.

1. Ensure that any hinged limb with a joint is held loosely. Imagine gently embracing your partner rather than holding onto them like Captain Kirk! A 'soft' joint is something that happens without even thinking about the placement typically and often this is a basic goes without saying!
2. Posture! A common problem in the digital age is the decline of good posture, so I may remind you or your partner occasionally. Shoulders back and chin up! :)
3. When walking, to create a more flowing line gait, walk with one foot in line with each other. This creates a natural flowing pattern of your gait, making your walk more dynamic.

First Pose - The Walk

I love this pose as a first pose for my session. It's dynamic and getting you moving helps break the tension of a portrait session! Plus you'll likely hear me tell a score of bad jokes. It's good time for all!

Walking Away from the Camera

I suppose this comes naturally first, as you have to walk away from me before you can walk towards me. This allows me to catch details of the outfit you're wearing, and lets your take in the environment. Also, it's good for your health!

Walking Towards the Camera

Walking towards the camera is the natural progression of walking away from it!

Walking Perpendicular to the Camera

My favorite of the walks! This creates depth with you and your partner and really creates a cool dramatic effect!

Pose 2 - The Embrace

Of all the poses I will direct, this one is the most prom like. To make this more interesting, I will make a couple modifications!

Pose 3 - Intimate

The final pose I will be demonstrating in this blog is the intimate pose. Forget that I'm here for just a moment and enjoy each-other's company!

In Closing

To paraphrase Pirates of the Caribbean, these poses are more guidelines. A couple's shoot is also about improving so don't be surprised if only some or none of these poses occur during your shoot! I will capture you at your best regardless of the pose!

Starting Off

Are you planning for your wedding and looking to create a meaningful color scheme, but you're having a hard time choosing which colors to use? Do you have a color you really like and you're looking to accent that color with other colors similar to that color or colors that complement that color? Then this blog post is for you!

Before we get started let's talk about color. What makes a color palette good? This is largely a personal question as some people prefer vivid, bright colors, and some prefer muted softer colors. Having different preferences is what makes us unique, so instead of talking about what your personal preference is, let's talk about using your personal preferences to select a color palette! 

If you're familiar with Shades and Hues skip ahead to Choosing a Base Color to Create a Color Scheme.

Making a Color Palette

For this blog we're going to utilize a fantastic resource: Adobe Color! If this is the first time you have used Adobe Color, let me run down the panels you'll need to understand. On the left you have the Color Harmony Rules.

Color Harmony Rules are a collection of rules that use a base color and defines a series of colors that are similar to it in shade or hue, or complement it in shade or hue.

Shades

No, I don't mean what you put over your eyes, I mean a measurement of luminosity of a color. Lets click on the Shade harmony rule so that we can visualize this. Using the color wheel lets select the color #BDBCFF. You can do this one of two ways: either rotate the color wheel to this position by dragging the circle, or typing the source color into the C Color.

So let's examine what's happening here. The ratios between the Red, Green, and Blue channels remains constant, but the bottom light, the luminosity changes. That's basically what a shade is, a constant ratio of the amount of Color and a change in the brightness of that color. Adobe Color shows two dark shades and two light shades of the color we selected. Determining what shade of a Hue to use as a starting point is often a good first step in selecting a color scheme for your wedding.

Hues

Hues are displayed on the color wheel in degrees, Red, Green and Blue. Let's start with a 0 Degree Hue. If you're familiar with trigonometry, you'll identify that 0 Degrees is directly on the right in the positive X-direction no movement in the Y-Direction. In RGB Terms, that's 100% Red, 0% Green, 0% Blue. Click on the Monochromatic Color Harmony Rule and Type #FF0000 into the C channel.

In order to get the other colors from the 0 degree hue we would have to do some vector math between the blue and green channels (shortcut is just to use the green and blue at the same ratio for each of the pure hues 0/120/240 degrees). The other method is to just lower the luminosity in the same ratio with the hue percentage.

All of that technical mumbo-jumbo is simply to tell you that everything along the 0 degree line is monochromatic with the color that as selected. It's still the same hue, but has a different value of saturation and luminosity. 

Using a Base Color to Create a Color Scheme

Analogous Color Scheme

So let's go back to the Lavender Color Scheme. Using the C Channel lets select the color #BDBCFF. Then lets click on the Analogous Color Harmony Rule. If you're looking for a good color scheme in which all of the colors are similar to each other, the analogous color scheme is for you!

Starting off the analogous color scheme it it creates a default hue shift near the color initially created. An analogous color scheme shifts the hue of the target color by the same degrees in either directions. Adobe Color does this shift twice so that you can have a total of 5 analogous colors as part of your color scheme. You can drag any of these colors to shift the hue angle. From there you can also tweak the shades of each of these colors. 

You can see that the shades of the analogous colors are similar, they have nearly equal luminosity to the base color and in general is a good starting point if you are looking for similar colors to build a matching theme. Move the one of the colors around until you have a second color you like, and the other analogous colors will be shown. This is a fun and easy way to create a matching set of colors for your wedding!

Complementary Colors

Okay, but what if we want the color we choose selected as our base color to 'pop'. In simple terms, when something 'pops' it has good contrast. In the world of color contrast we call those colors complementary. Often times a single complementary color is fine, but what if you want a color scheme that features three colors? Well let me introduce you to the magic of split complementary colors! Let's use #BEBDFF and select Split Complementary.

The complementary color is the color that is the direct opposite Hue, Saturation and Luminescence. The Split Complementary Color are colors near the complementary color. Split Complementary has the same controls as the analogous color scheme, but instead of shifting the colors around the base color, you shift the color around the complementary color. Each of the colors in the split complementary are analogous with each other, and have good contrast with your base color! This makes it so you create a color scheme which highlights your base color while matching each other!

In Closing

I hope you found this helpful. There is nothing that Color Science can do to replace your personal style, so if you don't like the colors that Adobe Color says are good, choose your own! It's your special day! This tool, however, is a great way of exploring your color scheme to give you some color ideas for your big day!

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The Palouse is home to breathtaking landscaping filled that attracts people from around the world to enjoy the nearly one-of-a-kind scenery. This blog post is designed to help you select a theme for your wedding in the Pullman / Moscow area!

Rustic

A rustic style wedding focuses on earth tones and take place in typically wooden structures like barns or cabins filled with warm incandescent light. The barns in the Palouse frequently appear in landscape art and a good location for receptions as it is a large open space to allow for seating of your guests.

While the choices for a wedding color palette is largely up to personal preference of the couple being married, I will suggest either an analogous theme that enhances the natural browns or a complementary color scheme that contrasts the wooden / rustic vibe of the venue.

For the analogous color scheme, I would focus on the colors of nature seen often in the Palouse: yellow, green, blue, and magenta.

For the complementary colors, I would recommend a split complementary color scheme of sage and sky blue.

If you’d like to play with color ideas for your wedding, I recommend on heading to color.adobe.com and experimenting. Simply put in your color your are designing around in the middle color of the wheel and you can select the color palette type you’d like to experiment with.

Twin Creeks Farms was a beautiful venue that I had the pleasure of shooting at this past weekend. If you are looking for wedding venues that are in the Palouse, check them out at: 

https://www.twincreeksfarmidaho.com/

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Kevin Armentrout Photography was with the Palouse River Rollers capturing their 2020 Team Photos!