What do you do when you’re bored, hate the cold, have a tight timeline and need a photo challenge? Shoot your own engagement photos obviously :D

When Devon and I got engaged, I already knew I’d be a 1.5 year engagement person because really 12 months is just not enough time to plan a wedding without wanting to lose your mind.  Well it’s been almost two years but we’re getting there haha. Coincidentally, the April wedding date will be exactly 2 years. Totally not planned and I didn’t even know until my friend Ana pointed it out. She’s very good with dates and I get her birthday wrong every other year LOL (luckily she’s also very forgiving). So why the selfie engagement session? Why didn’t we just hire a professional photographer? Well it kind of started off as a joke about shooting our own wedding and engagement so I figured why not! I was also kind of bored and was looking for a photo challenge anyway (NOTE: The wedding photos will not be selfies. Ain’t nobody got time for that!).  It was also because we literally had one day that we could do this before it got cold as we knew our opposite working and upcoming travel schedules would take us into late November. I’m just not made for the cold :( and there was no way in hell I’d be outside for these in the winter haha. The conversation went a little something like this:

“What, summer’s over?! WHEN? HOW? Damn, it’s cold already. K let’s do this. But the only time we have is this weekend. Good enough!….IT BETTER NOT BE COLD AND RAINY! (shaking fist)”

And so we were off to Tobermory up in Bruce Peninsula, the first place we went camping together. To be honest, I was kind of looking forward to being on the other side of the camera for once and having someone else tell me what to do but this was super fun and challenging. It was a great exercise in timing, posing, composition and seeing how much suspense I could handle as I watched, in what seemed to be slow motion, kids running by my tripod and $5000 camera setup…Everyone survived. I had also considered doing some aerial drone shots but considering the wind that day, it was probably a good thing that I didn’t. Maybe I should write a How-To post about taking selfies and your own engagement photos :D

It was pretty cold by the end and there were still tons of people but we did it! Overall I’d say the shoot was a success! I wasn’t concerned about fancy props, intricate lighting and all the things that sometimes overpowers the subject in a photo. All I wanted was at least three good shots and I’m happy with what we got. Even more important was the experience. We had so much fun doing these and spending the day hiking at one of our favourite spots, it made these images that much more special.  I have to say a big thank you to my fiancé Devon for being so patient and understanding with my often random photography ideas and adventures. It helps that he’s a photographer too but on this trip I made him do a lot of jumping on pointy rocks in his fancy shoes and none of them turned out haha.

I can’t wait for April 26th, 2017 :) You’re bringing a selfie stick right? ❤

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Stay tuned for the bloopers… :)