WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The second couple seem to be closer to each other's size/height. Thinking about it that way, it's a pretty awkward position.

i know this because my wife and i reenacted a mumford & sons music video for our engagement shoot

lol j/k

wedding photographers include the "engagement shoot" as a part of the whole wedding package, it is a way for them to make some more $$

thanks for answering my question; was wondering wtf purpose of these is

what do couples think is the purpose; how do they use these photos? put up on a website? shared on Facebook? saved for future children’s parent-mocking?

to me seems like some horribly humiliating frat hazing initiation but into marriage

I became fb friends with our photographer. As far as I can tell, she has been skiing at awesome places all winter. So I think I'll switch careers using the knowledge gained itt.

Jeff and I got engagement photos taken despite being very much not what one would consider the engagement photos type because we'd never done anything like that before and I thought it would be a good excuse for it (Jeff remained opposed to it but went along anyway because he's a good sport) and then we could give photos to our families, who were always hassling us about it. We got a real professional wedding photographer who was also a friend of a friend and did it on the cheap (we didn't have a wedding photographer at all, but we had a very low key wedding).

They are arguably not very creative (on the shores of Lake Michigan with the Chicago skyline in the background! So original!) but I like them a lot and still have one framed in our living room and an outtake at work because it's hilarious.

If I had it to do all over again, we might have gone for the haystack setting, though.

imo it probably comes from the pre-internet tradition of running an engagement announcement (typically accompanied by a photo) in your local newspaper.

the advent of internet + social media + digital photography has changed it in to something else

?

the nytimes still does wedding/engagement announcements (lower left at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/weddings/index.html) and they are totally a vanity thing. A friend's engagement was listed and it was completely because his wife's parents were very into token status things.

what do couples think is the purpose; how do they use these photos? put up on a website? shared on Facebook? saved for future children’s parent-mocking?

"shared on Facebook" is about all the explanation this needs IMO. Presumably the photographers talk up this angle to their clients, but I doubt most need that much convincing. It lets them post something NOW, get beaucoups of likes and comments and build the brand of their wedding months in advance of the wedding shots.

I also suspect wedding photos themselves feel less personal or meaningful in 2015 than years ago when you only saw the wedding albums of people you actually gave a shit about (well, and coworkers and such) and so it was kinda rare to see images of tuxes and white gowns in front of green grass or whatever. Sorta like baby pictures. Now virtually every day I'm brushing past the wedding or baby photos of someone I don't know very well on Facebook. I could imagine couples having some (not necessarily articulated or voiced) desire to have something that feels more "casual" or "like us" or with "real reactions" to each other and/or some quirky scenario. Something with "personality" - which is tough to do in the wedding shots unless you do a theme wedding (something still way out on the fringe).

every wedding is a theme wedding, in a way

ours was drunkenness

http://greenweddingshoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/chocolate-engagement-party-09.jpg

I would like to think the groom was looking at a print of that picture of the bride

PiP typically used to show another thing at the same time

Couples can also submit their photos to magazines like this one: http://engagedri.com/category/engagements/ for some nifty pub.

also some half-baked theory abt the secularization of middle class american culture/ 15min of fame/ capitalism making ppl consumers of everything (even when what was once tradition)

idk

I haven't been to a "cool" wedding but of friends-of-friends who had one, they had much less cool divorces

I could imagine couples having some (not necessarily articulated or voiced) desire to have something that feels more "casual" or "like us" or with "real reactions" to each other and/or some quirky scenario. Something with "personality" - which is tough to do in the wedding shots unless you do a theme wedding (something still way out on the fringe).

that makes sense. also gr8080’s social explanation: it’s a public statement/ performance not just for family but larger community, which (for many) is now expected.
photogs & couples imitate the look and tropes of on-trend engagement photos, some also (ostensibly) try to stake out some uniqueness/ originality/ authenticity.
also maybe the personal family “photo album” with candid pictures has lost its aura— world inundated with e.g. stream of flickr/ Facebook images; hence need for patina of “professional” photography to mark out these photographs (and what they commemorate) as special, as an “event”

(imo the professional sheen just flattens & drains the photographs of any aura-- makes most look like stock photography)

anyway, the props

http://www.theochoink.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/IMG_7473.jpg
http://stylesbyanndiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/13-SF-Bay-Area-Engagement-Session-Photography.jpg

(imo the professional sheen just flattens & drains the photographs of any aura-- makes most look like stock photography)

This is also because a lot of the photographers aren't very good though! Like very little of what's been posted in this thread really seems like it's done by photographers who (a) know their shit and (b) care about getting good photos out of their subjects (c) have the slightest idea how to do that. Not to say any of that would make them immune to photography zeitgeist and trends and so on, or that you could even really avoid that if you tried - - - most wedding photographs from the 70s (or 80s, or 90s) kinda look alike, cause of different film stock and hairstyles and so on. That can't be helped, but a good photographer should know when they're looking through the lens and seeing something awkward, stagey, inadvertently loveless, or otherwise worthy of this thread.

I know a married photographer couple in Columbus who do really solid engagement and wedding work, I think because #1 they take their craft as photographers pretty seriously and #2 they seem to actually like the couples and want them to look good.

This is also because a lot of the photographers aren't very good though! Like very little of what's been posted in this thread really seems like it's done by photographers who (a) know their shit and (b) care about getting good photos out of their subjects (c) have the slightest idea how to do that.

True! Takes great skill & sensibility to be a good portrait photographer.

Yet I think something about the genre itself (at least current incarnation of it) is intrinsically... pitfally. But this may be my (photographic & psychological) biases talking.

Soon-to-be married couples are generally pretty awkward anyway. It crosses the line when somehow the photographer emphasizes that awkwardness.

I mean, of all the goofy shit that's been posted here, I think this thread still could be summed up by this one gr8080 posted four years ago.

http://i.imgur.com/Ow1M7cC.jpg

I mean, why why why did the photographer make those people do that?

xpost Sure - for one thing, the whole impulse ("our engagement is different from all the other engagements") is fallacious, and so there are any number of ways that the photos can founder. But this is true of lots of "special" events that are only special because they're happening to you or your friends/family. Maybe what's changed is just the quantity/visibility of strangers' images; realizing just how many billions of beardos are doing the same woodland authenticity photos as you are surely has to make it harder to pull off the affect without the photos collapsing into self-awareness and/or irony.

I mean lawd…

http://i.imgur.com/2Kkdgvc.jpg

photography is so weird, you can get the lights and exposure and shutter time right, but if you're taking pictures of people, you have to have an entirely different skillset

my friend (an architect) helped this dude who is a professional architecture photographer one time and it's amazing what you can do with technique. however, the same photographer also does portraits of people who work for the studios, and I kid you not, the people end up looking like buildings

i could 100% believe that - - - over the past half-decade i've shifted to mainly shooting architecture, from primarily doing friendly people-pictures and candids and i've lost a whole set of skills related to the latter, even as i've improved as "a photographer" generically.

did I admit on another thread that I had yr building pics as the screensaver on my appletv for a while? good stuff

I mean, why why why did the photographer make those people do that?

Yeah that’s… unfortunate.

Problem with the genre is, what is it a photograph “of”? At least wedding pictures document and commemorate an event. Engagement photos aim to represent, what… a couple’s “love” for each other? A symbolic representation of their commitment?

It’s so hard to do that without falling into awkwardness, staginess, cliche.

In a way it’s safer to half-ironically play on pop culture motifs than— have them look into each other’s eyes.

a picture of the young couple filing a joint tax return

or rolling a joint

now that's more like it

taking their first tax return and spending it all on one really big joint, which they light using a mini cooper that's caught fire

I'm all about the story a picture tells

this one couple's epic engagement night

or one year anniversary i guess

reposting this from upthread 5years ago

http://i.imgur.com/nRZMYVw.png

I hope that is their actual wedding

god

pipe dreams really do come true

i went to high school with that dude & yes it was his actual wedding

that makes me really happy

u got more pictures from that wedding?

i don't think so, lost to the sands of myspace

so are the days of our lives

a friend of mine had a photography sideline for a while...everything was suuuper processed and filters up the wazoo but what was striking was how even when they were people i knew, mutual friends we both hung out with & knew well even, everyone looked so stiff & awkward! i swear every shot looked like those bad stock photos they put in cheap wallets
it was kind of a bummer

when the people get a little older all the couples photos look like big pharma ads

the mini cooper 1, not that it makes any sense, is kinda cool. idk id pay 2 be in a greg crewsdon photo prob

mh, i do recall you saying something like that and feeling very flattered/bashful - thanks again though, for real! I gotta get back into a regular posting groove.

Your Flickr is all-time, Dr Casino. I believe that means "very good".

http://i.imgur.com/DlpVSlQ.jpg

^^ dude is stoned and proposed via video game, a+

proposals

nadam had em