What to Expect
1. Approach
- Whether it’s an engagement session or a honeymoon session, these are generally more casual than weddings and elopements, but our approach is the same. Let’s get to know each other.
2. Preparing
- Fairly simple step, as these sessions are pretty casual there isn’t much to prepare in terms of the outfit, props, or other vendors.
3. After The Session
- Usually we try to expedite the photos for the engagement session couples so that you can use those photos for the wedding in some way. If it is honeymoon photos, I try to deliver them when you are settled into your married life.
4. Storybook
- We always recommend them, but there are so many other ways to tell the story and it is definitely something to discuss later.
Approach
Depending on whether it’s the engagement session or the honeymoon session the approach can be slightly different.
Selecting a Session Location
Engagement Session: We will try to choose a location that means something to you.
Honeymoon Session: It’s about including the travel part, so we will try to include the well known sites in the city of the session.
Proposal
Based on your inquiry, I’ll curate three proposals. The propsosals will probably vary by the locations. There aren’t much differences in packages, so it is more about the location, time for the session and everything will be a la carte.
Preparing
Ask lots of questions, write everything down and a lot of planning
Contracts & Retainer
Once one of the proposals is decided, we sign the contract, I send another questionnaire for more details and ask for a 1/3 non-refundable retainer.
Engagement or Pre-Wedding Session
This is a great way to get to know each other and also, even though engagement session is quite different to the wedding, you can see how I work.
If you are a camera shy, this is also a great practice as well and see how I make you feel more comfortable in front of the camera.
Honeymoon Session
As you will not have much to plan for this, as you were probably busy planning for the wedding, if there’s anything I could help, I would love to.
Let's have fun.
After The Session
A lot of these steps would not involve you, but it is important to know what happens in the background and why sometimes it takes over a month to edit the photos.
Safe
Camera, SD Cards, External Hard Drives, all these have potential to fail at any point. Therefore we have backups. We bring at least two, sometime three cameras, just in case one malfunctions in the middle of the session. When we photograph, there are two SD Cards in each and every camera, so two of the same images are created and saved in case one malfunctions. (Chances of two malfunctions at the same time is very very low)
After the wedding, before we leave the venue (probably in the car), we make a copy to an external hard drive creating a third copy. Once we get to our office, I copy those photographs to two other hard drives, one working hard drive and one back-up. Then the back-up hard drive is also backed up on to the cloud, creating a total of 6 copies of each and every image. So even if there’s a fire at our office, the files are safe. To let you know the photographs are safe, we usually send sneak peeks within 24 hours from the wedding.
Edit
The whole process of editing and completing the photos usually takes around 6 weeks from the session. This time frames vary on how busy we are.
Storybook
One of the main reasons to photograph is to tell the story, but often for these sessions are either the continuation of another story, so it is possible to combine them or make a more casual storybook.
Album Design
We offer a variety of types of albums for your needs as you can may want different vibes for these albums to compare to your wedding album.
Meet-Up
If we can meet in person, I will probably invite you to our office to go over the photos and show you the album design. If we cannot, we will do all this over the zoom call.
