Engagement photography sessions are your first photo contact with clients that just entrusted their wedding day to you. Make no mistake, even if they signed a contract with you, this is still a sort of interview. You can make them feel 100% confident in their decision to hire you, or make them regret it and potentially break the contract to look elsewhere. This year alone I had two clients book me when they previously booked another photographer, not even caring about losing the deposit – it happens.
So how can you make sure that your engagement photography sessions run smoothly? Check out these three tips.
Make it Special
Above all else, your clients want to feel unique and special. I know it can be hard to do when you’re photographing 100 brides that year, but do your very best. Take in all of their ideas, smile tons and be personable. A lot of times that’s what a client remembers and cares about the most, how they felt, not necessarily how the pictures came out.
If I can give you a “don’t” for this section, it would be don’t talk about other weddings with your couple. Sure maybe past weddings if you think something will be inspirational for them. But, letting them know you have another engagement session 5 minutes after theirs, or worse, shooting two engagement sessions at the same time (yes, it’s happened), just isn’t cool.
Bring Light
We bring our own light for weddings, so why not do the same for engagement photography sessions? Until this past year, I was shooting engagement sessions alone without someone to hold a reflector or some OCF. Now, I bring assistants to every shoot possible and my pictures are 100x better. Plus, my clients feel more special and my photos have more credibility in their eyes with more of a production made out of the session.
Be Prompt
Aside from never arriving late for a session, do your best with the delivery of the files as well. I will caution that you should be overly prompt, however, because then that could set unspoken expectations for the delivery of the wedding photos as well (which naturally take more time). I tend to go with the under-promise, over-deliver rule and tell them it’ll be about 4 weeks for proofs, and then deliver them in.
For a behind-the-scenes look at what an engagement photography session looks like, check out this Adorama TV episode of Breathe Your Passion:
