Hear me out.
You don’t need a mountaintop or a golden field of wildflowers at sunset to make engagement photos that matter.
You just need you and your space. The place where you binge-watch true-crime documentaries together. Where the dishes pile up on hectic weeks. Where your pets sleep in your bed and your epic vinyl collection lives. Where your real life unfolds in all its messy, loud, everyday glory.
That’s where the magic lives.
Engagement photos at home just hit different. Because they’re not about proving anything. They’re about remembering everything.
Your home already tells your love story
That spot on the couch where your partner always falls asleep holding the remote in the middle of the movie? Your kitchen that doubles as a dance floor on Sunday mornings? The porch where you sat until 2am talking about your dreams together?
That’s your origin story.
When we make your photos at home, we’re not staging a fantasy. We’re telling your true love story. I get to be in your world and see how you exist together when no one is watching. That’s the good stuff. That’s what I want to photograph.
You don’t have to perform
No one is watching or directing. No one sees what you’re wearing or your hair or whether you have matching throw pillows. You can wear your pajamas or your favorite National Park t-shirt. You don’t have to wear shoes. You can just be.
Being photographed can feel weird. Weirdly vulnerable, weirdly powerful, weirdly intimate. Making photos in your own space helps you relax. You’re not in public feeling like you’re performing for a bunch of strangers. You’re home.
You can make coffee, play with your pets, sit on the floor and play Nintendo Switch. This is the part of your relationship that’s usually invisible. Let’s tell that story.
It’s the only place that’s already yours
Everywhere else you could make engagement photos is a shared space. It belongs to strangers too. Your home is the one place that’s just for you.
So many folks tell me they want their photos to feel like them. Not like something copied from a Pinterest board or a cliche created by an influencer. The best way to do that is to start in the one place that’s built around who you are. Your space, filled with your memories and weird art on the walls.
You don’t need to fill out permit applications online and pay site fees for the perfect location. You’re already living in one.
One day it will all change
You might move. The couch with all the fur on it will get replaced. You’ll repaint the kitchen. Life changes. That’s why this is important.
Home photo sessions are love letters to the version of your life that you’re living right now. A few years from now, you’ll look back at the photos and feel a sense of nostalgia and gratitude that you thought to record these memories.
So that’s my pitch. Make (at least some of) your engagement photos at home. Invite me over to hang out with my cameras. Introduce me to your pets (pretty please). These are the days you want to remember as long as you can.
The best love stories don’t need backdrops or props. They just need you and your person and your world.
Let’s make something quiet and loud and deeply personal. Let’s make art about you.
PS: You can read more of my musings about engagement photography, and more interestingly, see more examples of engagement photos if you visit my engagement photography portfolio. And to see lots of engagement photo session blog posts, just click on the tags in the footer below or use this link.
