Wir Sind Alle Freaks

Ian and Kate Engagement Shoot

A barista at the coffeeshop I attend all too often asked me the other day if I enjoyed doing engagement photos. She asked it with the kind of wariness much of my generation shares about sentimentality and the hollowness of tradition. Even this couple, who I just did these engagement photos for, were reluctant, after perusing Pinterest for days, to wind up forced into dumb sappy engagement photos. At the coffeeshop, I shrugged and said, “yeah, I guess.” I’m not sure I want to exclude all others, but I like it okay.

But then I’ll sit down for a few hours and I’ll work on my coffee after it’s gone cold and I’ll turn out a batch from a session like this one and I fall in love with the work all over again. No matter how many headaches or stresses, capturing a real moment, whether that’s between two people or just one person and the camera lens, translating an emotion through the lighting and the small ways faces move, that’s what I love. There’s a kind of sublimity in that, and it appeals to the inner Romantic in me, who’s always searching for the transcendent in the details.