I am often asked by a future bride or groom: “How will I be able to smile non-stop for the entire photo shoot?  My face will hurt!”.  This is a legitimate concern, I have to say, when you have not gone through the experience yet…

A few weeks before their big day, Erin came to see me for a pre-wedding chat.  Among other things, she expressed her concern about how Lee, her husband to be, was not able to smile in front of a camera without feeling slightly unnatural and not quite himself.  My answer to her was: “Well…I can say to you now is that he will not have to worry about smiling at all”.  I knew she couldn’t understand exactly what I meant at the time, but she would understand soon.

Their wedding day unfolded beautifully.  We got to the point where I was left with just the two of them, so we started walking between beautiful vineyards towards a barn I had spotted earlier on.  I felt Lee was not very relaxed and was watching me, almost nervously anticipating the moment I was going to pick up my camera and…shoot.  I let him be, we kept on walking while having a fun conversation about some guests I happened to know.  While Lee started to laugh, I complimented him on how happy he looked and how great his smile was and suggested he take Erin by the hand and walk while whispering in each other’s ears, kissing, interacting the way they normally would…I slowly moved away from them and pulled out my telephoto lens.

At one point, I felt they almost forgot about me.  They got the space they needed to stop feeling ‘watched’ and things started to flow.  Later on, while looking at the photos, I thought to myself that nobody will ever know this man with such a great smile was ever concerned about bringing it out!

Photographing people is about bringing out the relaxed and playful side of them, sometimes in spite of some harsh conditions….Carly and Patrick will get married in September.  We decided to do a winter engagement shoot and incorporate some contrast into the story.  We waited for more snow to fall and we finally picked a Saturday….a very cold one!  Yet, while playing in the snow, they both forgot about their hands getting colder and colder and even said at the end: “This really brought back childhood memories of winter days, when we were always outside building snowmen and never feeling cold…we had so much fun today!”.  It’s true…we should all remember to let the child in us go out and play in the snow more often!

For more fun images, please visit www.manuelastefan.com.

Planning Elegance would like to thank Manuela Stefan for contirbuting this fun article about making photography fun and these beautiful portraits of her clients.  It’s important to keep in mind that you should relax and have fun at your wedding.