D-I-Y engagement photos: part 1 of 3 — ed levin park, california

I’m back from sunny California with sets of photos I couldn’t wait to show you — our very own engagement session!

For my pocket’s sake, I never considered engagement photos.  Not until my inner frugalista decided it would be a great DIY project to tackle on this blog.   Yes, believe it or not, all these quasi-pseudo-professional-ish photos shown here were taken by us, the way self-portraits are best taken: with a seemingly ordinary pocket-size digital camera on a tripod.  And, well, without denial, a lot of post-processing.

I admit, it was a wee bit of an exhaustive ordeal to acquire these shots.  First, the convincing.  When I broached the subject of taking our own engagement photos (and I had never once broached the subject of wanting any engagement photos to begin with), O.T. thought my DIY streak was out of control.  I understand, there are certain things left to professionals.  When I told him how much wedding photographers cost, he happily conceded.

As I talked (and talked) about all the DIY details, such as props and shots I planned for these DIY photos, he became more excited (he’s a fantastic listener, can you tell?).  I talk. He listens.  It’s perfect.  We are on the same page.

He, in fact, conjured up a lot of the frames and I gave no resistance (as much to his credit as mine).  He truly has a lot of creative input and, yes, I do my share of listening, too!

I will talk more about the inspiration to undertake this project and the behind-the-scenes details including a photo editing tutorial, but I will wait until part 3 of this three-part series (I did mention exhaustive ordeal, didn’t I?).

We took these shots on the magnificent hills of Ed Levin County Park in Milpitas, California.  We had visited this park two years ago, taken some beautiful shots during our hike, and were familiar with the scenery.  In fact, when I decided we would do our own engagement session, my first and only thought was Ed Levin.

We made sure to come in the late afternoon when the sun was low.  We arrived at 6:00 pm and fumbled along as we posed shot after shot.  After much fumbling and retakes, we had well over 200 shots, during which time the sun had waned in the distance.

There were brief moments of frustration (entirely due to our inadequate understanding of photography and light, and consequential thump of reality that this stuff isn’t as easy as we thought), but we had much more fun than we ever imagined.  So much so that we decided to take more pictures later that weekend, in a different scene — the vineyards — with different props.  Up next: DIY engagement photos part 2 of 3: Napa Valley, California.  Stay tuned!!

I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed taking them!  Feel free to click on each set to zoom in for a larger resolution.  If you missed our fateful love story and the wonderful way he proposed, you can find that right here.