Secret Swimming Hole, Catskills, NY

On paper, an engagement session might look like a simple prelude to the wedding day: a warm-up, a chance to get comfortable in front of the camera. But in my eyes, it’s something much greater than that. It’s an invitation to slow down. To make something beautiful and meaningful simply for the sake of it. To celebrate the quiet, everyday magic of your love somewhere between the magic and the mundane.

When I photograph engagement sessions, I photograph almost exclusively on film. There’s something sacred about the pace it requires no instant previews, no pressure to “get the shot” and move on. Just presence. Just noticing. It’s my favorite way of building trust with my couples: through quiet, intentional time spent together, where the focus is never on perfection, but on connection.

I always encourage couples to choose a location that feels like them. Sometimes that means a secret swimming hole in the Catskills, where mossy stones and dappled sun become part of the story. Sometimes it’s a snowy walk through the woods in Vermont, skipping stones together on the coast of Maine only accesibly by ferry, or reading together on the floor of your apartment in the city. I’m still yearning to photograph love in the Arizona desert, namely Tucson, après-ski in Aspen, CO or Jackson, WY, and in the small in-between spaces of wherever home is to you.

My approach is gentle. We walk, we pause, we talk. We let the wind do its thing. We honor the light. We will probably stop for a coffee or a drink or even by my house to spend time in my garden. The moments we capture aren’t posed, they’re lived. I’ll offer guidance when it’s needed, but mostly, I’m paying attention. To your gestures, your laughter, the way you hold each other without thinking, to the way you listen to one another, the way you touch and the way you play.

This is what I love most about working with film: it slows everything down. There’s no rushing a photograph into existence. It asks us to trust in the moment, in the process, in the beauty of the ordinary. The result is a collection of images that feel honest, tactile, and timeless. Photographs that don’t just document your relationship, but feel like it.

If you’re dreaming of an engagement session that’s rooted in something real: slow mornings, meaningful places, bare feet, quiet hikes, hot coffee, unbrushed hair, I’d love to create with you.

You can reach out here to begin planning your session, whether it’s in the Catskills, Vermont, the desert, or the comfort of your own home.

Let’s make something tender together.