Couples & Engagements

Navarre Beach Engagement Photographer

From the proposal to the ring, photographed in the light people fly here for.

Surprise proposals

If you are planning to propose, I will be somewhere on the beach looking like a person taking pictures of the sunset, and she will have no idea.

We work out the details ahead of time. Where you will walk, roughly what time you will arrive, what you will be wearing so I can pick you out, and a signal if plans change. I get there early and find my position.

The moment itself takes about fifteen seconds. After that we take another twenty minutes or so of the two of you, because the photographs immediately afterward, when neither of you can stop smiling, are usually the best ones of the day.

One piece of advice from having done this a number of times: do not schedule it for the exact minute of sunset. Give yourself a buffer of twenty minutes, because you will be nervous and you will be early or late.

Engagement sessions

An engagement session is mostly practice. Most couples have never been photographed together on purpose, and the point of an hour on the beach is that by the time your wedding comes around you already know what it feels like.

I direct rather than pose. I will give you something to do, walking, talking, telling each other something, and then photograph what happens. Standing still and looking at a camera is the hardest thing to make look natural and I mostly avoid asking for it.

These work beautifully for save the dates, and they also stand on their own if a wedding is not in the plan.

Couples who are not engaged at all

Some of my favorite couples sessions have nothing to do with a wedding. Anniversaries, a first trip somewhere together after a hard year, twenty five years in, or simply the realisation that every photograph of the two of you is a selfie.

You do not need an occasion. If you have been together twenty three years and have never had a proper photograph made, that is reason enough.

Where and when

Sand Dollar Pavilion for open sand and clean horizons, the dunes and sea oats just east of it, or the pier if you want structure in the frame. The Sound on the north side of the island gives you calm water and a completely different feel.

Golden hour, the hour before sunset, is the default. Sunrise is the alternative and the beach is genuinely empty then, which some couples prefer.

The water here turns that famous green in late spring and stays through the summer. If the color of the Gulf matters to you, aim for May through September.

What you get

A one hour session, full direction so neither of you has to know what to do, and a gallery of edited images delivered digitally with a print release.

Sessions start at $325 with a $100 retainer. Details on the investment page.