Wow, as an engagement photographer, we love when couples find awesome and unique locations for their engagement sessions! This was certainly the case for Mary and Oleg who had their engagement shoot last week at Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California. If you haven’t been there during the holiday season, you need to go! It is absolutely gorgeous.
Their shoot was not without its challenges though. Initially the engagement session was supposed to happen in Union Square in San Francisco. That way we could incorporate the holiday light Christmas vibe into their photos. However, with the San Francisco Bay Area and California in lockdown, we weren’t sure if downtown was the best choice. In a pre-engagement meeting to discuss alternatives, Mary expressed that Filoli was her dream engagement shoot location. We looked it up online and knew this was the place. She definitely got her holiday vibe and ‘under the stars’ theme here!
Filoli is a pretty popular tourist destination with its a beautiful lights. Even so, the venue did a great job ensuring their visitors were able to maintain a good distance. In a heavily trafficked place like this its always hard to get shots without people walking through the shots. Luckily, wed did the shoot on a Wednesday. Because it was a weekday, there was not much of a crowd. That’s a tip for engagement shoots. Choose a weekday if you want to avoid the crowds getting into your pictures!
As an engagement photographer that shoots several of these sessions per month, this was a great opportunity to try something different the norm. We do most of our shoots in the daylight so doing a session in the dark was new for us. It required some special planning and research for the proper lighting. Mary is also a fashion designer and a creative soul, so working with her on the poses and feeding off each others ideas was a blast. Plus, Filoli has so many great setups for photos. It includes trees with lights, old cars, a fancy sofa chair, and even a body of water to pose next to.
Stay tuned next year for Mary and Oleg’s wedding in September 2021! And if you want to stay up to keep up with all our engagement photoshoots, check out our engagement blogs.
