This comes up at every meeting, usually near the end, usually slightly embarrassed. It is a good question and the answer is duller than people expect.
Wear what you can move in
We will be walking and talking for most of the twenty minutes. Standing still is where people begin to look stiff, so I keep you moving — and that means whatever you are wearing needs to survive a field, a staircase or a cobbled street.
If a strap needs adjusting every ninety seconds, you will spend the session thinking about the strap. It shows.
On engagement shoots
Most couples do not have one and do not need one. The exception is worth naming: if being photographed genuinely makes you anxious, an hour together beforehand is the single most useful thing you can do. Not because you learn to pose — you will not be posing — but because on the day I am no longer a stranger with a camera.
Almost nobody is comfortable being photographed, and nobody needs to be.
Two practical things
Bring shoes you can walk in and change into them without apology; nobody photographs your feet. And eat something before the portraits. Every couple I have photographed at seven in the evening on nothing but canapés has told me afterwards they wished they had.
