Photographing Couples

Julie and Blake about to kiss

Julie and Blake kissing series

Been work­ing on pho­tograph­ing cou­ples the past few months. It’s more dif­fi­cult than I ini­tial­ly thought. You want to express love, but there are only so many ways one can do so with­out kiss­ing.

You’re no longer pho­tograph­ing an expres­sion, as with a sin­gle per­son por­trait, but an inter­ac­tion.

Julie and Blake hug

Julie and Blake hugging series

Having two peo­ple express them­selves in such a way can be tricky too. Many are too shy to kiss in pub­lic, let alone on cam­era.

When it works, though, it works. You can see it in their faces. The way their eyes shine. It’s almost like they lose them­selves, because they’re drown­ing in each oth­er, and noth­ing else in the world exists.

And, of course, best viewed large and on black. Click through for full size.

8 comments

  1. I love it when I can look at a pic­ture and see the unspo­ken devo­tion between two peo­ple. Its like every­one and every­thing around them does­n’t exist and all they are focused on is that par­tic­u­lar moment. What I would­n’t give to have some­one look at me like that.…*sigh*

  2. Sounds a bit of a sur­prise to me that peo­ple nowa­days are too shy to kiss in pub­lic, or on cam­era.

    Beautiful pic­tures, and beau­ti­ful cou­ple.

  3. ok,

    any­time you post about rela­tion­ships, kiss­ing, love, any of it, I swear I feel like I’m falling in love.

    There is some­thing about your posts of the sub­ject that I want to jump head­long and willy nil­ly into love. Just give myself into the the feel­ing of love and lov­ing.

    These pho­tos are so fan­tas­tic and so inti­mate. The first one best of all — I want to be kissed like that.

    I’ve for­got­ten what love is like, and how con­sum­ing and life giv­ing it is…sigh.…more pho­tos and posts like this!

  4. @Lucy — When we’re able to read two peo­ple in such a way, it’s as if they’re speak­ing with­out words. There’s noth­ing more inno­cent and pure.

    @Uncle Joe — Perhaps it’s just my friends, who act con­ser­v­a­tive­ly when we’re togeth­er. The only time I see them kiss is once a year, when the New Year’s count­down reach­es zero.

    It’s the cou­ple that makes the pic­tures. There’s only so much a pho­tog­ra­ph­er like me can do. The real beau­ty is in them.

    @Zaira — Recently, I’ve been feel­ing the same way; like I should dive head­first into love. Perhaps this is com­ing through in my writing/photos.

  5. I’m so in love with black and white now, I’m glad I took that class, some of my favourite pic­tures came out of it. I love your black and whites, espe­cial­ly the one where they’re both look­ing at the cam­era. So beau­ti­ful. You also have a very nice tone to your pic­tures… man I still need to get a flash.

  6. i love how he’s hold­ing her in the first b&w and how she was bit­ing his lip in an ear­li­er pho­to.

    I won­der, do you coach or talk to the peo­ple you take pic­tures of, as you cap­ture them?

  7. @Sophia — I find black and white to be dif­fi­cult to work with actu­al­ly. There’s so much to it, and no set of guide­lines I can fol­low for con­sis­tent results. It makes me want to take a black and white course. It terms of the even­ness of tone though, a flash does make a big dif­fer­ence.

    @loo — I gen­er­al­ly don’t coach peo­ple, because I pre­fer can­did shots. Occasionally, if some­one has absolute­ly no idea what to do, I’ll give them a bit of advice on how I want to see them, and hope­ful­ly they take it from there.

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