Amber Wilkie Photography » Wedding and Portrait Photographer - Arlington, VA and Washington, DC

Category Archives: Portraits

Engagement Session FAQs

I get a lot of questions about engagement sessions.  My clients have often never been professionally photographed and are therefore understandably nervous about getting in front of the camera.  So I thought it might be helpful to answer a few FAQs for anyone considering an engagement session.

Why should we have an engagement session?

Obviously, engagement sessions mean different things to different people.  Some are specifically looking for an image to use for save-the-dates or want a big photo for their friends and family to sign at the wedding.  Other times, the motivation is a bit more subtle.

engagement session at glen echo park

My thinking about engagement sessions is that they are a way to capture how you really were before you got married.  On a wedding day, it can be hard to show life.  You’ve got a lot going on, it’s a huge day – a lot of emotion, family drama, etc. – and there’s a huge party going on.  An engagement session is a quiet, personal look into your lives pre-marriage.

View full post »

Tara & Dustin | National Mall engagement

Tara and Dustin go with the flow, and I love them for it. See I planned a lovely indoor, heated greenhouse session with just a tad of happy-couple-in-front-of-the-Capitol images. But when we showed up at the Botanical Gardens, it was absolutely packed to the gills with tourists… and so we had to improvise. Lucky for me, Tara and Dustin are extremely chill people, game for anything, so we just hung around the Mall and I showed them all my little secret spots and anything else we found along the way. The National Mall is a really cool place.

cute couple on the national mall

engagement photography at the u.s. botanic gardens

These two are outrageously cute.

capitol hill engagement photography

super cute couple laughing on the national mall

national mall engagement photography

engagement photographer Amber Wilkie

engagement session on the national mall

washington, dc engagement photography

Congratulations, guys! Rock on in Ohio!

View full post »

2011 | a pretty awesome year

It’s that time of year when photographers fluff up their blogs with “best of” posts and I’m not above that either! It’s been a wild and crazy year and as I’ve mentioned, I’m grateful for my fabulous clients who trust me to give them the images they hope for and to stay out of the way (with camera at the ready) when they’re trying to have a moment on their wedding day. I’m grateful to wedding photography community at large, which continues to impress me with its friendliness and lack of paranoia about competition, and to all the amazing photographers who have given me so many opportunities to learn and grow. And jeesh I could go on and on and on. It’s been a really, really good year.

View full post »