"You get what you pay for..." - Engagement Photos

After our engagement photo shoot I could hear my dad's voice yelling at me - "You get what you pay for, Sara!" Never have I believed him more than I do now.

We thought we would save some money and find an "amateur" photographer on Craigslist to shoot our engagement photo. I responded to several ads in hopes of having my pick of the litter. Unfortunately only a couple photographers responded and only one agreed to give me the raw photos, unedited. (I prefer to edit them on my own.) So we went with him - "Ronnie Renaldi." In this age of digital photography, it seemed likely that the photo quality was guaranteed - we only would need some direction on how to pose...

"Ronnie" and I only corresponded through email. He, unlike the travel agent, refused to talk on the phone. I assumed this was an indication of his age - little did we expect or know it had far more to do with his fluency in English! :\ We were initially going to meet last Sunday evening but the weather was not cooperating so we chose to postpone a week, until today. I had asked that Ronnie choose a contemporary city setting. We hoped to not only have engagement photos but a souvenir to take with us when we move away from Denver. I was thrilled when we suggested an architecturally modern bridge overlooking the city! It sounded like the perfect spot.

When we get to our meeting spot, I was naturally looking for an Italian looking young man with camera cases... with a name like Renaldi. Up walks "Ronnie" - young man and camera cases, only not Italian. Asian maybe? His accent was so strong that he pronounced my name as "Sad-uh." Ok. No biggie. Kory and I are not even slightly racist. In fact, one of our closest friends happens to be Chinese. The only reason we were surprised was because of the last name which we later concluded must be a pseudonym and his strong accent obviously the reason he preferred to avoid phone calls.

So we start the shoot. The setting is really as amazing as it sounds. The bridge is looking slightly down at the glowing city scape. The sun is setting. We start in a little secluded corner or the bridge to avoid the crowds of people. "Ronnie" just starts snapping away. He stops. I ask, "What would you like us to do now?" We managed to understand, "Go over there and do the same thing." He points to another place on the bridge. Ok... but what were we doing? This is how the entire photoshoot went - us guessing what we had done before that he seemed to like. We were clueless. A couple of times he told me I was too stiff, but really, other than that, nothing - NO direction whatsoever! Luckily Kory and I managed to have a great time! He would tell us to kiss and hold it... so we would stand there for several minutes lip locked obviously longer than he desired, until he would finally yell, "OooK!" haha! He showed us a couple of photos that he'd taken. From what we saw of the "good ones", they were all terrible. The worst part - We're standing awkwardly staring at one another or at the camera with the most beautiful background. So much lost potential!

Oh well... as my dad always says, "You get what you pay for!" Hopefully we'll get at least 1 non-kissing photo worth putting on our save the dates... if so, it's money well spent! :)