Eat, Drink, and Be Married

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Engagement Photos on the Amtrak to New Orleans

November 26th, 2010 by Melia

Before I had my own engagement photos taken, I’d thought they were kind of a cheesy prospect. I couldn’t really picture Darren and myself gazing longingly into each other’s eyes while wearing matching polo shirts. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Luckily for us, the motto of our photographers, Adam and Allison Hudson of Adam Hudson Photography, is “Despise the ordinary.” (I think “the cheesy” is included in “the ordinary.”) Their wedding photography avoids the kinds of stock shots where you can simply rotate in Couple B for Couple A. Each photo captures the unique personality and dynamic of a couple.

The Hudsons also include engagement photos in all of their wedding photography package, because it’s important for them to get to know a couple by photographing them before their wedding day.

And wouldn’t you know it — I’m happy that we have engagement photos. It’s nice to have professional photos of us where we’re in regular clothes instead of wedding garb. It’s even better to have photos that we helped art direct.

Adam and Allison are popular enough that they can afford to have the following policy: They do wedding photography only for couples that they would be friends with. They say that a disconnect between their style and the couple’s means that they can’t give the couple what they want.

Darren and I are lucky that they chose us as friends, because a) they’re super fun people, and b) our pictures turned out beautifully.

I nominate Darren for membership in the Handsome Men’s Club.

Given that our wedding has a travel theme, A+A had the brilliant suggestion to shoot the engagement photos on the Amtrak train from Jackson to New Orleans, and around New Orleans once we arrived. They thought that a “traveling through time” concept would loosely weave the photos together, and they brought props to bring it to life: old wooden suitcases, a black felt flapper hat, martini glasses, and a tea set.

Somehow, word of the Amtrak shoot got around to Marianne Todd, Publisher/Editor of Mississippi Weddings Magazine. She’d been planning to write a piece on romantic Amtrak trips for the December issue and asked if she could do an interview and photo spread on our shoot. We didn’t mind at all and connected with her by phone before the shoot, and by email after. The issue hasn’t come out yet, but Marianne said that the spread turned out great.

The staff of Amtrak, pleased that the company would be featured in the magazine, made special arrangements for the shoot. We had access to the Jackson train platform before the other passengers did, a discounted “family sleeper car” to shoot in, and entry to the dining car during times when it was normally closed.

On a temperate Saturday afternoon in October, Darren and I met Adam and Allison in the downtown Jackson train station, where we would be married in just a few months. We had 10 minutes to shoot on the train platform before the other passengers were able to enter. We got shots of Darren and me walking together, and of a freight train whizzing by.

When the train arrived, we boarded, got settled in our respective train cars, and ate lunch in the dining car before shooting for the rest of the three and a half hour trip to New Orleans. We made a few costume changes and played around with different scenarios: two businesspeople exchanging glances on the train, for example, and a couple on honeymoon. Adam and Allison posed us much of the time and battled the dim light and shaking corridors of the train.

Down in New Orleans, the four of us cabbed it to A+A’s hotel in the French Quarter. Darren and I changed into street clothes, and we trekked over to the French Market, which sells all manner of foods and trinkets. It was important to Darren and me to get shots of us at the farmer’s market, because so much of our lives center around fresh food. We also tried on hats and sunglasses, which was a blast until we were shooed away by the vendors who didn’t want us photographing their wares. We ate beignets laden with powdered sugar at the famous Café Du Monde and asked our server for paper hats to wear (see above).

I was really laughing in this photo, because Darren’s head is so big that hats tend to sit jauntily upon his head.

Darren and Adam both had the idea to shoot in Pirate’s Alley, a cobblestone alley near Jackson Square  that looks as if it could be in Italy or France. We sat and talked at one of the café tables decorated with a single flower in a vase.

At one point, I was so taken with the beautiful brick walls near Pirate’s Alley that I asked Adam to photograph us against it. He asked us to sit with our backs to it, and I happily obliged, until I saw Darren sitting inches away from it.

“It’s New Orleans,” he said. “People have probably peed all over these walls.” Ew. I’m sure he was right.

It was in front of that invisibly filthy brick wall that A+A asked us to do a series that they call “60 seconds,” where we make as many goofy faces as we can in 60 seconds. I felt pretty ridiculous doing this, but we did end up with some winning shots.

At around 6:30 that evening, we wrapped up the shoot, and Darren and I met up with our friends Katie, Josh, and Kaila. One paella dinner and countless crack biscuits later, we were back on the train to Jackson. We shot photos on the way back, too, making sure to capture anything we’d missed the first time around.

You can see two albums, with some overlap, on the Adam Hudson Photography blog and on the Facebook album of our shoot. I love how they turned out. Darren’s mom, Jill, emailed us to say, “Just two questions: are these photos for sale, and how soon can I get them??” The photo-ordering website will be up soon.

Which shots are your favorites?

Read more about Adam Hudson Photography in the Jackson Free Press.

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1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Darren Nov 27, 2010 at 1:31 am

    Adam & Allison really nailed these. Melia and I had dreamed up what we wanted, and the French Market and Pirate’s Alley shots in particular really expressed the food & travel vibe we wanted to project. All the shots turned out great.