Photo Shoot

On Memorial Day, Dan and I had our engagement "photo shoot" with our wedding photographer. She hadn't met Dan yet and vice-versa, so this was a good time to meet up. Her name is Renata, she is originally from Czechoslovakia and lives in Silver Lake with her husband and their young son. They're both photographers - and they have a very unique style which we love.

So we met at Kemper Center at aroun 10:00am on Memorial Day - which turned out to be the perfect location. For those of you who don't know what Kemper Center is, it is very rich in local Kenosha history. The grounds are right on Lake Michigan and there is a ton of greenery and the buildings are a great backdrop. It's an old girl's school and is rumored to be haunted - ooh! - by nuns! It's a neat story/urban legend...check here for the scoop.

Anyway...onto our photo shoot. Now, I watch a lot of America's Next Top Model with Tyra Banks. I've seen every season - and thanks to VH1 marathons, probably two or three times. Tyra is a great coach to the model wannabes, and I think her advice can be carried over to just about anyone getting their picture taken.

Some of her main tips are:

1) Smile with your eyes: sometimes we don't want to show off a huge mouth of teeth, but we still want to appear as though we are smiling and happy....which leads me to her next tip...

2) Keep the face pretty: Tyra often has the contestants doing something in motion or some aerodynamic stunt, and if you're not careful, you can end up with a scowl or some other fierce expression (although fierce can work...if you're going for those edgy or editorial shots)

3) Find the light: This is very basic, we all need to work our angles and highlight our best features. What makes this so hard is that we don't always know what our best side is.

Now, I muttered a lot of this to Dan during the photo shoot - just to keep it fun. "Dan, find the light," and "Honey, smile with your eyes." I'm sure all of those shots were we are giggling are those moments. I didn't keep the face so pretty in all of those!

Allright...here's some of our best work!

We started out with a walk - and Dan did his best George W. Bush impression. Do you ever notice how GW points at everything - it must be a presidential thing?

Now, here are the true candidates. We're not sure which one we like the best - what do you think?