Today let me share with you the pre-wedding photoshoot that I did for my brother-in-law. Getting married these days has been a challenge for a lot of people. My brother-in-law told us that they wanted to get married this year and everyone knew how difficult it would be to get married these days. My mother-in-law even told them to move the wedding next year. Still, they wanted to push the wedding and as a family, we had to support them.
My brother in law named John is very close to me and he asked me for a favor one day. Since their budget for their wedding is not a lot he asked me if I could do the pre-wedding photoshoot. He knew how much I love photography and figured that I could do it. Pre-wedding photoshoot here in the Philippines roughly costs around 55,000 to 120,000 pesos ($1,130 - $2,470) that is a lot of money here in our country.
I was hesitant because I am not a professional and have never done a photoshoot. I mainly do street photography, church architecture and other stuff that strikes my interest.
If you want to have a look at some of my works feel free to check the link below.
Take Me to Church "Daraga Church"
Anyway, I could not refuse John and he asked me, "How much?"
I said, "Don't be silly just pay for my gas and feed us."
We laughed together after that conversation.
Also, I had one term before I agree. We need to do the photoshoot away from the city, away from as many people as possible for our safety.
Since his spouse to be was originally from the province. I suggested we do a Philippine theme. They were both excited about it and I asked them to provide costumes and props for the shoot.
I asked John to look for a location months before the shoot. I said I wanted green rice fields, a Bahay Kubo (Philippine Hut) and a river.
The location they found was great but the problem is the weather was not good that day. The skies were a bit dark and it was drizzling. But still, we need to push thru it.
I was bad at giving instructions with the poses that they needed to do. As I mentioned this is my first time I was doing a photo shoot. Good thing my daughter had a lot of suggestions as teens these days have a lot of ideas.
The bouquet above is made from wildflowers that she picked up along the way. She made it into a prop for the shoot. I guess my daughter is already way ahead of me.
Getting to this area was very difficult as it was very muddy. We had to take off our slippers as your feet would sink in the mud as you follow the trail. I will share the video of our ordeal and how we made the video at the end.
Here you would notice that the skies are dark and it was around 3:00 in the afternoon. I had to adjust the brightness of the photo.
There are a lot of trees in this area and originally I wanted to shoot along the trees with the sun shining thru.
We just settled for a picnic scene near the pond. John bought the fruits as props and there shouldn't be grapes in it and as we were aiming to use local fruits. Anyway, no one noticed it.
In this shoot, we noticed how much these two are in love. Always laughing together and you would know that their life together would be beautiful. Our family would grow larger now and more fun for all of us.
The costume design is like the traditional farming attire in the Philippines. For men long-sleeved shirt to protect themselves from the sun, trousers that are folded up to the knees and also includes the traditional hat called the "Salakot". For the ladies, the dress is similar to what women wore in the old days. The dress can be seen in some popular Filipino paintings with a farming theme.
One of the locations I wanted includes a Philippine hut called "Bahay Kubo." We saw this hut along the way and looks good in the shoot. The problem was, no one was home to ask permission. We looked for neighbors which were like 2-3 blocks away. We found someone who knew the owner and said that it was ok to take photos. He said that the owner wouldn't mind since we were only doing a photoshoot.
Here we tried to make a scene of coming home from a harvest but since the two joked about it. It seemed to have looked like coming home from selling fruits.
John jokingly said, "How come you were not able to sell all the fruits?"
Aileen replied, "Then sell them yourself."
We then all laughed at the exchange of words.
We were lucky there were vegetables planted on the side of the hut which added another scenario for the video that we were making. We tried to make it looks like as they were harvesting vegetables. This was the cheesiest part of the video prenup that we made. It includes glances at each other, you can check the video and wait for this scenario.
It was almost dark and we needed to call it a day. We still had two more locations to complete the shoot. We covered a lot on this day and I was pleased with the results.
Thank you for spending a little time with me today to share with you my work and a little bit of our culture.
Below is the video of our ordeal on how we did the shoot. How muddy the trail was and the fun that we had. On the video, if you would also see the final product of our prenup video which starts at 12:30.
Thanks again and I would love to hear from you. I have still so much to learn in photography and I would welcome all constructive criticisms.
All photos are original and taken with
Lumix GX85 and Olympus 45mm f1.8
Lumix GX85 and Olympus 45mm f1.8