Trinity Bellwoods Engagement With Coffee & Board Games | Margaret and Vincent On A Typical Sunday In Their Lives
Margaret and Vincent’s story is such a sweet one.
We met ages ago, when I was having a free giveaway for an engagement session. It was probably back in 2019, and definitely before the pandemic.
I chatted with the couple on Skype (back in the day this is what we used, believe it or not! I cannot imagine a time before Zoom, but there you have it)…
We moved our engagement session date a couple of times, and they were forced to postpone their wedding multiple times, because of the pandemic 🥺
I remember just how gracious and kind they were, letting me know and apologizing if it caused me any difficulty. And checking in to see how my business was doing.
I was just happy that they were still planning on celebrating their love at some point, no matter in what capacity.
It was really wonderful that they kept in touch with me, and still wanted me as their photographer, despite all the lockdowns and restrictions, and the long time that had passed.
Last year, in 2021, which was supposed to be the day of their wedding (actually the second or third “official” wedding date!), we ended up doing an engagement session for them instead.
So yes… the wedding plans changed a lot, true, but they made the most out of it by turning their (third) “original” wedding day into an engagement session!
They were open to doing something really meaningful to them and quite different from your traditional “engagement session”. Which was music to my ears, because Quirky Love is all about authentic storytelling.
Now, I know that you find these words - “authentic storytelling” - on just about every photographer’s website these days…
But sometimes, to be quite frank, it’s just a plain lie.
It’s not authentic storytelling, if you’re orchestrating everything about the shoot. It simply isn’t.
It might look beautiful, and still have amazing meaning to a couple.
But if you want to get precise, then “authentic” is NOT what it is😜
Alright, getting off my soapbox now haha.
Let’s get on with Margaret and Vincent’s real, authentic story.
What can you do for your engagement session?
When we brainstormed things Margaret and Vincent could do for their engagement photos, a few things came to mind:
Making sourdough bread - something that Margaret does all the time, following a family recipe from her father
Walk to Trinity Bellwoods park, nearby
Board games on the front lawn
Getting dressed up fancy for dinner
These were all activities they enjoyed most weekends, so why not preserve some of these memories?
Well, all of this sounded splendid!
Firstly, there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to photograph Margaret making bread. That is so much a part of their weekly routine. She has a recipe her father has refined over the years, and the entire sourdough experience was super special to them as a family, and also to me as a photographer, finding out about it.
Margaret looks at her sourdough recipe, perfected and passed down by her father
Margaret not only uses her father’s recipe (he’s a machinist, or machine engineer, I forget. Anyway, he’s very particular and careful about exact proportions and ratios. His recipes have been perfected!), but also uses sourdough starter that she cultivated in her fridge for four years! She got that from her father, too.
For all you bread geeks out there (like me!), here’s more on Sourdough starter (source):
A sourdough starter is a symbiotic community of lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast. Both yeast and bacteria feed on the carbohydrates present in flour when hydrated with water and allowed to ferment. As you refresh the starter with new “food,” each microbe gets stronger and more vivacious, releasing gases (providing air and lift) as they consume. These two live microorganisms exist in harmony within your starter, creating an environment rich with lactic and acetic acid. These acids provide both flavor and nutritional benefit.
Breads that are made exclusively with sourdough are referred to as naturally leavened. These breads have a longer fermentation time than commercially yeasted breads, which allows the lactic acid in the sourdough to “unlock” the nutrients within the flour. This creates a more flavorful, digestible bread with more readily available nutrients.
I bet now you’re wanting to try your hand at baking sourdough bread, eh? I know I am. For real. Except I know that I’ll probably kill the starter, given that I can barely keep a houseplant alive for longer than six months haha.
Margaret brings out her sourdough starter she has carefully cultivated for four years!
When I was photographing this part – baking bread – I considered putting in a little bit of light from my flash or mounting a little light on a light stand in the hallway.
But I didn't want to manipulate the scene too much, and because I wanted to be free in the moment, and not take too much time, I decided to just use the available light.
For that reason, some of the images are slightly grainy. I think that that lends a lot of feeling to them.
I love Margaret’s resourcefulness. She uses a little foldout table on which to knead the dough. When you're living in downtown Toronto, the constraints of a small space make you really creative (trust me, I know! We used to rent downtown for a few years, too).
I loved being able to capture a bit of her ingenuity. Of course I was also very impressed by how fluidly she combined the ingredients, and made the dough. You’d think she’s been doing this for years 😉
Alright, so, we made sourdough.
What next?
Well, one of the things they normally do on a typical Sunday is take a walk to Trinity Bellwoods Park, which is just a minute walk away from their place!
On the way there, they grabbed a coffee at their favourite Cafe, Ella’s Uncle, on Dundas St. West.
Margaret and Vincent stroll hand in hand to “Ella’s Uncle”, a nearby cafe and a favourite of theirs.
While we were there, I followed Vincent inside to take photos of him buying a coffee. I really wanted to get a shot of him picking up a cup, with Margaret standing outside waiting. You know, getting both of them in the frame.
I also naturally had to do quite a bit of editing on this photograph, because of the different light conditions between the inside and the outside. On a bright sunny day like this, the contrast between outside and inside is quite high!
Luckily, modern cameras and editing software are quite good at pulling out the information from the darkest parts of the photograph, as long as you don’t completely underexpose the shot.
I think it turned out well, but I’ll let you be the judge of that!
Vincent stands inside the cafe, waiting for the iced coffees, while Margaret waits outside to adhere to pandemic restrictions. Original photo (left), and edited photo (right).
Outside, we took a few photographs of the couple enjoying their iced coffees on the bench. I wanted to give them some space, so I stood farther away for a stretch. I used my zoom (“long”) lens to take a few photos. In one, Margaret wipes crumbs from Vincent, which I think is a sweet moment, though not exactly “traditional”.
Next, we strolled to the park. And they shared a kiss ❤️
Completely candid!
A few minutes from the entrance of the park, sits the Trinity Bellwoods Dog Bowl: a large valley where people take their dogs to play.
Vincent and Margaret often sit here and drink their coffee. They imagine what life would look like if they had their very own puppy. I just love this series of photographs, because it shows us a little snippet of time in their lives together.
Maybe in a year or two, or five, they’ll have a dog?
Until then, this – sitting on a grassy knoll, daydreaming about having a dog... Meaningful moments of their weekends together are how their lives are shaped.
When we strolled through the park afterwards, I was really trying to capture the spirit of just how easy company they are for each other. Margaret and Vincent are always smiling and making each other laugh. They are so warm with each other. I really tried my best to capture some of that. I had a lot of fun being a paparazzi, hovering around them.
Board games on the lawn
Afterwards, back at their place, they grabbed a board game called “Patchwork”, and a colourful blanket and threw it on the green lawn just outside.
Patchwork looks like a lot of fun, and I’ve been meaning to try it. Writing this blog, and seeing how much fun they had playing it, reminds me I should get on that (because people have so much passion for their favourite things, it makes you want to try it, too! And there just isn’t enough time in the day 😆)
While they played a game, I moved from side to side, and all different angles, in order to capture their facial expressions.
When people are playing a board game like this, it gives you a lot of opportunity to compose the shots more carefully.
It gave me time to think what I want to say with this photograph, how to capture their emotion and their interactions in the perfect way.
I always take more photographs than I eventually deliver, and that is because I'm really aiming to capture peak emotion or storytelling photographs. Not every photograph I take fits the bill.
You have to trust me when I tell you that I put a lot of time and careful attention to selecting only the best storytelling photographs. And I do this by having multiple stages of photo “culling”. I’m sure I’ll write more on that later 🤗
Getting all fancy for dinner
The final activity of the day was getting ready to go out to dinner. There are so many little restaurants in Trinity Bellwoods, that this is a regular date night: get dressed up, then enjoy a meal together.
Margaret and Vincent’s engagement session was the third weekend in a row that I had driven to Toronto for a Sunday photo shoot. It was quite hot that day, and the drive was long (though I love road trips).
But I wouldn't have traded it for anything else.
I am so very lucky that they trusted me to capture these engagement moments, that they were open and vulnerable with me, and they invited me into their everyday lives, to capture something meaningful and true and (extra)ordinary.
Did any of these engagement ideas spark your imagination? 🤩
An engagement session should be anything you want it to be!