At the beginning of yoga class, as the music chants a soft backdrop and a candle flickers at the front of the room, Judy always encourages us. “Set an intention for your practice today, if you’d like,” she says gently as we sit with our palms pressed to our knees. It’s advice I’ve learned to take to heart. Set an intention. 

That’s more than a goal, because a goal is something you hope to achieve; an intention is something you plan to achieve.

So Danny and I have started setting an intention for every photo shoot, for every wedding. Beyond the expected general intentions (“We intend to do a great job!” “We intend to have a better shoot than we’ve ever had before!” “We intend to give our clients a really wonderful experience and pictures to match!”), we set shoot-specific intentions. For Kristy and Nick’s wedding tomorrow, our intention is to create romantic images that are soft but vibrant and brimming with emotion and effortless elegance — regardless of whether we’re shooting in beautiful weather or dealing with rain. For the Cox family’s shoot a couple weekends ago, our intention was to create dozens of frame-worthy family portraits that were full of life and laughter. For Claire and Bill’s engagement session last Saturday, our intention was to approach the shoot as if those two were going to end up in Town & Country, with an understated, chic stylishness and a casual splash of romance.

Focusing our intentions for every photo session helps Danny and me shoot with a specific, cohesive approach, but it also helps us keep all our sessions from looking identical. We have a few keywords that we’ve chosen that define the overall style of our photography, and those are always a constant. But we like to shake up our approach depending on each couple or family’s personality and the mood they want to achieve.

And because blog posts are just so much more interesting when they include a photo, here’s another preview from Claire and Bill. Did we get the look we were going for? It would have been hard to fail with those two!~ Laura