Sometimes couples tell me they’re nervous right before we start, and Elizabeth and Bishoy were no different when we pulled up for their Centennial Park engagement photos. An hour later we were laughing so hard my face started hurting.

That’s kind of the whole thing. My job isn’t to pose you into oblivion. It’s to hang out with you and create space for you to actually feel comfortable — comfortable enough to be yourselves. And when that happens, you get photos like these.

Centennial Park: A Classic Nashville Engagement Session Location

If you’re looking for a location that does a lot of the work for you, Centennial Park is hard to beat. The Parthenon alone gives you this incredible architectural backdrop that somehow works for every kind of couple: romantic, goofy, editorial, whatever you’re going for. And then two minutes away you’ve got the pond, the trees, the stone walls along the water. It’s a lot of variety in a small footprint, which makes it ideal for a session where you want your gallery to feel layered without driving all over Nashville.

For Elizabeth and Bishoy, we bounced between the Parthenon columns and the waterfront and it never felt rushed. That’s the other thing about Centennial Park. It’s big enough that you can find your own little corner of it, even on a busy day.

What the Engagement Session Looked Like

We started at the Parthenon, which is where a lot of the nerves burned off. There’s something about walking alongside those massive columns that makes people relax. Maybe it’s the scale of the thing, maybe it’s just that it’s beautiful and hard not to feel something standing next to it. Either way, by the time we made it down to the water, Elizabeth and Bishoy were fully themselves. Laughing, close, not thinking about the camera at all.

That’s what I’m always working toward. Not a specific pose or a specific shot. Just that point in the session where it clicks and you stop performing and start just being together. These two got there fast.

A Note on Documentary Style Engagement Sessions

I shoot in a documentary style, which means I’m not going to hand you a shot list or move you around like furniture. What I will do is give you something to do, find the light, and then get out of the way. Most people are skeptical of this approach until they see their photos. (If you’re wondering what to actually expect at an engagement session, I wrote a whole post on that here.) The images that end up being favorites are almost never the ones where someone was trying to look good. They’re the ones where something actually happened.

Elizabeth and Bishoy are a great example of that. The laughing-so-hard-you-can’t-breathe photo from the steps? Nobody planned that. It just happened, and I was there.

If you’re newly engaged and starting to think about Centennial Park engagement photos, it’s absolutely worth putting on your list. And if you want to see more of what a session like this looks like, you can check out more of my work here.

Ready to book your own? Fill out the form below or reach out here 🙂