Same-Sex engagement photos in Florence, Italy

N+V //an LGBTQ+ couple through the alleys of Florence

If there is something good about this pandemic nightmare, I’m finally getting the chance to post many of the sessions I love most. The ones that kept slipping through the cracks at the end of every busy season. Don’t know if it’s that I haven’t really had the time or if it’s just the laziness that comes over me at the end of the season. Anyway, this is one of my 2018 favorites: a photo session shot in a September Sunrise through the Florentine alleys with a couple of guys I can now call friends. V and N are from the US and now live in Los Angeles, California. I shot their wedding the following year – in 2019 – so basically, what you’re about to see is a bit of a flashback after you might already have met them here on the blog.

There is nothing more valuable than a session with your photographer before your wedding if you want to break the ice facing a camera, especially if you’re one of those camera-shy people (I count myself in that club, by the way). It’s also helpful for me: an engagement session through the alleys of Florence is an opportunity to get to know you, to learn your own unique dynamic as a couple, before we’re standing in front of guests. Particularly when it comes to taking LGBTQ+ engagement photos, we, as photographers, must go beyond stereotypes and go well beyond the usual visual language: no off-the-shelf poses, no borrowed references. Just their story, their energy, their way of being together, using our cameras as tools for research. There are layers to every couple that don’t show themselves immediately, and those are exactly the ones worth finding. Beneath the surface, just waiting to reveal the joy of being together, which probably has not always been easy, gifted, or guaranteed, particularly in such cases. And that’s the part I treasure more. To disclose something that’s gently covered at the very first sight. If you still don’t understand what I mean, the last pictures are from their wedding, and they will tell you more about them! Love,

Fra