Frances + Mike Pt. 1: Downtown Los Angeles Engagement

I’m not going to lie, some pretty crazy things went down at the first half of this two-part Engagement Session! You would never know it by Frances + Mike’s glowing smiles and super fun attitudes, which is a huge testament to how awesome Frances + Mike are! But, we just have to tell you all the “behind the scenes” story on this shoot:

Part 1: The Homeless Lady Prom Pose: Frances really wanted to shoot in an antique store. She found one and it was great, but we only had 20 minutes to shoot in there before they closed up shop. That’s pretty quick! So we are shooting around when Joe notices that a homeless woman is talking to the store manager. No big deal, we shoot on. Then she starts heading over toward us and the couple. The lady starts talking with Frances + Mike (I mean, who wouldn’t? They are awesome!), so Joe runs interference and talks with the homeless lady about ALLLLLL sorts of things (turns out she has a small white tent across the street in a parking lot for her dog, who is also white, otherwise she wouldn’t bother with the tent and… etc.) as he walks her out of the photo. Marianne shoots, Joe shmoozes the lady, all is well. She finally says “ok, well I have to get going” and starts walking away. Joe turns around and starts shooting again. As it turns out, this lady had some strong opinions about what an appropriate pose is for an engagement shoot in an antique store, walked right over to Frances + Mike, and could not be dissuaded from setting them up in the most severe case of prom pose awfulness we have ever seen. So… that happened.

Part 2: Drive-By Photo Gang Verbal Assault: We moved on to the Arts District in Los Angeles, happy to put that scene behind us. We are shooting Frances + Mike against a cool ivy wall when a car full of people drive by screaming every expletive known to man and waiving their cameras out their windows in what we could only interpret as some sort of a photo gang equivalent of a drive-by. Mhmm, that went down and we lived to tell the tale. We are hard like that. Canon thugz fo’ life son!

Part 3: Random Racist Comment Lady: Have you ever had a moment where someone said something to you that was so out-of-nowhere overtly racist that you just couldn’t help yourself from stopping in your tracks and dropping your jaw and being like “Whoa! Did you seriously just say that”? So, we are still shooting in the Arts District. Some random lady walks up and asks Joe “so, is this an actual shoot for something?” This is not an unusual question for us as we frequently find ourselves shooting good looking happy people out in public, and the public can get curious sometimes. So, Joe responds “Yes it is…” and before he could finish his sentence to say “an engagement shoot for this lovely couple!” she snidely asked “For what? The Korean times?” In yet another testament to Frances + Mike’s awesome attitude, when Joe told them about the comment Mike jokingly stated “At least she wasn’t like ‘Hey, look! It’s Jackie Chan!”

So, that made for an interesting shoot! Check out the photos from part 1 of this engagement session. Part 2 will be following shortly!