Engagement Photoshoot in France

Naomi & Josh

At last! The sun’s out and the weather is actually nice. I think only English people say this, can you blame us? Particularly since May was a total washout and April was utterly freezing. With all this lovely heat about, I thought it would be a great time to post this lovely little session from last August 2020, as it sort of fits the mood.

I don’t usually expect to have any time off during the wedding season, especially enough to squeeze in an overseas family holiday… in AUGUST! ARRRR! I’m delighted to say that COVID made this dream come true (that dream you need like a hole in the head if you’re a wedding photographer).

You see, my wife’s parents live in Tours… a city situated in the Loire Valley, France (yeah, she’s French by the way). She and our two girls usually spend a few weeks of the summer holidays in Tours, catching up with friends and family… whilst I shoot a load of weddings back home. I then get to go with them at other times of the year when work isn’t quite so manic, Christmas is always great fun across the channel if I can make it (I love Oysters, which they have in abundance).

So, as a complete surprise to me, I got to go last time around. I stereotypically drank wine and ate cheese non stop, occasionally interrupting the flow for a spot of Petanque.

Actually, France had record temperatures whilst we were there and at one point I read 38°C on a garden thermometer, in the shade! Fortunately many houses in France have basements/wine cellars, my in-law’s one fluctuates between 13°C in the winter and 18°C in the summer. Guess where I went all the time?

So, how does Naomi & Josh fit in to all this I hear you scream… or ask. Well, they’re some pretty cool friends of ours and have been married since Sept 2019. They happened to be in France at the same time as us (that brief moment in the summer when we assumed our governments had sorted all this damn COVID stuff out), so we thought we’d use the opportunity to get a little post-wedding session in. I mean, we were in the Loire after all!

The below photos were taken right next the the Loire river, in a small town called Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire (which is within Tours) and it’s where my wife’s parents live (pretty cool huh?). In fact, the grounds belong the the town Mairie (town Hall) and it’s actually where Julie and I got married, some twelve years ago at the time of writing this. It was ridiculously hot, but we had an unforgettable time retracing old steps, discovering new ones and hanging out with these two.

Here’s a few of the keepers… let the sun soak in I say!