Here are the first of two winners of Zorz Studios’ EngagEd 2016—free engagement session contest—and their supernatural engagement session’s unreal adventures bursting out of library books.
This year’s free engagement session contest brought in some cool concepts and harsh competition, as usual. Jessica and Roman won the 2nd place and I am thrilled to present their results. Check out the concept of this supernatural engagement session:
“We’re both going into medicine and have spent countless hours together studying at what seems like millions of libraries while our friends made fun of us for being lame… Despite the fact that we are constantly studying for something, we both really love reading, and are constantly recommending books to one another. So naturally, we thought there was probably no better place for us to have a photoshoot than the library… We picture the photoshoot beginning there amongst a bunch of books, with us browsing through them and having fun climbing up to the high shelves, and flipping through pages. We’d “jump” into the books and become the characters in them, dressing and posing as the people in some of our favorite books of all time – like The Great Gatsby, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, The Outsiders, or however many we could manage. We’re already picturing making the craziest and most elaborate costumes to get into character, and it would be the perfect way to make our nerdiness look kind of cool for once!”
So we met shortly after the voting ended and our free engagement session contest winners were announced. During the shoot discussion meeting, it became clear that their original location, New York Public Library, was out of reach—they have strict photo permit policies: you cannot shoot there unless your wedding is hosted by the library. Even then I am not sure how close to the bookshelves we would get. The challenge was to find an alternative and the guys scored another win by arranging for a library in NJ where we were free to roam around as long as we keep things neat, civil, and quiet. Otherwise I would have gone further…
We narrowed our book choices to three: Harry Potter, The Great Gatsby, and The Outsiders. I don’t think there was a need for a believable plot as we were not shooting a movie but you can get the idea: the guys came to a library as they always do, got attracted by some unusual activity in one of the far shelf corners, found flashlights somewhere, went exploring the dark shelves, and things went paranormal when they started opening books, one after another…
Seems like their concluding adventure of this supernatural engagement session, spellbound by The Outsiders, beat the heck out of “lame” and “nerdiness look” which their friends teased them for… Mission accomplished. (You know what? I think I got my little share of nerdiness in childhood, too. Perhaps that is why I took some wild and rebellious self-portraits later in life. Would be fun to put some before-and-after next to each other… Isn’t it a course for most of us? 🙂 )
P.S. Those who track my sometimes preposterous blog titles may need help decoding this one… Liebe /ˈliːbə/ means “love” in German.
(Click images for full size)