Marisa and Jake – Engagement Session on the Amalfi Coast

Marisa and Jake booked an engagement session, not a honeymoon shoot, not a wedding. They were not yet married. They were in Italy for ten days, and they wanted a set of portraits that marked where they were as a couple before the wedding back home in Brooklyn. The ring was on her finger, the date was set, and they had an afternoon to spend across three towns on the Amalfi Coast.

An engagement session has a different energy from every other type of shoot I do. There is no gown, no tuxedo, no veil, no ceremony to build around. The couple wears what they want. The locations are chosen for the visuals, not for the logistics of an event. And the mood is lighter, more playful, because the weight of the wedding day is still months away. Marisa and Jake arrived in casual outfits that had clearly been chosen with the coast in mind: she wore a colorful off-shoulder crop top with a white eyelet skirt, and Jake was in a white linen shirt with blue trousers. They looked like a Brooklyn couple on vacation who happened to be very photogenic.

The Convento in Amalfi

We started at the Anantara Convento di Amalfi, a converted 13th-century monastery perched eighty meters above the harbor, originally founded in 1212 and later home to Capuchin friars for over two centuries. This is one of the few venues I work at that sits in Amalfi proper rather than in Ravello, and the architecture is different: white stone, lime-washed walls, and an Arab-Norman cloister with marble pillars and interlaced arches that reflect light from every surface.

The cloister at the Convento acts as a natural studio. The white walls bounce light inward, creating an even, bright illumination that flattens shadows and makes skin tones glow without any artificial fill. In the middle of the day, when the sun outside is too harsh for outdoor portraits, the cloister stays cool and workable. I shot Jake standing between the marble pillars, hands in pockets, the arches receding behind him. His white shirt blended with the white stone and his blue trousers provided the only color contrast in the frame. Then Marisa alone, her colorful top standing out against the monochrome cloister like a brushstroke on a white canvas.

The difference between engagement outfits and bridal wear shows up immediately in how the couple moves. Marisa was in flat sandals. She could sit on the floor, lean against a pillar, walk backwards down a hallway without thinking about a train or a hem. Jake rolled his sleeves and sat on a stone ledge with one knee up. The images from the Convento have a casualness that wedding portraits cannot produce, because the clothes allow it and the absence of ceremony removes the formality from every pose.

We moved through the property toward the terrace overlooking the harbor. The view from eighty meters drops straight down to the boats and the beach, and the coastal village of Atrani is visible curving around the next headland. I shot Marisa leaning against a column on the balcony, the village behind her in soft focus, her crop top picking up the warm tones of the terracotta rooftops below. Then both of them under a floral pergola near the cloister entrance, where the climbing plants created a natural ceiling of green and the marble columns framed them on both sides. Jake’s hand was on the small of her back, and their engagement rings were visible in the close-up I took of their clasped hands, his fingers interlocked with hers against the white stone.

Ravello in Lemon Print

From the Convento we drove up to Ravello, thirty minutes on the winding coast road. Marisa changed into a lemon-print dress for the second half of the session, a choice that was so specifically Amalfi Coast that it practically wrote its own color palette: yellow lemons, green leaves, the warm stone of Ravello’s walls, and the blue of the sea behind every terrace.

SHOOTING IN RAVELLO

EMILIANO RUSSO

Ravello is truly among the most magical places in Italy for romantic photos.

HIDDEN JEMS

We find hidden spots in Ravello and your romance deserves the finest.

RAVELLO IS CHARMING

You may merge a lavish marriage offer with a rich trip along the Shore

We started at the Giardini della Principessa di Piemonte, where the colonnade and the views of the coast gave us the wide landscape shots. The light at this hour, around 4 PM in late June, was warm and directional from the west, hitting the stone balustrade and the couple from the side. I shot them from behind the colonnade, using the pillars to frame the couple against the coastline, with the lemon-print dress filling the center of the frame and the blue sea visible through the gaps between the columns.

Then into the Villa Comunale gardens behind the cathedral, where the pergola filtered the afternoon light through green leaves and created a soft, green-tinted glow on everything below it. The iron gates at the garden entrance had decorative musical notes worked into the metalwork. Marisa leaned against one of the gates and the musical notes were visible behind her shoulder, a detail specific to Ravello’s identity as the City of Music that no other location on the coast would produce. I shot the gate detail as a close-up too: the iron notes against the sky, the garden visible through the bars, a frame about the place rather than the people.

In the olive grove within the Villa Comunale, I stepped back and shot from a distance with a telephoto. Marisa and Jake walked through the grove and then stopped and started dancing. Not a planned dance, not a first dance, just the two of them putting on a song from Jake’s phone and moving together on a stone terrace above the sea. I kept shooting. The frames from that spontaneous moment, with the olive trees behind them and the coast below, are the images that feel most like who they are. They are not performing. They are two people from Brooklyn who heard a song they liked and decided to dance on a terrace in Italy.

The Ravello streets gave us the final set of images for the afternoon: sitting on stone steps by an old wooden door, holding hands under a vine-covered archway, walking past the shops with their hanging textiles. Jake kissed Marisa’s forehead under a pergola where the dappled light came through the leaves and landed on the lemon print of her dress, making the fabric look like part of the garden itself. On a stone wall near the edge of town, they sat side by side and Marisa touched Jake’s face, turning him toward her, and I caught the frame from below with the coast visible behind the wall. Each of these compositions placed the couple inside the fabric of the town rather than in front of a scenic backdrop, and the lemon-print dress connected Marisa to every lemon tree and ceramic pattern visible in the frame around her.

IN ADVANCE IS BETTER

Book our service now!

Don’t miss out the opportunity to have us at your wedding. Booking in advance gives more chance we are available.

MEET ME

Atrani at the Blue Hour: creativity in your engagement session

The last stop was Atrani. By the time we arrived, the sun was behind the mountains and the sky was beginning its transition from warm gold to deep indigo. Marisa and Jake were tired. They had been shooting for three hours across two towns. I told them to trust me on the timing, that the next twenty minutes would produce the strongest images of the day.

The Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maddalena sits above Atrani’s piazza on a terrace with old streetlamps. In the blue hour, the lamps switch on and cast warm pools of light against the cooling blue sky. The Rococo facade of the church and its tiled dome are visible behind the couple, and the sea reflects the last color of the sky below them. I positioned Marisa and Jake on the terrace with the lamps on either side, and the contrast between the warm gold of the lamps and the deep blue of the sky behind them created a split-toned image that no filter or editing technique can replicate. It only exists for about fifteen minutes. Then the sky goes black and the effect is gone.

For the final frames, I brought them down to the piazza level where the stairs curve toward the beach. The piazza was quiet. A few locals were sitting outside the bar. The sound of the sea reached us from below. Marisa sat on the lowest step and Jake stood one step above her, his hand on her shoulder. The dome of the church was visible above them, lit from within, and the deep blue sky framed everything from above. They were tired and happy and looking at each other the way people look at each other when a long day ends and it was exactly what they wanted.

The Atrani frames closed the session and the gallery. The progression across the afternoon moves from the white cloister light of the Convento to the warm garden light of Ravello to the blue-and-gold of Atrani at night. Three towns, three types of light, three different palettes, all in a single session that started at 2 PM and ended at 8. Marisa later told me the Atrani images were the ones she posted first, because the color contrast made them look like film stills. Jake said his favorite was the dancing frame on the Ravello terrace, because it was the only moment in the entire session where they forgot I existed. Both were right. The best gallery has both: the composed portrait and the stolen candid, the planned light and the unplanned movement.

An engagement session on the Amalfi Coast does not need to be complicated. It needs the right locations at the right hours, outfits that work with the palette of the coast, and a photographer who knows where to stand when the light changes. The rest happens on its own. If you are considering a session, this is the format I recommend: three hours minimum, two or three locations connected by short drives, and a timeline that ends at the blue hour. My engagement photography page explains how these sessions work, locations, timing, and what to wear. If you are also thinking about coming back for the wedding, the Ravello wedding guide and the elopement page cover every option. Get in touch with your travel dates and I will build a route around the light and the locations that work best for your afternoon.