Raul Santos Raul Santos

Proposal in Venice on a traditional Venetian gondola

Alina & Nathan, from USA at their engagement travel in Italy

As soon as I started working as a surprise wedding proposal photographer I knew it was always going to be a challenge. Although it's not always 100% surprise, as the fiancee already expects that during that trip, at some point the proposal will happen, I always need to treat the situation as being a surprise.

When Nathan hired me to photograph his proposal he told me he would like it to be in a gondola in Venice. He and Alina are North Americans. I am always curious how the guy manages to hide the little box with the engagement ring during the trip. I had already photographed requests in the gondola, but always together with the couple, which makes the surprise even more difficult. This time we agreed that I would follow the route from outside and photograph along the canals and bridges of Venice. It was a different and very rewarding experience, as I was able to offer different photos than usual.

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Raul Santos Raul Santos

Summer photo shooting in Florence

We can do good photos even on the summer

Sometimes the intense heat doesn't let us think very well. It was a hot summer day in Florence and I needed to drive a couple of Americans for a photo shoot with good views of the city.

Doing this in the early afternoon carrying a backpack with about 6kg of equipment made things a bit more complicated.

But one of the coolest things when you work with photos of couples in love and in a city that is all about love, art and history, is that once you start making beautiful photos in such iconic places you get a good dose of encouragement to keep going no matter what the weather conditions are.

And as soon as I introduced myself to the couple and we started the photo shooting in Florence everything flowed very naturally and in the end they really liked the result: being driven by a local photographer with explaining a bit of the main points of the Renaissance city along the way and having your passionate record in this scenario is something that customers value a lot.

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