Running Engagement

Yesterday Ben and I got our engagement photos taken by the enormously talented and creative Ryan Brenizer. I wanted our photos to be taken in Hoboken and Jersey City, where we live because I wanted it to reflect our lives. While I can’t say that our typical Sunday is spent at the Hoboken train station, we do pass by it just about daily, used the New Jersey Transit for going on trips, and have gone through the station on our many training runs. It was also important to me to get some photos taken at Liberty State Park because we spend a fair amount of time there: our weekly training runs with our running groups, races (5Ks and half marathons), and other long runs. We got the usual engagement type photos taken, but we also got some photos to display our personality as a couple.

One of my concerns about getting our photos taken was our appearing stiff and unnatural. Taking photos and being the center of so much attention can be awkward and strange. I wanted photos that showed us as we are (albeit better attired and more polished version). Ryan was wonderful to work with because he knew how to pose us to get artistically interesting, yet natural looking. We don’t looked obviously posed, but rather like he happened to capture us in a brief moment of time as Ben and I laughed, walked, hugged, and snuggled each other. We got us to relax (“Act human-like,” he often advised in a dead-pan voice, which cracked us up) and just have fun with the whole experience. I didn’t worry about looking good because I trusted Ryan to make us look good.

At Liberty State Park, we had some photos taken in our running clothes and of us running. Ryan experimented a bit. He sent us a preview of four photos a few hours later that night. We’re in awe of what he’s done and can’t wait to see the rest.

Here’s one of the photos. Ryan merged a frame of us running with us sitting one the waterfront at Liberty State Park.

I also asked one of my wonderfully talented friends, who is an art designer, to make us an engaged race bib. I gave her the NYRR 2014 Brooklyn Half Marathon race bib as the design base because I love that particular race bib so much. I love the black and white design, along with the sentimental memories associated with the Brooklyn Half (my first half marathon, doing the race with Ben and friends, hanging out at Coney Island afterward, memories of Prospect Park). The numbers are the date of when we got engaged.

We’re getting married. We can’t wait to see what else life has for us together.