Last week Candice and I went down to Hog’s Back Falls on the Rideau River, where we met our wedding photographer, Andrew Van Beek, for engagement photos.

It was a blast. Andrew commented a few times as we were climbing over rocks and around fences and past “No Entry” signs how much fun we were to shoot. Towards the end he had to ask us to try to smile less to take some more serious shots! Ducks swam over to pose with us, squirrels watched with interest, and puppies frolicked nearby. And we found a dry stream filled with big chunks of rock that made a perfect backdrop for a few shots, and which despite having photographed dozens of couples at the falls before Andrew had never seen! Despite having a photographer with a pile of lenses around his waist taking a couple frames a second at us we weren’t one bit nervous or self-conscious. I’m really excited about having him do the wedding, now.

One great bit about Andrew is that he shoots digital (for the geeks: with a Canon EOS 20D) so instead of getting proofs or negatives, we just get 3520×2346 jpeg originals, and making prints is left up to us. The usual deal with wedding photographers is that you get proofs and pay through the nose for prints from the photographer, or pay through the nose for negatives, so this works out pretty well. He does do “albums” in the form of coffee-table books, which I think is pretty neat. We’ll almost certainly be taking him up on that.

Anyhow, a bunch of our favorites are up here. Go see how cute we are!