emil and melinda : omaha engagement photography

Emil and Melinda had the fantastic idea to do their engagement pictures at the Omaha zoo! I met them on a hot Saturday a couple weeks ago (note their long-sleeved black shirts, poor things!), and we had a blast searching the zoo for some unique locations that didn't scream "zoo."

We started out in the jungle, one of my favorite places in the zoo.


Can you believe this was Melinda's first time on the rope bridge?? She'd always been a little too scared to try it before!


Okay, real picture first and outtake second. There was an Amish family just in front of us, and the Amish guy to the right of them totally makes the outtake AWESOME. Also, personal trivia: I'm Amish! Well, my family was, at one point. Pennsylvania Dutch, to be exact. And they were the victims of a famous (in the area) Native American massacre in the 1700's. It's kind of an interesting tale!


Anyway. Back to love, and all that happy fun stuff!

SO CUTE, these two!






We then hit up the aquarium, which unfortunately was VERY crowded so we didn't get a chance to do as many pictures as we would have liked. Plus, for some reason fish and sharks are very uncooperative and didn't play nicely in the background.


However, I did decide I want a pet seahorse.


Then it was off to the Garden of the Senses!




Okay, do you see who Melinda looks like in that second picture above? I totally see Christina Ricci. Gorgeous!












Awww, how cute is this picture of Melinda and Emil? So in love!


JUST KIDDING! Haha, see what I did there?

Here, Melinda and Emil do their best orangutan impression.

I feel like that is one very wise great ape.








We got lucky. SO SO lucky.

It was ice cream day.

Which meant......

All you can eat ice cream.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If I was Superman, ice cream would be my kryptonite. Ok, that analogy makes no sense. But I love ice cream. My most-used wedding present? An ice cream maker.

In honor of the ice cream social, they were giving away milk mustaches, which these two great sports were totally willing to don for a picture.




Mmmmm ice cream.

Anyway.

This is a terrible picture, but I love it because how many people do you know who had a peacock in their engagement pictures??


To close, I'll tell you about a fun, creative idea that Melinda had. She loves this 1960's vintage picture by Garry Winogrand from his series "The Animals"*:


She brought along a printout of the picture, and asked that we try to replicate it, or at least pay homage to it. While it's a wolf in the picture, the Omaha Zoo's wolves aren't in cages like this, so we had to substitute a slightly larger animal...the tigers! Unfortunately, like the fish, the tigers weren't cooperating and wouldn't walk towards us no matter how much Melinda begged and cajoled. She did, however, get it to lift it's head once....so she's ALMOST the tiger whisperer.



I think we got pretty close! It was definitely fun trying to get the pose and composition right. I'm always down for doing this if anyone else ever wants to try it. :)

Emil and Melinda, thanks so much for the fun day - and ice cream! - and I can't wait til October!

*I forgot to ask Melinda what the photographer's name was, so I got this by Googling "black and white picture couple zoo wolf". What CAN'T Google find??