When I met Minna and James at Valkiaisjärvi for their Love Stories session I had no idea just how awesome their shoot was going to be. Boy, was I in for a wonderful surprise!
Minna and James have been together for over 20 years. They met in the UK on a night out for his birthday while Minna was visiting her pen friend.
Romance blossomed on a bridge and when the time came for her to fly back to her hometown here in Oulu a week or so later they promised to keep in touch.
This was a time before the internet was being as widely used as it is today, smart phones just didn't exist. Keeping in touch meant physically picking up a pen and writing or running up massive phone bills.
And so they wrote to one another. They wrote to one another for years.
James visited Finland whenever he could, while most other Brits saved up to go to the beach somewhere warm and sunny he was spending his holidays in Oulu to be able to spend time with Minna.
Eventually, after James had moved across permanently, they got married and had children and they've never looked back.
I asked them what it was that they loved most about each other, what it was that attracted them.
They both said, rather emotionally, that they just saw each other as soul mates. They understood each other perfectly, that they made sense.
What I loved about their shoot was seeing how talking about their relationship and their feelings for one another affected them both. Seeing the happy tears, the spontaneous hugs and warm kisses come without prompting from me - and obviously being able to capture all of them for the two of them to keep and look back on in the years to come.
Apart from some very mild direction to change the backdrop, everything that you see in their photos came entirely from them and from the things they were saying about one another to one another.
Thank you, James and Minna, for sharing your story with me!
If you'd like to book a Love Stories session for you and your partner just get in touch!
You capture some beautiful moments!! Yorshire is so lucky to have you to capture them all!
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