If your wedding anniversary is coming up, you may be looking for a suitable way to mark the occasion and capture romantic moments. It’s an important event for all couples, whether you’ve been married for 1 year or 10 years. The day symbolises your love and respect for each other and the solid relationship you’ve built together, and it’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate your special bond.

Organising a wedding anniversary photo shoot is a beautiful way to recreate the magic and make more memories of your married life together that you can treasure down the years. But if you’re not sure about how to approach camera work, or you’re looking for visual storytelling ideas for your anniversary, we’ve got some useful suggestions for you.

1. Romantic weekend photos

Take your other half on a romantic weekend to celebrate your anniversary and use the location(s) as a backdrop for your photo shoot. Conducting an anniversary photo shoot during your trip can be a wonderful idea to capture the romantic feelings between you when you’re both happy and relaxed in each other’s company and far from the stresses of daily life.

If you choose to go on a city break, shots taken in an urban setting can yield some of the most original results. Why not combine sightseeing with photography, capturing iconic locations in London, Paris or Rome along with your continued happiness? Many photographers use the ‘love on the go’ concept, using bustling streets, car parks, bus or train stations as a quirky background against which to pose naturally.

2. Stay-at-home photo session

If you’re celebrating your wedding anniversary at home, there’s no reason why you can’t make a special effort with your photography. Bedroom photography doesn’t have to mean boudoir shoots (that’s a whole different chapter altogether), it could also mean capturing everyday happiness at home. You and your spouse in pyjamas having a pillow fight, or enjoying breakfast in bed, complete with coffee and croissants, fizz and flowers?

It’s cheap and simple to jazz up any picture with props, and they can be one of the cutest ideas to add impact to a romantic photoshoot. Choose the right props according to your setting and theme – maybe wine glasses and a bottle of champagne, or party balloons or even love quotes – and feel free to play around with them.

3. Gardens, fields or forests

Why not ask Mother Nature to lend a helping hand with your wedding anniversary photography? You could take the camera and simply step out into the garden, or go for a long country walk, or head into the woods. The more meaningful the venue to your love story, the better. The important thing is to use your connection with nature to help tell the story.

Colourful plants and flowers, cornfields and haystacks, a clearing in a forest, warm summer sunshine – these can all make amazingly atmospheric backdrops that you can use to spark creative photo ideas for romantic couple images. Bring some props – a bright scarf, a retro bike, a pre-packed picnic basket and a cosy blanket. Revel in the beauty and solitude that surrounds you in a natural environment and feel inspired. Here’s a great example of a romantic woodland couple shoot.

4. Rainy weather photos

A rainy day may not be the first thing that comes to mind when taking photos but bear with us – it can really work to use the bad weather to your advantage. Romantic embraces and passionate kisses in the rain, with and without an umbrella to shield from the elements, make for a special atmosphere that can produce spectacularly emotional images. Here’s a beautiful example of how to get it just right.

The idea is for the photos to show a contrast between the obvious discomfort caused by the wet weather and the serene happiness you both feel in each other’s arms. It’s a metaphor for the emotional safe haven your relationship represents.

5. Shared activities

Some of the best visual storytelling ideas revolve around doing things together as a couple. Whether you both love cooking or painting, gardening or golf, a shared hobby can bring people closer together – who knows, it may even be the way you met in the first place. Why not bake a cake together, go clubbing at night or hiking during the day?

Even something as simple as an everyday outing can be turned into a location shoot. Take your camera to a café, pub or restaurant – again, the more meaningful the venue, the better the outcome – and just relax in each other’s company, camera at the ready. These kinds of locations don’t need any special poses; just act natural and capture emotional shots.

6. Wedding Day replay

Whether your wedding day was last year or last century, one very popular idea for a meaningful romantic photo shoot is to recreate the day of the actual wedding. This may need a bit of planning. Try to recall the best moments of your wedding day celebrations, maybe looking over the wedding album to choose the most beautiful photo moments – then take photos in the same poses.

Whether it’s just-married pictures outside the church or during the reception later, there must be plenty of opportunities to recreate your magic moments and relive the memories of your special day. This couple recreated their wedding photos 59 years after the day!

7. The importance of lighting

There can be no better feeling than seeing photographic images that capture the deep connection between you and your husband or wife. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a romantic photography shoot can be the way to tell the entire love story.

That said, the number one hurdle every photographer needs to overcome to produce stunning results is to get the lighting right. Romantic light adds a soft warmth to the setting, helping to create a dream-like, ethereal photo. Harsh light, on the other hand, can kill the vibe completely. For outdoor photography, the best natural light is found at the ‘golden hour’ – the short period of time just after sunrise or before sunset. It’s the light that comes closest to capturing an emotion as complex and mysterious as love.