Luster Studios » North Carolina Photographers Craig Carpenter

This week I had the pleasure of photographing Yuki and Kenta for their engagement session. Yuki had contacted me immediately after becoming engaged with an urgent message.

The engagement itself was totally unplanned and unexpected. They had actually only dated 10 days before deciding to get married, although they had a 10 year history of being “just friends.” They first met in college in Japan and Yuki came to UNC in 2003 as a postdoc to develop her career in biochemical field, whereas Kenta did the same in 2006 to the University of Virginia. It was a coincidence that they came to the neighboring states considering the fact that there are hundreds of universities and research institutes in the United States. At the time they decided to take advantage of that, and started seeing each other every few months

Fast forward to today and now they are engaged and never thought we ended up like this! The unique twist of fate is that she’ll be leaving in 3 weeks to move back to Japan and they only had one last possible weekend where she would see Kenta before moving permanently. Unfortunately, he now lives in Charlottesville, VA. They told me that they are still working out the details as Kenta will be staying here in the US.

As with a few of my other couples, they described themselves as both being camera-shy, but told me that they loved the work on my website and it convinced them that I would be able to make them feel comfortable and look amazing in the final photos.

After some thought, I decided to chauffeur them around Raleigh and let them point out locations that looked interesting to them. It was the least I could do knowing that these would possibly be the last images that they would have taken in the US. I also took a bit of comfort knowing that they would have these beautiful photographic memories to hold onto on during those rough times when they were deeply missing each other.

I usually don’t do this but they also did insist on having a photograph taken with me to just remember their experience… I’m usually more comfortable looking through the lens. :) Keep in touch and I wish you both the best!