First Engagement Shoot

I recently was asked to shoot my friends engagement pictures. I went to high school with him and his fiance so I really want to do a good job with them. Anything that you think would help for my first time would be greatly appreciated. I'm planing on mostly using my 50 1.4 as shallow DOF seems to be the desired effect. I am looking for ideas for posing, places to shoot, perspective/angles, etc. Thanks!

"Take a look at what you're looking at" I think you should just garb your cam and gears and go out and do the shoot. Don't worry about planning where to put the couple, if you lay down and shoot or stand up etc. To me that only limits one. It can be a good thing, don't get me wrong, but many times I have gone out on shoots with a plan in my head and when I start processing and look at some of the places I could have taken some photos from it just blows my mind. "Expect the unexpected." Just be confident and professional, act like you know what you're doing (even if you don't) and trust me, you'll be making shot after shot.

PS. What you need to worry aout is making sure those exposures are spot on. Hope the shoot goes good man. Hope to see them soon. I know you'll do well!

I think a key to success is.... shoot a lot of pictures. Fill up your memory cards. If you only get one good photo out of 10, that's 100 good photos if you shoot 1000. I'm sure your percentage of success will be higher.

Most pros take backups - if you have a failure on anything, thats their wedding gone. And they wont thank you for that. You dont get a second chance, so take a second camera body with charged battery and plenty of storage cards. You will do well take a medium zoom for candids at distance, just to vary the shots. You wont get all you want from close shooting, and people move around all the time