This Seattle engagement session was magnificent.

The whole time I was photographing Whitney and Garrett, this line by Rainer Maria Rilke kept repeating in me head. “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”

So, when I got home, I looked up the whole passage. It’s from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It reads, “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.”

These two embodied those lofty principals. You could see it in the way they held each other, looked at each other, smiled for one another.

This session was next level. No doubt.