soggy holiday

 
Many portrait photographers will post on their blog examples of the best holiday cards created for clients as inspiration to others and also to lure in potential new clients for the coming year. Excellent marketing. I, on the other hand, think it far more interesting to share examples of the images that didn’t make a greeting card cover. Which might tell you something about my marketing skills.

For several of the busiest weeks of this past holiday portrait season my area experienced a lot of rainy, dreary weather. And it was of the most menacing nature because the sky would completely clear for very brief periods of time, leading my clients and I to believe we could go forth with the shoot, only to soon be sorely disappointed.

This family really wanted their holiday portrait to be outdoors on the lakeside behind their home. After two rain postponements this was to be our final opportunity to get the shot they envisioned. I hadn’t been at their home for ten minutes when a downpour burst on the scene. Since we could see large breaks of clouds in the sky we decided to wait it out a bit in hopes of trying one last time. Sure enough, the sky soon cleared and the rain exited.

Now we were dealing very bright contrasty afternoon light, and with no open shade positioning the family was challenging. We rigged their pool umbrella to break some of the intense rays, put a blanket on the very wet ground, plopped the family down, and I took exactly two shots before once again out of the blue the rain and wind reappeared.

This was the last shot made, and what I like about it is the fact that although the majority of the family appears distressed about the conditions they found themselves in, the dad refused to stop smiling because by golly he was going to get this holiday card thing handled once and for all. No surprise that this didn’t make the card cover, but I was pleased that the clients still wanted a copy of the image for their own enjoyment.

And you might wonder what became of the poor soggy photographer and her camera on this day? Well, she heroically got the shot and then sprinted as fast as her legs would take her all the way to her vehicle out front of the home, leaving the soggy family to fend for themselves. Ü

~Cynthia