At several points during Emily and Nathan’s engagement session, I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed “We’ll look back on this and laugh!”.
What a shoot this was! First of all, let’s get it out of the way - these two are adorable and I absolutely love the photos we captured during their woodsy engagement session. Now, onto the part that I like to refer to as “a series of unfortunate events”. 😂
I took Nate and Emily to one of my favourite photo locations. Kind of a hidden gem that I was so excited to shoot in with them. It had rained all day and finally stopped, which made for a good news/bad news situation. The good news? We didn’t need to reschedule! And those vibrant post-rainfall colours were popping. The bad news? The trail to get to the clearing was unbelievably muddy. It was super hot and humid out. And the mosquitos were out to party. But Emily and Nathan were up for an adventure, so we went for it. We slipped and slid all the way down the trail, and I realized about 10 minutes into the shoot that Emily is super sensitive/allergic to mosquito bites. I offered to leave and go to another location, but being the trooper that she is, she wanted to stay and go for it anyways (we had already worked hard enough just to get to our location!). So there we were, standing in a field on an intensely hot day, dripping in sweat, mud all over our ankles, getting eaten alive by mosquitos (hives and all), in a beautiful location that was just a little more overgrown than I had remembered it (thanks to a crazy rain + heat wave combo over the previous few weeks). But Emily and Nathan were all smiles, laughed it off, and completely rocked their session.
After a bit, we decided to head to a nearby park to finish up the shoot with a different look and feel. Feeling accomplished that we made it through those challenging shooting conditions and excited about the amazing images on my camera, we started heading back down the muddy trail. “Hang on, let’s do one more on the bridge!” - famous last words of a photographer who proceeded to slip on the mud, fall onto a rock and break a camera lens. Honestly, I am laughing while writing this because it was just the perfect storm of obstacles. Emily and Nathan were so sweet and truly concerned for my well being, but I quickly dusted myself off and exclaimed something to the effect of “It’s ok! It’s part of the job! It’s not the first time (sad but true)! I have insurance (phew)! Let’s keep going!”.
I am pleased to say that the remaining part of the shoot was uneventful, and we continued to make some great images at our second location before wrapping up. A little bit of photoshop magic took care of the allergic mosquito-bite reactions, and Emily and Nathan’s positivity and sense of adventure took care of the rest! It was such a roller coaster ride of a session, but I don’t think I would change any of it,partly because it makes for a really hilarious story, but mostly because I absolutely love the images we captured. Here are some favourites!
