Spur Of The Moment

Sometimes the best sessions happen spur of the moment, without lots of planning and opportunity to overthink things. At least that seems to be the way it works when trying to do pictures with my own children.

The other afternoon rain was coming and the cloud cover does what it does and made for some gorgeous light. (Never decide against taking pictures because it’s cloudy. That is actually the most incredible time to do them because it creates a giant softbox and the light is fabulous.) I grabbed a dress and hat and handed them off to my daughter to put on and we left twenty minutes later.

I pass by this yard near our neighborhood frequently and love the look of the blooming crepe myrtles and picket fence. I had actually driven past it that day and it is what inspired the sudden desire to do some pictures. Abigail is past the point of being horrified or embarrassed that I will stop at random spots and ask a total stranger if I can take pictures on their property. I think she trusts me after the photo success at the abandoned greenhouse we did months ago. I’ll be sharing those on Thursday.

With teenagers it can be a tricky to move them away from what I call the instagram face. There is a certain look that social media cultivates that I like to move past as quickly as possible so I can get to real laughs and personality. I can’t remember what I said that made her laugh but I think this is one of my favorite pictures of her.

This was also a good opportunity for me to practice using my 50mm lens. The nifty fifty it’s called because of its affordability and capability. It is a work horse of a lens and for most of my photography life it was my only lens. Since my beloved got me my dream lens for Christmas though it has been collecting dust and I realised I needed to practice with it some. Different lenses do different things and I want to have a variety of tools at my disposal so that the images I create for myself and clients don’t get stale or repetitive.

It still hadn’t started raining so we headed to a field beside our church where I had noticed yet more crepe myrtles blooming.

We started on the back end of the property where the trees are but eventually made our way up near the road. There’s a small building there that has been everything from a fresh seafood store (oh, the smell in those days!) to a candy shop to a southern home cooking restaurant. It has been empty for quite a while now but a couple of months back we noticed an antique car had been parked beside it. I would love to know the story behind it because it made a fantastic prop.

All in all we had some fun mother/daughter time and I got to brush up on some skills. A total win win situation.

Advertisement