Rainy Weddings and Mountain Hangouts
My decoy set up on Cathedral Ledge
It will be a brief update this week. I have been quite busy lately. I will continue to be busy for the next couple of months but I have a few fun, far away assignments that should make for cool newsletter posts. This week was pretty standard stuff, but it was made a little tricky by lots of rain and last minute plan changes. And hiking. And intricate planning in places with zero cell service.
Saturday I drove back out to The White Mountains for a surprise proposal shoot. The original plan was to hike up to White Horse Ledge, which is a pretty challenging trail, and wait for the couple to show up and shoot the proposal. The proposer changed his mind at the last minute and changed the location to Cathedral Ledge, a much easier trail. The views are still great. There is zero cell service out there and the top of Cathedral Ledge is pretty big so I was nervous about the guy finding me. It's important for surprise shoots like this to send photos of each other and give updates on outfits for the day so everyone knows who everyone is. One of my tricks is to set up a tripod and pretend to be a nature photographer so the guy knows who I am and generally where to stand when he does his thing. I was a little nervous about getting to the top on time, and about knowing the couple when I saw them, and the guy knowing me, if I had missed them, if they changed their minds, and then I was convinced that I took the wrong trail or was in the wrong place. Many of these concerns would have been quickly dealt with if I had even the tiniest bit of cell service. I had none so I just stood around for over an hour until they showed up. it went fine. I knew the proposal was about to happen but I saw a random dude walking briskly towards the scene, right into the framing I had planned and I had to run and intercept him and shout-whisper "Please wait! Something is about to happen." This confused and alarmed him but he figured it out and my client dropped to his knee about 1 second later. Mission accomplished.
Thursday and Sunday I had weddings in the Portland area. Both weddings were great but both were made stressful by rain. Full blown storms on Thursday and intermittent drizzling on Sunday. The couples dealt with it just fine, in fact the couple on Thursday really embraced it and we did some very epic portraits on a cliff side in really miserable SIDEWAYS rain. My gear is fancy and expensive and claims to be weather proof/water-sealed but that's never a guarantee. Watch this stressful video by Reggie Ballesteros for my worst nightmare. I took these shots with my umbrella perpendicular to my body to protect my camera from the sideways rain. These guys were real troopers.
Then on Sunday I shot a mellow wedding with a ceremony at Fort Willaims/Portland Head Lighthouse and a reception at Camp Ketcha in Scarborough. I tried to make a joke by pronouncing it "Camp Ketchup" to two different people and both times they corrected me "It's actually pronounced KETCHA." One guy said "I think it's native or something." The ceremony only had a few drips but then it poured for a little bit and then drizzled the rest of the night. Camp Ketcha would be a fun venue to shoot with better weather. Lot's of space to run around. Fort Williams was great as always. The rain made this a very pleasant, almost sleepy wedding.
This week will be a little crazy. I have a massive real estate shoot in New Hampshire and an engagement session at The Nubble on Friday, a hometown wedding on Saturday (shooting with Lilly again!), and two engagement shoots on Sunday. The week after that I will have my first and only Bar Harbor trip of the year! Apologies to my car. You can rest soon, I promise.