Evening photo shoot, or the pursuit of a very dangerous hobby

I thought I had a senior shoot tonight. It had to get rescheduled. Pooh.


I was looking forward to it. I happen to know this senior very well since she works with me. She's been on my teen advisory board at the library for the past six years. She was on the very first teen board we had. And now she's graduating. And I get to do her senior pics. 


But not tonight. 


Luckily, I had planned on doing E's shoot with some other friends, so I still got to go out shooting. I had two models willing to shoot with me and another photographer, the lovely Mrs. M from A New Birth.


Guess who one of my models was?


It was Tay from Time with Tay.


As I said to Mrs M, I don't know what I like better, shooting photos or hanging out with friends and laughing until your cheeks hurt. Tonight I got to do both.

We headed out to the lake.


We traipsed up and down steep banks, until we got to the water where we wanted to be. As Mrs M and I were stumbling clinging to the vines growing out of the bank, gingerly and gracefully working our way down the muddy, narrow path to the water, we commented on how strong the vines were.


I hope they're not poison ivy, I say. No, they can't be. They don't have three shiny leaves.


Like this? says Mrs M, pointing to plants full of groups of three shiny leaves that we were walking through.


Gulp. I better take a shower when I get home.

If there's any snakes in this grass, I'm outta here, said Tay, as I encouraged them to head back just a little bit further.


When I heard the word snake, I whipped my head around, got down off the the rock I was standing on and started to head back to the car.


Er, I forgot about the girls. Better check on them.


No, I didn't see a snake. I'm just saying, says Tay. Well, I'm with you on that one. Any snakes and we're all outta there.

Then I remembered that a bear had been spotted kind of, sort of in that general area.

And I remembered that P's mom said bears move fast. And cover lots of territory.

Gulp. Lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my.

That caused a few moments of concern. This is getting dangerous.

Mrs. M pointed out that we were making way too much noise for a bear to be around.

Aren't they gorgeous? I love taking photos of teenagers. They are such good models since they're very comfortable in front of the camera. I think that must be a by-product of all these cell phones having cameras on them and people taking pictures of one another ALL THE TIME.

Either way, it makes it very easy to work with them and their portraits are just fabulous.

When the pretty evening light left us, we headed home, full of fun memories and lots of beautiful photos.

Thanks, girls. Love, your mothers.

I had to show you this pretty tray I found thrifting yesterday. And the green vase. 

Love them.