Part of my branding, obviously, is that I LOVE to capture pictures that are unique and sometimes this means traveling to different locations to do so. Most of the time it’s St. Louis because it’s only an hour away, but sometimes I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit cities that are further away such as Chicago, and coming this December, Las Vegas. 🙂 I had an engagement session schedule to happen in Chicago and I thought to myself how cool it would be to capture another session or two. I knew that Ashley had another session coming up and I thought I would check with her and see if this would be something she’d be interested in, she of course was very much so. I had no idea, but Ashley is hoping to go to school up in Chicago… not sure her parents share that same excitement though. 😉 We scheduled her session for the night before my engagement session up there, just so I would have time to settle in and be able to breath a little between the two sessions. Chicago is probably my least favorite city to driving in, and I’ve driven through New York City before and I would much rather drive there than Chicago. So I needed this time to calm my nerves a little because I don’t like to waste time driving, and when it takes 45 minutes to drive one mile (yes, it happened right before Ashley’s shoot) I start to feel my inner “Hulk” wanting to unleash. HA
We had perfect weather for the shoot. It was a little warm, but I’ll take an 88 degree day over 105 any day. Ashley was great to work with as well, especially with such a large audience. Sessions in large cities really requires a special personality because you have thousands of people all around and you’ve just got to drown them out and forget about all those eyes that are on you. Ashley had that personality for sure and this was one of the reasons I asked her if she’d be interested in this shoot and one of the reasons she is an ambassador for us as well. She did great through at every location, we were able to capture everything from fun pictures to more dramatic fashion-style of pictures. And the locations we hit up were equally as awesome. Going to larger cities is always super fun because you have so many possibilities all within a block of each other, but something I try and push myself to do is to not capture all the typical spots for photography. Doing this really makes your pictures look touristy and I definitely don’t want that. Sure it’s Chicago, but I do want the pictures to be unique even when I’m in a city about four hours away.
Don’t get me wrong, we got some skyline pictures, I mean, it’s Chicago… but for the most part I want people to see these pictures and not even realize where Ashley is at, and I think for the most part we accomplished that.
This was just a test shot for my lighting, but it’s one of those accidental shots that ends up being one of my favorites. 🙂
