Indianapolis Family Photographer | Indianapolis Family Photography

While visiting Michigan recently, I had a chance to reconnect with an old friend and get her and her adorable family in front of the lens. First, a little backstory…

I met Lacey shortly after moving to Michigan when I was 12. My family attended a church in town and I was involved in the youth program and classes each week. I met Lacey there and then later played on a softball team with her (or did we coach? … I can’t remember anymore). Our families only lived maybe a mile apart and we spent a lot of time together in middle school and into high school. I believe it was our sophomore year when Andrew and Lacey started dating… if my memory recalls correctly, I believe it was the Homecoming Dance? The rest is history… sort of. 😉

Lacey and Andrew went away to two different schools after high school but kept in touch. Ironically, Lacey and I ended up living only about a 1/4 mile apart in our adult lives – her in a condo and I in an apartment. We continued to see each other – Tiger’s games and concerts (oh I will never forget the Michael Bublé concert) were just our thing. 🙂 Lacey and Andrew kept in touch, and just like it was always meant to be, ended up back together again, now married with their two furry kids.

I always get more nervous and excited to photograph families when it’s like a mini-reunion simultaneously. You’d think I’d be less nervous (yes, I get nervous with every shoot… any photographer will admit this with enough probing… we put a lot of pressure on ourselves!) when I know the people, but nope! During the day leading up to this session I probably checked the weather report and radar about 42 times, actually walked outside to look for patches of blue sky and sun about 31 times, and may or may not have texted Lacey weather reports every few minutes when we were within 30-45 minutes of the session start time.

I arrived to the session location early to get a feel for how wet the grounds were going to be – it had been on and off POURING all day (not to mention the day before). It wasn’t too bad, and there was even a clearing in the clouds! So I ventured out onto this little hill to snap a test photo and – low and behold – the skies opened up on me and it started POURING. I wrapped my camera in my sweater and sprinted for the car in the fourth-grade-fireman-boots I snagged from home.

This continued up until the start of our session. We sat in our cars and chatted for the first few minutes and then figured what-the-heck. Might as well go for it since we’re all here and ready… we can always reschedule if we get rained out! And we didn’t.

It misted for the first 10 minutes of the session and then it stopped. Well, stopped until we got in our cars and were pulling out to go home… then it opened up again. 😉

Pre or post stormy weather is always my favorite for lighting – it’s so moody. So naturally, I’m incredibly happy with how these images turned out. I only wish it hadn’t been misting or rainy to make it more comfortable for everyone involved! I don’t think the dogs minded one bit, though, and were actually quite pleased to get out of the house for the evening.

Tip for photographers: When photographing dogs as part of a session, have the owners bring along someone who can get the dog’s attention, bribe them, and hold them when you want photos sans-dogs. While I’ve done this in the past, I didn’t do it for this session and it worked out, regardless, but I won’t always get so lucky.

All in all, I left the session, yet again, feeling like I just spent the last hour and a half juts hanging out with friends. I would want photography to feel any other way for me and hope my client’s feel the same when they leave their session, too.

Back to Indy I go!

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casey and her camera is an Indianapolis Family Photographer specializing in family, couple, lifestyle, senior, and wedding photography for Indianapolis and the surrounding areas.