29 Apr Daffodil Field Sunrise
Disorientated and groggy-eyed, I woke up to my cell phone beeping at me at 4:30am on Saturday morning. A VERY early morning… the price you pay if you want to get in a sunrise shoot. Considering I got less than 5 hours of sleep, I could have felt much worse. I was just hoping that my blurry vision would clear before we started to shoot and the models were fairing better than I.
I drove down early to the fields to scout out a location. For those PNW’ers who don’t know, the month of April is the tulip festival in the Skagit Valley and it is crazy with people all over the place, so my choice of location would unfortunately have to be last minute. The sunrise shoot would be our only short window of time to find a field of flowers that wouldn’t have the horizon littered with people. Rolling by the fields, there were already armies of photogs getting ready for the sun to crest. One thing separated me from the rest, 4 models in prom dresses and a car FULL of gear. Where their focus were the flowers, I simply needed mother nature to accent my models. Thousands of flowers and photographers shoulder to shoulder all getting the same picture, my 4 flowers were a one-of-a-kind bouquet wrapped in beautiful fabric – Kim, Lisa, Anna, and Myrriah.
I finally found a lonesome daffodil field with not one other person roaming it. I quickly parked and threw up my lights to mark my territory, and I gave any newcomers who could mess up my clean background the stink-eye. The models and hair/makeup crew all found the location fine and prepared for the shoot. Thanks to all of the crew for the great job, it’s hard to make models look good that early in the morning (credits below). My good friend and director, Andrew Lahmann, was also in attendance, video documenting the shoot. We will have a video out shortly of the weekend’s events.
I first shot the models individually, then as a group. They all did a great job, each bringing their own style. This was my first time shooting Kim and Anna, and they instantly performed for the camera. It was a fairly brisk morning, especially if you happened to be covered just with a dress. All the girls were freezing but masked it very well when it was time for the flash to fire.
This was one of two shoots I had planned for the models that day, so we ran through this shoot fairly quickly so the girls didn’t get too tortured by the cold. We wrapped the shoot and called a couple hour break before we would head back up to Bellingham to shoot at the Lairmont Manor. I’m hoping to have those photos processed and up on the site tomorrow, along with another post, so keep checking back!
SHOOT CREDITS:
Production Assist/Video work: Andrew Lahmann
Models: Kimberly Couture, Anna White, Myrriah Train, Lisa
Hair/Makeup Supervisor: Dana Miller
Hair/Makeup Artists: Eva Furler, Katie Inman, Sharon Guzman