I’ve known Addison’s uncle, Todd, for almost all my life. He’s a lifelong friend. We go spend time with him at his camp up in Pittsburg, NH a few times a year. We have dinner nights at his house. He remains one of my oldest friends.
When Addison was thinking about some Senior photographs, Todd gave his sister Kerri my contact info and she wanted to hire me. Awesome.
Our session was at their family cottage in Rye NH. It’s a tiny little cottage in a gorgeous area along the seacoast. It’s the only original cottage on the strip; all the rest of them have been torn down and rebuilt into these ridiculous waterfront monstrosities.
When I was in high school, we went to the cottage after our prom. There is grainy VHS video footage of 18 year old Sid running around the beach, climbing on the roof, pretending to fall off the rocks. Now, all these years later I’m going back again to photograph another generation of Todd’s family. How awesome is that.
Oh, look, a screenshot from that time:
We spent a better part of a day at the cottage with Addison and Kerri and the family. In fact, Kerri’s folks even stopped by who I hadn’t seen for many many years. It was great having lunch with Brian and Peggy. I’ve always felt at home with that whole family, so it was a great reunion.
We broke the session up into a few locations. We started around the cottage itself and along the rock wall that overlooks the ocean
The cottage is right on the water. I had her stand around on the rocks to get some really wide-angle portraits using the ocean as a background.
The sky was fantastic that day with lots of cloud cover. I absolutely love this image of Addison sitting on the rock wall looking off into the distance. Her outfits perfectly fit the location.
From there I moved her over to this large piece of driftwood that has been there for as long as I can remember. This was my top choice for a spot. Addison is a dancer and the second she contacted me about a session, this is what I wanted to do.
Everything went perfect
I love this shot. I love the light, I love her composition, I love the clouds - all of it. Once I got this photograph I knew we were “in the zone” and I had her change so we could get some portraits of her leaning against the base of this structure
This shot also includes the cottage in the background. To me it’s always been part of the family, so I wanted to be mindful to get a few portraits with it in the background.
We braked for dinner and sat around and caught up with everybody. As the sun started to go down, I had Addison put another one of her dancing outfits on and we went back out to the wood structure. I brought along a small backdrop that I wanted to try to set up behind her - kind of a frame within a frame. I had a longer shutter speed to drag the natural light in, and since I was going handheld (and using a flash) some of these are a tad out of focus or blurry, but that’s okay because I love the feel that they convey.
Everything went perfect for this session with Addison. It felt good to get on location again; since moving into the new studio at the Picker Artists building I haven’t had a chance to do a lot of location work and this stuff gets my blood pumping. The fact that I got to do this for a family very dear to me was the cherry on top.
I want to give my wife Sara a big thank you for assisting me for the day. Her job was to hold on to the light as we moved from location to location and making incremental steps as I got my exposure just right.
So, Sara, big props to you. You rock more than you can image
Big BIG thanks to Addison and her mom Kerri for hiring me.
Thanks to my buddy Todd for giving Kerri my contact info.
Thanks to the cottage for being there when I was 18, and now when I’m closing in on 50.
If you are reading this and you would like to produce portraits in this style, please contact me.