Saturday morning I photographed a wedding at Log Haven up Millcreek canyon. The weather was perfect, the setting was beautiful and the event even started on time, it was what seemed to be the start of a perfect day.
But, let's not speak too soon...shooting outside up the canyon has it's consequences. About half way through the shoot I was wandering around outside, snapping candids when suddenly I got a very sharp pain in my neck and I realized I had just got stung by a bee on the job. I'm not terribly allergic but I do swell like you wouldn't believe. I got stung in elementary school by stepping on a bee and my toe swelled up so bad I couldn't wear shoes. Sure enough, a few short moments later the spot on my neck swelled up so bad that you'd think I got hit by a softball or something and had a giant welt. So I asked the manager on duty if they had some ice and Benadryl to help with the swelling. After rumaging around for a bit she was able to find some form of Benadryl like medicine. So I took that and kept on working. It worked like a charm as only a few minutes later the swelling decreased dramatically and it no longer bothered me. However, it did have it's side affects. Just about as quickly as the swelling stopped, the drowsiness kicked in. Fortunately I only had about an hour left til I was done, unfortunately I had another shoot to get to.
My second shoot wasn't for another hour or so, so after the wedding I went home and was able to get in a quick nap before I had to head out to my second shoot, which was a portrait session at Murray Park. I mentioned that the weather that morning had been perfect, however as the day went on, dark clouds started rolling in and the wind picked up substantially. When it was time to get up and go to my shoot, I was so tired from the allergy medicine that it was all I could do to get myself out of bed. As luck would have it, as soon as I arrived at Murray Park it started to rain, if it had started an hour earlier, I could've saved us all some time, rescheduled the shoot, and caught a few more z's. But, since we were down there, I thought we'd try and wait it out, but there wasn't a patch of blue sky to be seen and the longer we waited, the harder it rained. Needless to say, we decided to reschedule the shoot for the next day, in hopes that the weather would be better. I rarely shoot on Sundays but it was an extended family portrait session and everyone but one lived out of State and was leaving the next day. So we crossed our fingers, rescheduled for Sunday morning and hoped for the best.
Fortunately Sunday brought me better luck as the weather was perfect and we were able to get in plenty of photos before they had to take off on their long drive home. You can't always win and with this job you have to be prepared because sometimes you just never know what's going to happen. I guess Saturday was just one of those days.
