Photo Shoot During Break in the Storm

It's one of the oldest clichés around: You have to play the cards you are dealt. It’s also an uncompromising truth … especially for the photographer. Such was the case this past Monday with Dawn, Kelly, and daughters. Dawn had set up this shoot, working around various schedules with her family and myself. We had come to decide on Monday, possibly the only day we’d be able to fit it in with the hectic schedules we all had. Well, God, in His inscrutable wisdom, decided to park a tropical depression over northern Florida and send rain-band after rain-band our way that Columbus Day weekend.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity and following the advice of many photographers who have had tremendous photos come from, not despite, horrendous weather, I kept an eye on the radar and decided to push through.

Thankfully, no rain spoiled our day. The wind, on the other hand was nearly catastrophic. Wind played havoc with my subjects’ hair, even surprising me by ending up blurred on some shots due to the low light (necessitating slower shutter speed). Wind also destroyed my ability to use flash lighting during this cloudy day. I had a shoot-through umbrella positioned camera-left on my first site. After a few frames to nail the flash stop setting, a wind gust took my stand, flash, and umbrella parasailing across Forsythe Park. In the melee, my radio sync receiver was broken and with no back-up, my ability to use flash was gone.
Despite these challenges, I managed to use natural light to get enough decent shots to satisfy.

This shoot taught me some valuable lessons:

1. Always treat every challenge as an opportunity.

2. Savannah, especially Forsyth Park, is so much more photogenic when overcast, than when subjected to harsh sunlight.

3. When dealing with low-light, don’t forget to change your ISO to a higher setting to avoid blurry movement.

4. Never use Aperture-Priority mode with moving subjects!!! Made that mistake when shooting the family walking through the park (through various levels of shade). The A-Priority mode submarined my shutter speed and ruined many shots because of blurred movement.

5. Be grateful for Photoshop and a modicum of post-processing ability.