There’s nothing better than having a session where that person or that couple makes it personal. Sure, I can pick out a pretty location and you’ll get pretty images. However, if say you and your fiance’ love baseball, wouldn’t it be even better if you did your engagement session at a ballpark? If you guys go out boating each weekend, wouldn’t it be better to take your engagement photos out at the lake and even on your boat?

When I first met with Ricky and Natalie and they brought up that they’re both huge baseball fans and would love to do their session at a ballpark, I immediately saw 7’s line up and heard the victorious sounds of a slot machine ringing jackpot! It isn’t exactly a secret that Mitch works in baseball and that I love it. To say that it’s a way of life for us, might be a drastic understatement. Being the photo nerd that I am, whenever I’d be down at the field I’d see different spots and think that gosh someday I’d love to have a session of us done down here, and do this, and go here, and do that. So, having a couple that feels the same way and that I can give that to was pretty spectacular.

By the way, this ended up being a two day session. However, it wasn’t planned out that way. We had been trying to nail down a date for a couple of months, but between Ricky’s travel schedule for work, my crazy wedding schedule, and needing an open night at the field, we just couldn’t seem to get together. There was finally a Friday towards the end of June where we thought we had it! Ricky and Natalie drove up to Fort Wayne from Indianapolis, we had been shooting for maybe a half hour when the skies turned black, the wind kicked up, and the tornado sirens even went off. Being married to a groundskeeper, I know how to obsessively check the weather. I have probably five different weather sites bookmarked. All day Friday I was continually refreshing those pages and crossing my fingers. With those two driving a couple hours for our session, I most definitely didn’t want them to come up only to get rained out. Wouldn’t you know that all day the radar and hourly predictions were completely clear of anything but clouds. However, when the humidity is as ridiculously high as it was storms will literally just pop up out of nowhere.

So, there we were in Mitch’s shop (the closest place we could get for protection) trying to make a new game plan. I completely figured, and understood that what we had gotten would probably be all we would get. I was bummed. Here was this awesome couple that I could finally share all of my baseball field photo plans with, and it was over before it began. At least that’s what I thought, and then Natalie and Ricky totally surprised me by saying that they’d drive up the next night to finish the session, no problem. If I were the type to do cartwheels, I would have been doing them all over the field in the rain.

Their Saturday evening drive was well worth it. We had a beautiful evening, beautiful light, and thanks to it being the weekend before the Midwest League All Star Game, Mitch had the field looking especially spectacular and we even got to use the LED boards thanks to video guru Allan working late to complete his to do list.

Oh yeah, they’re pretty awesome too! I can’t tell you how many of these shots I didn’t prompt at all!

See those skies? Yeah, about this time I was praying that it was all bark and no bite.

About 10 seconds after this shot we started a sprint to Mitch’s shop where we all ate lots of dirt thanks to the fab wind.

Oh, and one last exciting little tid-bit about the awesome Natalie and Ricky. Their engagement session was recently featured on Project Bride.

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Oh boy, I think that my maid needs to be fired after seeing all of the dust collecting around here! As you can probably guess, the wedding season and traveling combined have kind of kicked my butt. I’ve still been pretty good about getting images up on the Anna Lynch McClary Photography Facebook Page though. The ironic part is that I’m poking my head in here just to let everyone know that I’m jumping on another airplane tomorrow and will be out of reach for a few days. The next couple of weeks I get to travel to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Colorado, and even make a stop in Nebraska for weddings and senior sessions. I’m going to miss my bed and my kitties, but it should be a good time filled with lots of great photo opps.

Oh, and when I return, I vow to be a better blogger. To show my seriousness, here is one image from each of the sessions that I shared on Facebook today.

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I mentioned the other day how crazy my travel schedule is shaping up to be through this month and next. I’ve noticed that I’m doing a lot of Facebook posting and not necessarily blogging, mostly because I can do it quickly (or at least quicker than blogging). Because of that I just realized that I never posted up my Colorado trips on here, but did only did on Facebook. Let this act as a little motivator to like Anna Lynch McClary Photography’s Facebook Page so you’re in the know when I go through these phases. The trips have booked up pretty quickly, my June 9-15 trip only has two morning (we’re talking crack of dawn, during the beautiful morning light right after sunrise) sessions on the 11th and 14th open. My July trip of July 24-Aug 1 only has morning or evening sessions available on the 28th and 30th. If you want in, I recommend not waiting and contacting me through the “Contact ALM” button up above.

Now, this sneak peek was posted up already, on the Facebook Page, where else?! But, I figured that I should share the love over here on the old bloggity blog. Matt and Leslie were my first wedding of the year back in the beginning of May. They had a beautiful outdoor wedding up in Lafayette, Colorado at the Lionsgate Event Center’s Gatehouse. You’ll get more of a story on Matt and Leslie when I do their full post, but for now this will just have to do!

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Over the past month wedding season has kicked in and a crazy schedule has kicked off. Somehow this year, my wedding schedule is split exactly in  half. With May, June and July mostly back west and August, September, and October mostly in Indiana. So, if you’re ever looking for me, your best bet is probably either Fort Wayne Internationl, Denver International, or on a plane. During last week’s trip back I squeezed in a Friday night engagement session with Bri and Braden.

You might say that I jinxed the day when I tweeted how beautiful it was the morning. It was absolutely gorgeous that afternoon, too. Then, about 15 minutes before our session was supposed to start a nice 30 mph wind kicked in. We took cover as much as we could, but I could not deny one of the locations that I scouted out. So they both totally bucked up and probably braced themselves for each gust. Not only did we have the wind to deal with, but because I had so much fun downtown, we were running out of light quicker than I could shoot. Here’s just a few sneak peek shots, but you’ll be seeing the full post soon and come the end of July their wedding images.

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I guess I can’t officially say goodbye, but the school year is definitely winding down and rather quickly. My days have been filled with a couple last minute senior sessions, grad card designs, and getting the Class of 2011 info put together. How it’s that time of year already absolutely floors me! Here is a little peek at a few images from Rachel’s session (who by the way is pretty dang cool) the other day.

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My season kicks into full swing this week with seniors and engagement sessions and my wedding season starts next week. I’m so looking forward to getting back into the groove of things and hustle and bustle, but I was not expecting to start it off in the hole. Last week, out of nowhere (after spending the previous week out of the office) the flu got a hold of me. So that to do list that wasn’t all that intimidating is now looking a little scarier. I’m behind on emails right now, so if you’re waiting on one, know that I’m not ignoring you. Now, let’s not let this blog sit empty and unrefreshed for another day.

Brady took me fishing in his friend’s pond and out around the farm last fall.

Honking his horn of course!

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If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had someone say, “I wish I had known about you when we got married,” I’d probably be out shopping right now, trying to figure out where I’m going to spend all of this money at. Instead I usually stand there and want to scream back, “But you know me NOW!”

Most couples, at least the couples that I photograph, get how important wedding photography is. After all, when the day has come and gone, the flowers are dead and your food is gone, you’re only going to have your wedding images. However, you really can be photographed professionally again in your life. You don’t even have to wait until you have kids or hit that next milestone. So many couples are fantastic about making sure that they have beautiful wedding images that they can pass down for decades to come, but then they don’t have any beautiful images of themselves again for years until they have kids and decide to get their family photo done, and then there are some who don’t even do that.

Then there are those other couples who either tried to save a buck on their wedding photographer and got back images that they were less than happy about, or in Fort Wayne I’ve heard of quite a few couples, who to this day haven’t received ANY images from their wedding (I’m talking years later). Those two situations are a real bummer, and while you aren’t ever going to be able to have a redo on the moments of your wedding day, you can at least still get some awesome images of you and your husband or wife.

My point though, you really don’t have to have a reason to have a session! I know that’s just crazy talk to some people, but I promise you that in 60 years when you, your spouse, or your kids are going back through photos and they come across these images of just you two, that you and they will be sooooo incredibly happy that you didn’t wait around for a reason. Oh, and p.s. I also have a payment plan available, so you can get rid of that excuse.

Email me at anna@annalynchmcclary.com today! No more excuses, don’t wait until tomorrow, I love shooting couples and we always have fun during those fun and relaxed sessions. Here are just a few of my favorite non-wedding day couples shots.

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