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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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’ve finally figured out why I let myself get so behind on blogging images. It has major perks… well sort of. So, maybe it has more like one perk. You see Heather and Freddy have long since been married, but hey I couldn’t just ignore their engagement session. That perk I was talking about, well getting to show off one of the cool products they picked out to show off these photographs.

Last year was the first year that I offered guest books to my clients. While it is a no brainer product for wedding guest books, it doesn’t stop there. Seniors, these are perfect for your graduation receptions, moms to be could use the images from your maternity sessions for your guest book at your baby shower and even in those first weeks as your new baby’s first visitors stop by.

Now, I think I’ve already held these pictures up long enough, so without further ado…

You may notice a theme…

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When Mitch and I made yet another move last year, it left me with the decison to do my photography full time or keep it part time and find a different job out here. The more I thought about it, I couldn’t justify having a day job that I didn’t love and a weekend job that I did. So, I made the leap and commited what seems to be every waking hour to this little photography business. I did decide though to throw on a little part time bartending job at Parkview Field. Why not? If Mitch was going to be down there most nights, I may as well have done the same thing and brought in a little spending cash, right? Thanks to the crazy business that August has brought me, I did end up leaving that part time job, but before I did I met this cute little blonde.

Back in April I bundled up and headed down to the field for orientation. I was lucky to have one familiar face in my friend Jamie there, but quickly found another in Leaha. I knew that we were going to have a fun summer working together and thought that was probably about it. However, a couple of days later she mentioned that she was going to get married in August. So, I have this adorable, bubbly little blonde that is super fun to be around, who is also getting married. If you think I hesitated for one second to give her my card and tell her that my “real” job is photography, you’d be crazy!

Tomorrow is Leaha and Ryan’s big day, so I wanted to get a full post of their engagement images up before I had wedding ones to put up (sneak peek was here). When we were getting ready to take these, I think Ryan was a little nervous that I was going to have him skipping through a meadow or something goofy like that. Then, there was Leaha who was so excited and ready for these pictures that you’d think she was a seasoned pro in front of the camera. Luckily, I didn’t make them skip and they even had a couple beers.

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Being able to shoot two people that are in love is pretty much a dream come true for me. You see, I am and have always been a total romantic sap. I will 99% of the time choose a chick flick over anything else. A good engagement story will quite easily make my day. Heck, back in my dating days I tended to give all the wrong guys an extra chance (or twelve) with the thought that love conquered everything. Now, there are few days that I don’t just stop and wonder how I got so lucky to find Mitch. For those of you that are my polar opposites on this one, I can only imagine how many times I just made you roll your eyes.

The end of July I made my very first trip to Lafayette, Indiana to shoot Jessi and Daniel’s engagement pictures. The fact that I made it there alive is a small miracle. Suffice it to say that I no longer blindly follow my trusty GPS. Once I made it there though, I finally met these two and they were exactly what I had pictured from Jessi’s emails and phone calls. The entire session they were looking out for each other, and just so totally in love. The first time I asked them to kiss you should’ve seen how excited Daniel was, as if he needed my permission!

Before we actually started shooting, they took me to the church that they’re going to be married in and a couple of locations they had in mind for wedding pictures. Jessi was just absolutely glowing as she shot off a few ideas she had in mind. I can’t tell you how excited I was after leaving that night. Besides the obvious reason of me being a sucker for a good couple, this is the main reason I include an engagement session with my wedding packages. I feel like I know these two so much better now and even got to see exactly what they have envisioned for their big day. Now, I don’t feel like I’ll just be some photographer showing up on their wedding day.

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to get images up on here, but just haven’t had time to sit down and write everything that I want. So, instead the post gets put off. Well, not today! This is short and sweet on the words (there will be more for their full post), but I have to get out the door, so here are the images you came here for!

Oh, and Leaha and Ryan get a bonus sneak peek image because of my lack of writing!

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