You guys! I have a funny behind-the-scenes story for you. I seriously love sharing the struggles and challenges of what my mom and I face when doing most of our shoots because we have gotten to the point where we literally just crack up laughing at ourselves. It’s sort of expected for things to go wrong for us. We joke around saying that we have the worst luck and we wonder who has the bad karma, me or her. Maybe both? Haha. I think we have to find it humorous otherwise we will drive ourselves crazy. Plus, things like this always end up making the best kind of memories. I will never forget this day and whenever I see these photos, I will remember what happened. It makes me appreciate what we do that much more.
Over the weekend my mom had this really cool idea to take a mini road trip out to Bushkill Falls in Pennsylvania. Her and my father went there together back in the 70s and she thought it would be fun to go with me and do a shoot there for July 4th, hence my red, white & blue themed outfit. We are really trying to push ourselves more creatively and play around with different scenery and locations. I checked it out online and instantly said YES! The photos were stunning and I couldn’t wait to check it out for myself. This was such a spur of the moment trip that we didn’t end up taking the hour and a half drive until late in the afternoon. It’s set up so that you can choose from several different trails that take you all around the falls. Each trail takes a certain amount of time to get through and you need at least 2 hours to really see the whole place. There were tons of bridges and steep steps and let’s just say I did not have on proper footwear. I didn’t expect it to be a mini hike, otherwise I would have worn sneakers!
The plan was to take photos first and then go about the trails to see as much as we could. Despite what you see in these pictures, the place was jam-packed! In order to get only me in the shot, we had to wait awhile and let a bunch of people pass us by. This went on for a bit and definitely took up a lot of our time. Lighting was not the best (thank you Lightroom) and since the 85mm lens is not meant for landscape shots, it was a little challenging for us to capture the vision that we both had.
After only being there for maybe 45 minutes tops and not getting to venture out too much into the falls, it started to rain out of nowhere. At first it was just a drizzle so we figured it would pass by. We kept walking further out in the trail. Then all of a sudden it started to downpour. You guys, it was legit torrential rain. We had no umbrella, nothing to cover ourselves with and we were nowhere near the exit. We couldn’t run back because we would have literally fallen (damn flip flops) and hurt ourselves so we had to take our time navigating our way back through all the bridges and all of the steps to climb our way up to the top. My poor mom was wearing white leggings. Our hair and entire bodies were completely drenched. I couldn’t help myself and I just burst out laughing. Then my mom started laughing. People were trying to hide and cover themselves and there’s my mom and I just standing in the rain completely hysterical. It was like one of those scenes from a movie where you see someone open up their arms and look up to the sky while the rain washes over them. I did that. haha. It was seriously one of those moments where instead of feeling defeated I felt a sense of release. I don’t know how to explain it. Our trip was obviously cut short at that point and my mom had to buy a t-shirt for the hour and a half ride back home. (memories!)
I catch myself getting stressed out and overwhelmed when things don’t go as planned or when I have a vision that I can’t bring to life. I hate that feeling. This time, it was the complete opposite. I felt like it was a sign for me to just take it easy and stop being so hard on myself. Things happen that we have no control over and we just need to learn to accept this. The only thing that we can control is our reactions. I could have easily gotten so upset that we took the drive, paid to get in, got rained on and our trip was cut short. Instead, I decided to just embrace and accept. There is a freeing feeling about that.
I honestly don’t think I can imagine experiencing these moments with anyone other than my mom. They have more meaning and they’re more memorable because they happen with her. We really have become quite the team and I give her so much credit for taking on all of these adventures with me. I know it’s not always easy. Actually, it’s never easy. We were joking around saying that this is what we get for trying to be more creative. Haha. In all seriousness though, there is always a story behind the photos that you see. If I never shared this on my insta-stories (hopefully you saw it!) or wrote about it here on the blog you probably would have had no idea what happened. Those “picture perfect” moments are never actually perfect, even if they appear to be. This is why I’ll always be transparent and continue to share the struggles, not just the success. Despite the setbacks, we still enjoyed ourselves and I’m so happy we took that drive out to PA. It was fun to explore another area, even if only for a little while.
We somehow managed to get these photos thanks to my incredible mother! When we left we really had no idea if any of them came out good. I love that we did this shoot in Pennsylvania since the Declaration of Independence was signed right there in Philadelphia. It gave it even more significance. We would love to go back before summer ends, but this time we will be more prepared and I’ll leave the camera at home! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this story as well as the photos. Hopefully it gave you a laugh. Wishing all of you a very Happy July 4th! ❤️
-Get The Look-
Top Social media