Well this might go down as one of the wildest engagement sessions I’ve shot. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the photos, but we ran into lots of crazy things in just the couple of hours we were together.

For starters it poured down rain on my ride downtown to meet Julie and John and amazingly it stopped raining as soon as I arrived. We took advantage of the break in the rain and started shooting at the Lurie Garden in Millenium Park. Unforunately due to the Blackhawks parade being that morning we ran into some issues with several areas being blocked off or closed. We went to the skywalk – closed. We went to the garden by the Art Institute – closed.

We were headed out of the park and witnessed a fist fight going down in the street. Within minutes it was a mess of police and ambulances – the perfect setting for engagement photos right?! Nothing says I love you like a guy laying in the middle of the street bleeding. Needless to say we got the heck out of there and away from all the drunken Hawks fans.

The next stop was Olive Park near Navy Pier. Of course it once again started raining on our way over. They did a quick outfit change and we ventured out between the rain. Olive park is generally open until 10ish (at least from my previous experiences) but for some reason we were kicked out by police at 8pm. I think by this point they thought I was lying about all these locations that I swear are normally open haha.

We headed down to the beach for a few last shots with some looming dark clouds. The beach was littered with trash from that days earlier activities which took some serious photoshop magic to clean up. And just as we were packing up it started pouring rain. We ran for cover as I tried to protect my gear . Unfortunately in park there aren’t a lot of great places to take cover. Luckily a gentlemen and his kids were nice enough to let us squeeze in under a covered bus stop for a few minutes with them. I usually don’t end sessions by ramming my couples in a 6 foot space with 3 strangers, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do! When I finally got in a cab to head home I was soaked from head to toe and the guy goes “Oh man – what have you been doing?”……. never what you want to hear from a cabbie because you know he sees all kinds of people all day.

Lesson of this session – Don’t plan on a session on the day of the Blackhawks parade and if you do hope that you get lucky enough to have amazing clients that will roll with the punches… literally!

Can’t wait for their wedding in September! Let’s hope it’s a little calmer!

We snuck a quick pic in by the ferris wheel at Navy Pier where John proposed!

Off to Olive Park 🙂