Morning Beach Sessions, Dead Car Batteries and McGriddles
Let me just start by saying I am no means a morning person. I will absolutely wake up when I need to wake up, I am not the kind of person that can snooze several times. Once my alarm clock goes off, I’m up. But I am not excited about being up early. Unless it’s for a shoot.
I met Natalie in November through my friend who told me Natalie was looking to get her holiday card photos done for 2024. I am not sure what was in the water the second half of 2024 but my turn around times were insanely fast. Normally I have a normal session delivered within 2-3 weeks, but the last 6 months I’ve been doing 1 week turn around and my clients and I have been loving it.
So with the short notice of booking Natalie I felt the need to get her photos shot and edited as soon as possible while still maintaining my level of expectation for how I like my edits to look. Natalie and I agreed on a location in North County San Diego on the beach, between Encinitas and Carlsbad beaches. And we also agreed to an early morning session, 8am on Veterans Day which was a Monday that year. I convinced my husband Miko, who is also not a big morning person, to come with me. Since becoming pregnant Miko has not hesitated to come with me to my shoots and to hold my heavy camera bag because in his words “there’s bricks in it”. I also bribed him with breakfast at Shorehouse Kitchen in Carlsbad if he came with me lol.
At 7am Miko and I got into my Jeep and when I started it, we noticed it sounded… odd. But didn’t think much of it as we drove to the coast to photograph Natalie and her husband and son. We arrived at the beach on the cool November morning, met with the family of three and the shoot began!
Morning sessions are so great, with a different kind of goldish lighting but also bright and creamy. The crowds are nonexistent and I usually check the tide charts to make sure to avoid high tides.
After we said our goodbyes to Natalie and her family we got back into my Jeep to go to breakfast. And that weird sound we had heard earlier was actually the battery. It was dead and my Jeep did not want to start and we were stuck on the PCH. Luckily beach folk are really nice and it took about 5 seconds for someone to offer us a jump. My battery was so dead it took about 20 minutes of the jumper cables being hooked up to it for it to get a sufficient enough charge to finally start. So we ended up skipping Shorehouse Kitchen, went to McDonalds for breakfast and then autozone to get a new battery. Don't worry, I took Miko to Shorehouse Kitchen a couple months later and he loved it.
IG: @bybelenphoto