Josh’s Seattle Senior Photography Session at Gas Works Park and the Arboretum

This session with Josh was a bit last minute.  His mom Cheryl had been given my name by the mother of another student who I had photographed, and Josh needed to have his photo turned in to the yearbook in about 10 days.  To make it trickier, I already had two other senior sessions scheduled for the day that Josh was available.  Fortunately the other sessions were not until noon, so we were able to arrange to meet in the morning and still have enough time for a complete session.

Gas Works Park

We met at Gas Works Park at 9AM, and thankfully the weather was very cooperative with mostly sunny skies.  Not at all what you can plan on in Seattle this time of the year!  We wanted to spend time at both Gas Works and the Arboretum, so we had to move pretty quickly.

We also lucked out that there were not too many other people at Gas Works when we started our session.  Often on a nice Saturday in the winter all of the parks will be jammed with people trying to spend some time outside.  Maybe we were just early enough to beat the crowds.

Because we had limited time we concentrated on just a couple of areas rather than doing a thorough tour of the park, as I would normally do during a photo session.  Josh had some great ideas for some of his photos, but the low sun angle made things a bit tricky since shooting straight into a bright sun can be somewhat problematical.  Wouldn’t you know that a sunny winter day would turn out to be a mixed blessing!  We did some experimenting and managed to come up with photos that Josh was happy with, in spite of the bright sun.

Washington Arboretum

Next it was time to head for the Arboretum.  Pretty close, only about a 10 minute drive.  But it was now after 10AM and Seattleites had realized that it was a nice day, and they’d better get outdoors to take advantage of it.  This meant that when we reached the Arboretum all of the parking lots seemed to be filled.  We had caravaned from Gas Works, with me following Cheryl and Josh.  Once we reached the Arboretum we drove our cars slowly through each parking lot, hoping for one of the elusive parking spots.  Finally we spotted a car getting ready to leave and I took the spot while Josh got out of his car, leaving Cheryl to keep circling while we got some photos.

Josh had also brought along his dog, a very friendly Yellow Labrador, and once Cheryl found a parking spot she brought the dog to join us.  We were able to get some fun shots with the dog before it was time for me to go and locate my next client.

Here are a few photos of my session with Josh.