Rachel’s Senior Photo Session at Kerry Park and Seattle Center

This high-school senior photo session was a bit different than what I normally do.  Rachel is not a Seattle area resident.  She is not even from Washington state.  She came here all the way from Napa Valley in CA!

Two years ago I had a senior photo shoot with Rachel’s older sister Natalie.  They were planning to travel to Seattle, and thought it would be fun to take Natalie’s senior photos somewhere different.  They located me online, liked my work and called me to set up a session.  You can see Natalie’s Senior Photo Session by clicking on this link.

Everyone loved Natalie’s photos, and way back last September I heard from her mom (Karen) that they wanted to have me take Rachel’s senior photos as well.  Of course, Covid has made a mess out of so many things that they were trying to figure out exactly when they would be in Seattle.  Once they got their Seattle dates figured out we planned our session, with the caveat that the weather in Seattle in the fall was a lot less predictable than in Napa, so we might have to do some last minute rescheduling if the weather chose not to cooperate with our plans.

On the planned day the weather was classic Seattle autumn – overcast with a good chance of rain!  We met at Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill to start the session, and things were actually pretty good.  Lots of clouds, with what looked like rain far off to the southwest, but nice and dry where we were.

As we were just starting our session a man walked into the park with his St. Bernard puppy.  Rachel is an animal lover (and who could NOT love a cute puppy!) and went over to pet the pup.  I asked Rachel if she wanted some photos with the pup if it was OK with his owner.  He thought that was fine, so we got a few fun shots with Rachel holding this rather large pup, one of which you’ll see below.

We spent about a half hour at Kerry, then moved down the street to Parson’s Garden to get some different looks.  By now the weather was starting to look pretty ominous, and while it was not yet truly raining it was definitely spitting!  Our original plan had been to go from Queen Anne to Golden Gardens, but it was also getting windy and looked like the body of the storm was heading right toward Golden Gardens.  Not conducive to a fun photo session!

So we decided that instead we would just drive down the hill to the nearby Seattle Center, where even if it rained I knew of several spots where we could still take photos.  This worked out really well.  The weather system passed us by, and we had a lot of fun exploring the Center while taking photos.  Neither Rachel or Karen had even been to the Center, and I have been there at least a hundred times, so I was able to both show them around and tell them a bit of the history of the Center.

Enough of my babbling!  Please look at the photos below.  We took a lot more than this, but at least it should give you a feel for our session.