So, there are always surprises when I am doing a photo shoot. Always. Some are obvious and some not so obvious, until I pull the images into my editing software. Last Tuesday, I shot a family shoot during the Golden Hour of a late summer day. We spent an hour and a half walking wooded trails and open fields capturing a family of four. The two brothers, Drake and Evan, followed their mom & dad with their grandfather's walking sticks. It truly was a beautiful evening. Towards the end of the night, I wanted "just. one. more." photo of Drake by himself next to a tree in the open field. He decided to cooperate with me, mainly because the thought of his Blue Moon ice cream reward was too tempting. So, I positioned Drake against the tree and began to focus on my camera settings when I noticed that his eyes got really, really BIG. Take a look at the photos and read more about what happened...
Nope, there is not a photo of Drake by himself against that tree. Not one single picture. After I noticed that his eyes got really BIG, he screamed, "SNAKE!". Trying to decide if this was a creative ploy to get out of "just. one. more." photo, I decided to give the courtesy glance to humor him. As I tuned into my surroundings and peered down, I heard a rattle by my feet- the same rattle that cued Drake to the snake's presence. There it was, black and yellow in all of it's glory and upset that we were intruding in it's habitat. I screamed like a baby and ran down the trail. Classy, I know. So, the jury is still out if what we saw was a Michigan Rattle Snake or a Michigan Fox Snake (both can rattle their tails and are often mistaken for each other). Either way, I guess, it's a good thing that I am an LLC because that snake was certainly not happy that we were trespassing on his territory.