Saturday was an interesting morning.
The weather turned quite quickly from pink, fluffy clouds and blue skies to grey, mean clouds and greyer skies. KeeKee was our second shoot of the morning, and she was running late. While I am no stranger to mornings where I just can't seem to get anything right, where I forget things and have to turn around, where I am setting people behind, I get a little antsy when I'm not the person holding things up.
Normally, I wouldn't even be bothered by the lateness of others. I am pretty damn breezy, all things considered, and I know that I want people to be understanding and kind when I forget or run late, so I do my best to be understanding and kind when people are extra human. So when KeeKee said she was going to be 15 minutes late, I was inclined to brush it off and hope that she was overestimating her lateness. The only thing stopping me from not giving it a second thought was knowing how very busy Likeke gets after about 8:30am. Both Sande and KeeKee let me know they aren't shy, and a crowd wouldn't bother them, but I had two concerns about crowds: one, I can get very anxious when people are eyeballing me while I work. Letting you in on a little secret, I feel scrutinized when I know folks are watching me as I snap away. I've gotten far more used to it, since gorgeous merfolk tend to draw crowds even in the most secluded of locations, but it's still a bit unnerving. And perhaps most importantly, it doesn't feel ok to me to hog a place that people have come to enjoy and photograph.
Do I know for a fact that almost 100% of the people who hike to these places feel entitled to hog the spaces themselves until they're done playing around and photographing? My experiences have taught me that yes, I DO know that for a fact (there are exceptions to that rule, make no mistake). I don't feel right being like that, though. Nature isn't mine to commandeer, and I don't want to be THAT photographer.
ESPECIALLY because we wear our company name and website on shirts when we go shooting. Anybody that we rub the wrong way with our inconsiderate ways can blast us on social media, so I want to be as polite as possible. Not just for good optics, but because I'm a pretty polite person as a general rule.
Without even a hint of animosity when I say this, KeeKee ended up being closer to 40 minutes late. We hustled up to the falls, did the first shoot, and then it was KeeKee's turn!
KeeKee is absolutely stunning, so just sitting in the waterfall in the tail was an amazing look for her. But she really came to kill the game, and did so with panache. We were about 30 minutes into her set when a crowd of people whooshed in, as predicted. They were like a swarm of locusts descending upon us, and their numbers were massive. In the span of about...oh, five minutes, at least 30 people arrived.
So.
We snapped the last five photos, packed everything up, and hiked ourselves out. Sometimes, thems the breaks. It sucked to call the shoot short, and again, with absolutely NO JUDGEMENT or malice, this is why it's super important to not be late.
