You know my relationship with the camera is almost pathological. If the day had more hours, I’d spend them shooting and there are times of the year, like fall, when the light, landscape, trees, colours, sunsets, absolutely everything is beautiful and my need for taking photos is multiplied by a thousand times.
End of summer I was already possessed by the autumnal spirit and I thought it was the ideal moment to kill two birds with one stone: shooting a beautiful family session and spending the day with another person as crazy for photography and beautiful things as I am: my friend Stephanie. We had planned it all weeks in advance: we’d dress up, the kids would wear the gorgeous Stadtlandkind clothes we both had, we’d brunch at a wonderful restaurant in the Geneva countryside, we’d have a walk at the vallon de l’Allondon and we would both take turns to take pictures of our respective families.
I bet you’ve already guessed that things weren’t as idyllic as we had planned. After weeks of nice weather, that day it was cloudy. It was supposed to get sunny during the day so we didn’t despair and made the 30-minute drive to go to the meeting spot. When we arrived, Steph and her family were already there and when I saw her face I understood the weather wasn’t the only problem. It turns out that Eloise, her little baby, had had a little accident involving poo everywhere while they were driving there AND, to my great surprise the in-my-view-always-more-than-perfect Stephanie hadn’t brought a change of clothes. Poor little Eloise was in her diaper. 😀 😀 😀
After a few minutes of self-pity and cursing our bad luck, wondering why these things never seem to happen to other people, etc. etc., we decided to laugh about it and forget the pictures for a moment. Stephanie wrapped Eloise in a blanket and rocked her to sleep in her stroller. We took a little walk by the river, grabbed a non-photogenic but delicious hamburger and tried to have a chat while our little creatures were doing everything in their power to stop us from doing so. In other words, we had a very #reallife lunch, the ones we usually have when the kids are involved.
Finally, as improvisation is usually what works best, we decided to go to Stephanie’s to have a coffee, one of those with a flower drawn on it (Steph’s husband nails it!), and go out for a very casual walk through the vineyards around the corner of her house. At the end, the sun was shining, I got my autumnal colours and some family photos that make me very happy.
The kids all looked very cute in their Stadtlandkind clothes, I also got to wear my new dress from Stadtlandkind for the first time and it ended up being a very normal day, with its bright and dark sides, but in very good company.
Photo credit: Stephanie and myself.
Kids clothes and my dress: Stadtlandkind
