Behind the Scenes Senior Portrait - Emily Domer | Emily McGonigle Photography

Emily Domer is one of my 2016 Senior Models, and I had the pleasure of working with her again a couple weeks ago, this time on her senior portrait session.

I was really looking forward to Emily's shoot, because it was something a little different than my normal on-location sessions. During Emily's pre-shoot consultation, she pulled out her phone and said, "I know this isn't going to be possible, because there are no waterfalls in Nashville, but I really love this," and showed me a beautiful image with a waterfall and lake as the background setting.

My immediate response was, "Of course we can do that! We're going to have to drive a little bit to find it, but if you're willing to do that, I love that idea!"

So that's what we did.

The week leading up to Emily's session, the weather looked very iffy. As the week went on, the predicted storms started to appear to be shifting towards dryer weather... until the night before. All of a sudden, we were to be expecting storms around the time we would be arriving to the location 2 hours away to start shooting.

But this is Tennessee... and when the weather says "a 30% chance"... you know that basically means it's not going to happen. Or does it?

Well, we decided to chance it, hoping for the best. So we met at the studio that morning for Emily to get her hair and makeup done, by Kenzie Leath.

We decided to carpool to the location, in order to stay together, but on the way down, we of course had to stop at a gas station known to carry Mt. Dew: Code Red. According to Emily, you can't do a photo shoot without Code Red, so it had to be done. Once we had our Code Red, we got back on the road and kept heading towards our location.

About half-way through our drive, there were some pretty sketchy looking clouds that ended up unleashing their fury on us. Still, I wasn't too terribly concerned, because we were still an hour away from our destination.

We finally arrived to the falls, and it seemed as though the rain was following us. It was humid, and the air was thick, but there were only a few drops at worst. We climbed down to our spot, and the drops started to multiply and it was pretty breezy, but we decided to push on. We weren't going to let a few rain drops stop us.

A little bit after we started shooting, the rain left us, the clouds cleared, and we ended the session with some gorgeous sunlight. The variety of light was actually pretty neat, because it allowed for a pretty dynamic session!

Once we were through with our shoot, we piled back into the car and had a very entertaining ride home. Matthew, who was of course assisting me that day, taught Emily and her mother Lori, the "My Cows" road trip game. (At least that's what I call it... I'm not really sure what the official name is). Turns out, all 4 of us are pretty competitive. We got a little lost on our way back to the highway home, but that only allowed us more opportunities to spot cows, see a gorgeous sunset, and dissect Matthew's romantic "type" ("Horse girls" need not apply -- Haha!).

The whole experience, was truly an adventure, and we all got to know each other really well that day. We *also* got some really awesome images, while we were at it!

Check out this sneak peek finished image from Emily's session:

Special thanks to Kenzie Leath for all her help with Emily's hair and makeup! Check her out on Instagram at @kzkreations. Also, as always, thank you to Matthew Simmons for all his help on this shoot, and for keeping everyone entertained!

Until next time, fam!

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Emily McGonigle Photography is a Franklin and Nashville Portrait Photographer, and can be contacted for booking inquiries here.