Destinee and Aaron are celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary this fall and they chose to travel from Cleveland, Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee to celebrate.  Destinee and I met at the Creative at Heart conference that we attended last November.  We were buddies during the conference and had a common ground having both learned from the super cute photographer-educator, Hope Taylor, so I was so thrilled when she asked me to photograph their trip to my town.

We started planning the shoot last December and talked about it more when we both attended the Hope Taylor Alumni retreat in Charleston in early May.  Our plans were to shoot Monday, June 5th.  We both knew it was the beginning of CMA Fest week and it would be more crowded than usual, but we were going to work around that.  Well, the Saturday night before, I was watching the Nashville Predators play in game 3 of the Stanley Playoffs and started wondering when game 4 was that Nashville was hosting.  Turns out it was set for Monday night, and after the record numbers of people that were downtown for Game 3, I frantically texted Destinee about what she wanted to do because Monday was just not going to be an option with that many people.  We both (reluctantly) agreed that the best would be a sunrise shoot, which means picking her up around 5:15 am!

That morning, it was super thick out and seriously foggy.  I worried during the drive in that the visibility would just be so bad that we couldn’t get great shots.  Boy was I ever wrong!  The fog was so moody making for some amazing photos.  But the cream de la cream was when we walked down Broadway and they still had the street blocked off from the crowds the night before, so we took advantage of this moment, and walked out into the middle of Broadway and shot in the middle of the street, making one of the most unique photos I’ve ever shot.  And the fog made the streets wet, which made the neon reflecting on the streets look just amazing.  It was just a great shoot and so worth that 4:00 am alarm going off!

Lesson learned that if a couple is willing to do a sunrise shoot, I’m definitely willing as well after this amazing experience!