It finally happened, all, I got to do my own magical snow photoshoot!
Can you believe I’ve never photographed in the snow before? Being so close to the mountains and I’ve never yet taken the opportunity to pack up my camera and make a day of it - until earlier last month, that is!
This was a styled shoot, and for those of you who are unfamiliar, a styled shoot is where you put together a theme you want photographs of and then get models, outfits, florals, etc. for the occasion! I’d actually come up with the idea of wanting to do a styled snow shoot back in November but the holidays came and ruined everything (okay, not really).
No, the holidays, crazy weather and models being sick all pointed towards postponing so I was left with an additional month to plan! I went to work on drafting more detailed outfit ideas and created moodboards for each look I wanted to capture.
The looks
I ended up creating three different looks for this magical snow photoshoot: Greek-Inspired, Spring and Ice Queen. I’ve even added the moodboards below for your enjoyment! (All of the photos were pinned on Pinterest and if you’d like to view the boards there, the links are embedded).
The models
Next up was to re-recruit some models! Where to turn but my best gal pals: My sister Mallory and her best friend Amanda are definitely people I’d enjoy spending the whole day with and trolling around in the snow for some stunning images so I was ecstatic when they agreed to model for me!
I assigned Amanda the Greek-inspired and Spring looks while Mallory (self-proclaimed Queen of Darkness), took the Ice Queen look.
Wardrobe
Amanda herself generously donated pretty much half of her gorgeous closet of clothing for me to riffle through and pick out the best contenders for my different inspired looks and as you can see below, they were some gorgeous pieces!
Mallory even provided her own stunning green ball gown for the shoot because who the heck doesn’t want to dress up in a ball gown in the snow with a white fur shawl and pretend to be queen!?
Florals
The final touch for this styled shoot was the florals. I’d long-dreamed of having a flower crown involved and Amanda just-so-happened to have one on-hand! She made it herself and yeah, I bet you didn’t even notice they were fake flowers it is so well done!
The bouquets were admittedly very sad when held to professional standards, however I am quite proud of the bouquets I put together!
The Greek-inspired bouquet was actually comprised of half of a Trader Joes bouquet I picked up the morning up the shoot along with half of an old and dusty plastic olive branch plant I had obtained at Goodwill the week before.
The spring bouquet was my favorite with a bunch of fresh eucalyptus and light pink and peach roses from the second half of the Trader Joes bouquet. It is still on display on my dining room table (although is probably just about ready to be disposed of by now).
THE DAY OF THE SHOOT
The morning arrived just as hectic and chaotic as I knew it would and I texted Mallory and Amanda that I was leaving Rancho Cordova to head up to Auburn at 8am. I stopped and got the bouquets along the way, traded my little car for my dad’s 4wd truck (thanks, Daddy!) and then got to Amanda and Mallory’s apartment. I whipped up the bouquets you see below (with the help of their cat, Tugboat), while the finishing touches or hair and makeup were done.
On our way
Starbucks in hand, and the truck packed to the absolute brim with all of the outfit bags, props, florals and extra warm clothes that could fit, we drove off up to the snow. We stayed along highway 20 and since I’d not planned for a particular spot for the shoot (with only “large open space of snow” in mind) and ended up pulling over at this gorgeous little enclave you see below!
My sister took some awesome shots of me in my newly-personalized Morgan Potter Photography jacket while Amanda got ready for the Spring look. I love this jacket and I think the personalization I did actually turned out pretty cool if I do say so myself!
Spring Fairy
As soon as Amanda was ready I got to start shooting. And may I just say that this was the first shoot since I bought my new Canon 5D Mark IV (which you can read more about here!) so I really went full-out and had fun with it. I’d only had family and commercial shoots up until this point and with my original shoot having fallen out, I hadn’t had a true opportunity to put this baby to the test before now.
It. Was. GLORIOUS. You guys, even if you don’t know anything about cameras, let me just tell you the quality of the photos, the amount of blur my backgrounds got and just everything about them seemed so much more magnified since I upgraded. I was having a blast (probably too much of a blast- poor Amanda was freezing to death) and got these amazing shots:
(And no, it actually wasn’t snowing! I enlisted Amanda to through clumps of snow up in the air right before posing to get these “snow effect” photographs).
Ice Queen
Amanda went back inside the truck to regain any semblance of body warmth and to change into the Greek-inspired look while I then photographed Mallory, who had been getting ready in the background.
Mallory’s look was super fun and edgy- she has the cutest short black hair and that paired with the white fur shawl and green dress was super magical! We ended up not using the crown I had originally intended to use because it just looked so good without! Some serious Narnia-vibes here.
Greek Goddess
Finally Amanda de-thawed enough to come out in the final look of the day: Greek-inspired. ie The Most Freezing Outfit To Wear in the Snow look. And why yes, she did wear plastic bags on her feet to keep from freezing her toesies off and to wear while I got upper body shots of her as you can see in the Bloopers at the bottom!
The bloopers
And no good shoot would be complete without the bloopers. These are the perks of photographing your friends- you can publicly share their most laughable moments and they still love you after it...ENJOY!
