Ellen // Portraits // Sayre, PA

It’s a story Derrick loves to tell because it just shows how absolutely crazy we are:
Last summer, my sister Ellen came up for a few days to visit. I left work early one afternoon to spend some extra time with her and that was the afternoon we got a major storm. Like – a tornado-major-storm. Derrick came home from work to find Ellen and I in the basement, terrified that the world was ending. We had brought some things down with us – things that we knew we couldn’t live without – like the dog, our cameras, computers, and hard drives. He still makes fun of me: “what if a tornado really did hit our house? why didn’t you take anything that could actually help you survive?” well – we were prepared to document anything that happened when we finally emerged from the basement – and that was all we were concerned about.

We had planned on doing a photo-shoot based around Ellen’s masquerade mask, and so when we went out the next afternoon – it was to a terrific background of downed limbs and trees. The damage done across my street at the cemetery where we went was completely awful. It was actually closed – we couldn’t go in thru the main entrance. But, far be it from two photographers to be told that their location was closed off – we drove down the street and found an open gate that really isn’t an entrance and we probably shouldn’t have gone in but we did.

The results were fantastic and we had so much fun.
If you have a item or prop you’d like to base a photoshoot around – let me know! I am game for anything and I’d love put something together for you!