What to do when it’s windy at your senior session? | Olivia | Pullman Washington Senior Portrait Photographer

Oh no, it’s windy on your session day. What do we do?

Most people’s first thought is often to consider canceling the shoot. It feels the most normal, because we don’t want all of your hairs out of place, clothing doesn’t want to lay right, sometimes wind can bring other weather conditions.

But what if we go forward with the session, and your images turn out like the ones below! Olivia’s senior session actually produced some of my favorite images out of the 2022 season. There are some definite ways to combat not having wind, and this is what I do if the winds aren’t completely unworkable!

Embrace the wind – and your inner Beyonce.

Hear me out, the wind can put a damper on some posing and open areas that we may have hoped to go to for your senior session. BUT looking at the positive side, the wind will add movement to hair, clothing and other parts of the image – which adds visual interest in terms of composing your image. We wouldn’t be able to have your hair flowing without creating breeze any other way. Come to your session with an open mind and channel your inner Beyonce! We may also use poses that utilize your hands to play with your hair and clothing to keep it in place – I will walk you right through how to do this, while still making it look natural.

Find buildings, hills and landscaping to help block wind.

In the earlier images, we hugged into a couple buildings, which were allowing us to have little wind interruptions! These images mine as well have been taken on a still day. Figuring out which direction the wind is blowing, and going on the opposite side of the wind will block the gusts, so there is sometimes a small breeze, but often times it’s like it’s not even blowing. The last set of images was in a field located in a valley between hills, and also had trees lining it. This allowed for several blocking mechanisms, so even when we got the occasional gust of wind, it wasn’t too bad.

Wait for wind lull’s and photograph between gusts.

One thing you will hear me say over and over on windy session days is, “okay, hang out, do you hear that? A lull is coming and we will shoot then. Okay, go.” If you listen, you will hear a big gust or two coming, and it almost is followed with a lull of little breeze. Shooting during these allows for more still images, and time to adjust any flyaways or clothing that has been blown out of place. This can take a little bit longer to get the shots that you want, but this is why we plan for extra time for your session, just in case we need it! We used this method when I photographed Olivia in the flower field. There was a hill and some trees near, but not close enough to block too much. This meant we were getting some wind blown shots, but they were still gorgeous!