Our nearby grand-daughter, Hali, will be a senior in high school this fall, so she asked her aunt Colette to take her senior pictures since Colette is a photographer of some note within our family unit......and even with others that are not related at all. I've often been confused as the family photographer but, I'm not. I take pictures frequently and of everything. She however takes GOOD photo's. Not as often, but with a better eye and good equipment. So, there's a huge difference.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Hali requested senior photo's. So, of course as a 17 year old with a discriminating point of view, she didn't want her picture taken just anywhere or somewhere that was going to be a popular, outdoor spot for photo's that her peers would have. We had to go to an out-of-the-way area. She requested a photo sitting at a beautiful lake in the hills. Well, we say....good choice! We could combine her photo sitting with a family day in the hills playing tourist, which we kind of were. So, we all piled into Colette's suburban ....a very large car. She lives in Chicago where the drivers are very aggressive, so no small or compact car for her. Since she couldn't buy an army tank to give her an advantage over the other nincompoop drivers in the area, she wanted one that would at least make other vehicles bounce off of her in case of an angry driver competition. Side note: If anyone hears me complain about South Dakota drivers in the future; just slap me. We've drove in almost every state in the contiguous US and Chicago and the surrounding area has the most aggressively, rude, 'every-man-woman-and child', take-no prisoners attitude in drivers we've witnessed. Seriously, I think they run over each other in the name of sport. Even my otherwise sweet, considerate, non-combative daughter changes personality as soon as she hops into her vehicle. It's frightening to see. (Yes you do Colette, so don't try to deny it. The veins in your neck pop out while you're strapping on your seat belt and by the time you're out of your driveway, the whites of your eyes are flaming and you're looking for the first driver to shout obscenities at.)
Obviously the mentions of Colette's vehicle side-tracked me. Back to the photo trip in the hills. Soooooo....we're heading to the lake and along the way Colette, who moved away from the area over 20 years ago, remembers an area that has large groves of aspen trees. She's driving past one grove after another and mumbling, "Nope, not that one. Uh uh, not that one either," while the rest of us are commenting they all pretty much looked alike to us. Finally Hali inquires, "Aunt Colette, are we looking for a particular aspen tree?" We laughed, but she was serious. Finally after about a dozen different sites, we arrived at one Colette deemed acceptable. We all throw ourselves out of the vehicle......remember, it's large so you don't just step out of it...and breathed a sigh of relief to finally have found a couple of trees that met with Colette's approval.
I should mention, only because the reader will probably notice, I was busy taking pictures of Colette taking pictures because, that's what I do. Remember the whole not"good picture taking, but frequent picture taking thing? OK, just wanted to be sure everyone remembered that. So, after the particular Aspen tree sitting, Colette spied an old rail fence from a distance of about 7 miles away. If you recall, I said she was good at this. So, once again we all piled out and went about our assigned duties; Hali being posed by Colette, Colette taking pictures, grandson Marc or Bob holding the reflector. Whoever didn't hold the reflector was the baby wrangler and had to corral 3 year old, energetic, "glad to be out of her car-seat", Cassie. I of course was busy taking pictures of all the gang and/or scenery.
By now the day is getting on, the troops are getting hungry as well as antsy and we still haven't made it to the designated photo spot. The lake. We finally arrive and the lake is indeed beautiful, the shoreline a short distance from the parking lot. But, did anyone say this was going to be an easy task? Indeed not! We are lead not to the nearby lake with a beautiful backdrop of blue sky, trees, and hills, but on a path that wound halfway around the lake, into a large outcropping of rocks, timbers and tourist looking for the historic site of Custer's Last Stand. OK, I'm lying about Custer. But, all things considered, the lake was sadly the last place of focus. Some of the best pictures of Hali were in front of large boulders (see above), tree's (also see above) and paths (possibly above) that would've looked like any other place in the Black Hills in about a zillion places that didn't require walking a few miles. Oh wait, we could've done this in our back yard! Teenagers! Did the lake show up in any pictures? A couple out of the hundreds taken.
The end result was a fun day in the hills, lots of laughs, great pictures....which I won't post the best of because Hali will want to send out her choice later and I might accidentally put her preference on this page and you know.....teenagers!
