I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of photographing Samantha.

The day before our shoot was scheduled, the forecast for the shoot day was miserable (rain) so we called it off. But when shoot day came around, the weatherman had some good news: the rain would be done by 4pm. Sam and I hopped on the ferry and got to Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands around 5:30pm. It was still raining when we got there, but I could see blue sky on the horizon. We chilled on a bench for about half an hour and then got down to business when the rain stopped.

It was still a bit overcast here, but bright, and I used a Nikon SB-900 in a shoot-through umbrella to give a little punch to an image that would have otherwise been very flat. Also processed with a bit of a retro flare:

Best of all, we had the entire beach to ourselves! It was a weekend afternoon, downtown Toronto, on a huge popular beach — and there was no one but us around. Glorious.

Natural light:

The sun never really came out at any point, as it was low on the horizon and the dark clouds were still obscuring it. But higher up in the sky and opposite to where the sun would be was all blue sky and dramatic cloud formations:

As the sun started setting, we got some colour in the sky:

And what fun would the lake be if Sam didn’t get in it?

As of this writing, Kali’s in eighth place (out of 25 contestants) to be one of the eight stars of the new reality show, Lake Shore.

Here’s another photo of Kali to keep you motivated and voting for her!