Katie and Tom

This shoot almost never happened. But we're oh so glad it did!

We received an email saying pretty much this : "I'm a Lieutenant in the Air Force stationed in Alabama and am looking for a photographer in the Athens, OH area to take some photos of me and my boyfriend. I've seen your stuff and liked it and wondered if you'd be available Sept. 18-19 as I have a 30 hour window of time to see him then."

You would be surprised at the amount of weird emails and requests you receive once you put yourself out there on the World Wide Web as professional photographers. We get requests from India, Britain, Ethiopia...you name it, saying that they love our stuff, want to hire us for whatever price we say, and will send a cashier's check right away. We are usually real nice to everyone (just in case someday a legit person wants to fly us to Ireland for a shoot) but usually after we ask a few questions and tell them we like to meet in person and go over ideas and logistics, well, they just seem to disappear.

Katie responded to our "nice" return email with a photo and a phone number so that we could talk in person. The photo was of her an Tom being goofy at Ash Cave in the Hocking Hills so all of a sudden we knew this was a real request. Cool beans.

Heather gave her a call the next day to see if we could possibly get it to work out for the both of us. Katie turned out to be great to talk to, just a sweet, kind, "real" person. The whole story turned out to be this...Tom and Katie met here at Ohio University a couple of years ago. He's still here studying meteorology and in the Air Force ROTC while she is in Alabama finishing her training and expecting to be deployed to who knows where in the near future. They have several friends in relationships in the military and have seen first hand the life changing trauma that can happen to those who choose this life...not just death but limbs lost...scars emotionally as well as physically...sometimes years of separation. They wanted to capture this moment in time to look back on no matter what happens in the future...this moment of love and health and youth.

Yeah, pretty heavy stuff. In fact it makes me a little teary-eyed just writing it! Wow.

We decided that we would meet them at Ash Cave to do the photo shoot early on the Sunday morning a couple of hours before she had to zoom to Columbus to catch her flight back to Alabama. Ash Cave was on her way to the airport, they loved it there, so it just seemed to make sense. Now if the weather would cooperate!

Luckily, it was beautiful out. 70ish degrees, feeling like fall, a little misty. We met them at 9 a.m. so there was no direct sunlight into the Ash Cave canyon...just soft, pretty, indirect sunlight. A perfect morning. They were soooo fun to shoot! With them knowing it was going to be awhile before they would be seeing each other again, they just couldn't keep their hands and lips off of each other. They were cute...passionate...sensual...and so in love. What a pleasurable way for me and Heather to spend a Sunday morning. Capturing moments in time. Recording love.

Good luck Tom and Katie!

Jeffrey