Katie Mathews Photography: Carmen

One day last week, I took Carmen and her sister Bonnie out for lunch and then the plan was to go take some senior pictures. Carmen is actually graduating next month, but I wanted to do some "sample" senior pics for my website etc, so I asked her if she'd be my model.

So, after lunch, we went to the lake to take some pics of her in her Azalea Belle dress. In April every year, Wilmington hosts the North Carolina Azalea festival. It is a BIG deal in this town. They have garden tours, the Queens Coronation, Concerts, a parade, a street fair etc. You can find Azalea Belle's at all of the events and Carmen got to be one this year. So here are a few pics of that:

Now here's where the story gets entertaining....(kinda long, but funny)

We drove around downtown to scope out some places that we wanted to go to to take the pictures...we had to park the car (obviously) and then we were going to go get some ice cream and walk around downtown and get some cool/funky shots. So we drove to the top of one of the parking decks, thinking that might be kind of cool to get some shots of the city in the background. So we get out of the car and I open the back door where my camera bag was...set my keys, phone and wallet in my camera bag (because we're getting ready to leave the car) and I went and took just a few pictures of Carmen at the top of the deck. Well, there was a guy up there with his 2 dogs and they were running around playing ball. Carmen's Azalea Belle dress was in the car so Carmen tells her sister, Bonnie, "close the car door so the dogs don't get my dress." Well, I'm in the zone and not paying any attention to the fact that she actually closed the door and my KEYS were in there and the automatic door locks had already activated. UGH. So now what? We're locked out..no money, no phone etc. We asked the guy if he had a cell phone and he didn't, but he said he lived close by and would get it. Sure enough, he was back in less than 5 min and I called Brian and asked him to come rescue us. So now what? Well, we made the best of it and still went on with the shoot....then Brian rescued us and we headed home (our family and their family had dinner at my parent's house that night and it was almost 5 by the time Brian got to us). So in a week or two, the girls and I are going to go and try again downtown!