Rainy Day shoot with Amani

I don’t remember if we knew it might rain and we decided to chance it anyway. If I had to guess, we knew it might rain and we decided to chance it anyway. Worst-case, we get a little wet and end up with some shots anyway. Weather in San Francisco is hard to predict, and rain is even more difficult to predict. It’s often on and off and the forecast is also wrong a lot of times. My plan was to shoot somewhere where we could get under cover quickly if it rained, or even shoot under cover if needed.



The Location

Cottage Row, Mini Park, the overpass at Geary and Webster. And Buena Vista Park.

Cottage Row Mini Park

Buena Vista Park



The Model

Amani, who is very chill and always fun to shoot with. And who makes me shoot during the rain. I’m kidding, it’s more like we make each other shoot in the rain. Fun fact, we were talking after this shoot, and she was telling me about how she never got notifications from my texts. We found that she had me on do not disturb by “accident.” I am still hurt. But we’re still cool. So, that’s maybe not so fun, fun fact. But I will type through my tears, it’s okay.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bodybyamani/



The Shoot

We met at Japantown. The plan was that if it was raining, we could shoot under the structure on Peace Plaza. It had stopped raining, so we walked over to Cottage Row, Mini Park. They’re really not kidding about the “mini” part. It’s practically what could be someone’s small yard and a walkway that gets you from one block to another. But the small area that it had was cute. We avoided going into the grass because the rain makes things muddy and we just stuck to the walkway.

For the next look, we then went to the overpass at Geary and Webster. We got a few shots in but had to stop soon after. It began sprinkling and seemed like it was going to turn to full-on rain. There were also a lot of people crossing though the overpass, so that made it a little more difficult to shoot in and we wrapped up quickly.

The last location we went to was Buena Vista Park. It was raining lightly, but it was on and off and it was good enough to shoot in. There is a lot of tree coverage at the park, which helps to block out some of the rain. You just get the random huge rain drop hitting your face sometimes. What I really wanted to do was shoot at a playground within the park. The problem was that I had never been there before, and I had no idea where the playground was. Also, at the time, Google Maps didn’t show the location. I just knew there was a playground there but didn’t know exactly where. We entered on Duboce Avenue & Buena Vista Ave E, which I found later that it was practically on the opposite side of where I wanted us to shoot.

We just went a bit into the park until I saw some tennis courts. We started off by shooting on a path inside the park. We moved over to the Tennis courts to get more shots.

And then this is where things went off the rails. I wanted to find that playground. We ended up walking all the way to the top of the park. Between carrying gear and generally being out of shape (sigh), I almost died. The park looks tiny, but walking uphill made it seem like it took forever to get uphill. When we got to the top, I didn’t like the location, so we worked our way back down. I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly where we ended up shooting the last two looks but there were some shipping crates that looked interesting and we shot by there. We were close to the Haight side of the park and I only know that because we exited at Haight & Buena Vista W. The kicker was that as we were done and we were leaving, I spotted the playground I had been looking for, but I was over it and we had shot everything we wanted to. It was memorable, to say the least. Amani is great company and it’s always fun shooting with her, so I’d do it again.



Behind the Scenes



The Shots

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