Whooo Hoooo! You’ve booked a photo session with me… you figured out your wardrobe for the shoot, you’ve settled on the location of the shoot, you know what to expect from the shoot and you are sooooo excited to come to Hawaii and start your much needed rest, relaxation and getting your beach on…. but what if it RAINS during your photo shoot??!!
“Jennifer, we are so excited for our photo session with you, but we’ve heard the weather is unpredictable and it rains on the island… what will happen to our photo shoot?” I get this question occasionally, at least enough now to answer it in a blog post and label it an “FAQ”. My answer is, “We will shoot RAIN or SHINE 🙂 🙂 🙂 !!” with 3 happy faces behind that statement. I’d say that Hawaii weather is actually quite predictable. Every single day, it is hot or hotter. It stays in the 80’s all year round, if that’s not stability for you. Even in hurricane weather, it is warm, with a dash of muggy with the additional humidity. Yes, it absolutely rains across the island chain, but I will tell you being a Californian most of my life, that Hawaii rain is SOOO NOT California rain. If it rains in Oahu, it will rain for maybe 5 minutes, maybe a sprinkle, maybe a down pour of sheet rain, maybe a pelting of hard drops, but whatever the rain, it usually does not last long, at least not long enough to cancel or reschedule a 60 minute photo session. It’s enough rain to refresh yourself as it passes through and then to get sucked into the remnants of the tail of mugginess it will inevitably leave behind in it’s wake. I guess what I’m trying to say is… “No worries! It might rain, but if it does, it’s just a few minutes and we take cover until it bypasses and we resume with our photo shoot.” I can stand by this statement 97% of the time. The other 3% where this may not work is if we are on a hurricane watch and we’ve scheduled our shoot 6 months out OR if we are under a freak flood of rain over the entire island and at which point I would recommend shooting on the far south west side of the island near Ko’Olina where I could safely say “if all of Oahu is raining, chances are, it’s dry in Ko’Olina…” Knock on wood, this train of thought will hold true, but in all my years of my professional photography career here on Oahu, I’ve only had to reschedule a photo shoot ONE time and that was because Hurricane Flossie was making it’s way through and better to be safe than sorry. Also, keep in mind that all the atmospheric changes that happens during rain… how it mixes with the sun and entangles itself with the clouds… well, this all makes for a pretty gorgeous, GORGEOUS sunset shoot… so you might want to pray for a little wee bit o’ rain to pass through because it always, ALWAYS, leaves a magical sunset behind when it passes (see above photo). If you want to play it safe, I would suggest to schedule your photo shoot a couple of days before your flight heads out. This way, if there is just no way we can shoot because it won’t stop raining, at least we have a couple of days buffer where I can try to reschedule if the time is open and not booked.
I hope this eases your mind. Warmest Aloha, ~j
