A month in the life of a Naples, Fl Family Photographer | October 2022
Hi, it’s Brian! I am a film family photographer located in Naples, Florida. I am so excited to start a monthly personal blog post series. I feel like ever since we’ve had 3 kids time is moving so fast and I want to use this space to highlight some of the in-between moments from our life. This post focuses on moments from the month of October. We had just moved to Naples, FL at the end of August which gave us a few weeks to get settled before Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28, 2023. It was quite the “welcome to Florida” experience and I am glad we have our first hurricane behind us. We learned so much about hurricane prep throughout the weeks leading up to it and now having lived through it we now have new insight on what we could have done better.
As a family, we hunkered down in our Condo during the storm and after it, we made the best of what we could without having electricity for 3 days. It was a lot of board games, visiting the local park, and just walking around our neighborhood streets. We kept our fridge cool enough to save most of our food by using frozen bottles of water which we had frozen in the days leading up to the hurricane. We were able to light the grills down by the pool to heat our coffee and even stopped at my inlaws’ house (which lost electricity for 6 days!), to use their gas stove to cook some of our frozen foods up before they went bad from melting.
As the City of Naples and other coastal towns recovered and began to rebuild from Ian, we tried to give our kids some normality and tried out a few October/Fall activities we use to do in Western NY, activities like going to a pumpkin patch. We opted to go to Farmer Mike’s U-Pick and although it was different from our prior pumpkin patch experiences, it was just as memorable. We got some good advice from a few locals who said, “Make sure you go early!” and boy am I glad we did because standing in an open field full of sunshine on a 90-degree looking for pumpkins would not be how I would choose to spend my Saturday. 
Eventually, things started to feel like they were getting back to a new normal. The rest of our month was filled with lots of swimming, lots of self-portraits, and lots of Halloween celebrations! We didn’t realize but the Lake Park neighborhood we live in is one of the best ones to go trick or treating in! We were AMAZED by the number of extensive house decorations that were out and the magnitude of trick or treaters that were out and about! It also was a little weird to be sweating on Halloween after experiencing so many cold and rainy holidays before.
Are you living or visiting Naples, Florida with your family or extended family? Consider booking a session with me while you are here! It’s a great way to document your time together with your whole family, including pets and older siblings. If you have any questions about how to get started? Get in touch! I’m always happy to guide you in making the best decision for you and your family.
