Bambi vs. Snow: Our 12-Hour Secret Misson to Nowhere.

Well folks, we tried. But Seattle's "Snowpocalypse 2012" beat the creativeLIVE team in yesterday's unexpected Bambi vs. Snow challenge. The airport was crippled by an ice storm that Seattle just wasn't prepared to handle. After a twelve-hour valiant effort, our fearless captain Craig came back to pick us up sadly defeated. 

Our secret mission: Celeste, Kenna, Nikko and Adam pack up a mobile version of creativeLIVE's broadcast gear and fly down to San Francisco for a 36-hour adventure to bring all of YOU directly into Bambi Cantrell's studio today, Friday Jan 20th. Bambi would take you on a tour of her studio, including live photo shoots with models, make-up artists—all in true Bambi style. Kenna would ask Bambi your questions during this surprise live remote broadcast as a precursor to Bambi's upcoming workshop on creativeLIVE. Then we'd pack up and fly back to Seattle. We'd replay the bonus Bambi studio tour for all of you who many have missed the live event.

Sadly our secret mission was canceled, canceled and canceled again. Boo! We first arrived at the airport at 4:30am for a 6am flight. We were teased for about an hour while the flight status still claimed to be on-time. Not so fast, Seatac airport then shouted. Or rather, not today at all. Hundreds of flights were canceled in a historic airport shut down for our neck of the woods. We were re-routed four different times, to San Francisco, to Oakland—we were willing to fly anywhere that would get us in the proximity of Bambi! Each time we switched destination airports Celeste & Adam had to go claim our two checked bags that were too large for us to carry on, then re-check them on the supposed next flight, then go through security again. Good news was security lines were pathetically short... Bad news was it took the airline an hour to find our oversized tripod bag, which we nearly left behind to be delivered at a later time. 

Upon attempting to book a 5th flight to depart at 8:30pm, the kind folks at Alaska Airlines gave us the icy cold truth—it was 99% likely that no flights would be taking off and if we live here in Seattle it would be in our best interest to head home before getting stuck at the airport overnight. In fact they suggested that we don't even try to rebook for the next day as they were predicting more of the same inability to de-ice planes. Priority was going to international flights if anything was able to take off.

Did the weather not understand that thousands of creativeLIVE photographers all over the world would be let down?!?!? Apparantly not. Before we left to head home with our heads down, I was interviewed by our local Q13 Fox News station about our experience that day. It turns out one of the Q13 producers (and creativeLIVE fan), Natalia Dotto, had been following our story all day via social media. Have fun with our play-by-play photo album on Facebook—we did! We were mostly smiles all day despite all the waits. No reason to be otherwise!

Precisely 12 hours into what was to be our 36-hour journey, we arrived back at the creativeLIVE studio safe, sound and very disappointed. 

But there is light at the end of the icy tunnel. Bambi is coming back to creativeLIVE this March 16-18th for a new workshop, Focus on Fabulous: Wedding and Portrait Photography. As always, the LIVE online event is FREE! Be sure to secure your spot and sign up!

If you ever get stuck in an airport for a day, be sure to invite Celeste, Adam and Nikko—I couldn't have asked for a more cheerful patient gang to hang with!

~Kenna Klosterman