Gallery Park Family Photos | Glenview Family Photographer

Gallery Park was a naval air station until 1993. Now it's 142 acres with a 45-acre lake in the middle, the largest park in Glenview, and it's the one I book more than any other.

I've photographed a lot of families here, with more on the calendar this fall. Enough sessions to have stopped guessing where the light is.

Here's what I've learned about it.

The open shade is the whole reason

Most parks give you one usable hour. You take photos at sunset or you don't take photos.

Gallery Park has enough cover that there are pockets of open shade scattered across it. Open shade means even, soft light on a face. No squinting, no dark hollows under the eyes, at a time of day when most parks would be unusable.

My spot is west of the tennis courts. You get shade from the trees and from the buildings, which is the part people don't expect, and you can still see the water from it. From there a path takes you down to the lake edge. Which means you can get beach photos without the sand.

I've started mini sessions here at three in the afternoon and the light held. That's rare, and it's the difference between working around your toddler's nap and working around the sun.

You get the lake without the beach

Water in your photos, without driving to Gillson or Lighthouse and circling for parking. The lake in Glenview is 45 acres. The paths run along it. The walk from the car is short enough to make with a stroller, a diaper bag, and a kid who has already decided he isn't walking.

The lake is built so you never see all of it from any one spot. Trails meander, and the land folds into fingers and small bays. Which is why fifteen families can shoot at the same park and none of the galleries look alike.

Same look as the beach. None of the logistics. No sand in anyone's shoes on the drive home.

The pavement does the work of a reflector

This one is a photographer thing, but you see it in your own face in the final gallery.

Light-colored ground bounces sunlight back upward, filling the shadows under eyes and chins. It's what a photographer's reflector does, except nobody has to stand there holding a silver disc at your family while you try to look relaxed. Gallery Park gives you three surfaces that do it. The paved path, the gravel trail, and the water itself. Standing you in the right place near one of them does the job quietly.

What it costs to photograph here. Nothing.

The Glenview Park District does not require a photography permit for its ordinary parks, and Gallery Park is one of them.

The permit rule applies to exactly two places. The Grove is $50 per two hours. Historic Wagner Farm is $50 an hour plus a deposit. Gallery Park and Flick Park are genuinely free.

Worth knowing what that saves. Wilmette asks a $150 half-day commercial permit for Gillson Park. Highland Park charges $75 a day, stacked on top of picnic and pavilion fees. Evanston is $75 plus $25 an hour. Those costs reach your invoice eventually, from somebody. In Glenview they don't exist.

Logistics

The park is bounded by West Lake Avenue on the north, Chestnut to the south, Patriot Boulevard to the west, and Lehigh to the east. That's 142 acres, so where you enter matters. The park district lists the address as 2001 Patriot Boulevard, which is the west side and not where we're doing your photoshoot.

We meet on the north end, off West Lake Avenue, in the lot by the tennis courts. I'll send you the exact spot when you book. Parking is easy there, which is not true of most places worth photographing. From the lot I walk you to the light.

Park hours are dawn to dusk, and that's the only hard constraint. Some of my favorite frames come from the twenty minutes after the sun is technically down, so we start earlier than you'd think and we finish on time.

Ask me about restrooms when you book. Park Center is on site, but the front desk runs 9 to 3 on weekends and an October golden hour session ends closer to six. If anyone in your family was potty trained in the last year, we plan for that.

When to come

There isn't a bad season here.

Spring gives you flowers and trees still leafing in, so the shade is lighter and the whole park reads green. Summer is full and dense, and the shade west of the tennis courts is what makes a July afternoon survivable. Fall is the obvious one, and it's the one that books out first.

Winter is the one nobody asks for and should. Snow is the best natural reflector there is, it throws light up into faces from every direction at once, and the lake edge is quiet in January in a way it never is in October.

One thing to plan around in winter. The park closes at dusk, and in December dusk is just after four. A winter session here is a late-afternoon session, not an evening one.

One cloudy morning

It was spitting rain and fully overcast. That's the forecast that makes families text me asking to reschedule.

Overcast is the best light there is. The whole sky turns into one enormous soft light source. Nobody squints, nothing is half in shadow, and there's no sunset to chase because the sun isn't the point.

Then the kids found out they could jump. So we jumped. I have something close to a thousand frames of those two in the air, and the keepers from that morning are still some of my favorite work from this park. They weren't being photographed. They were jumping, over and over, waiting to see what it looked like.

If the forecast looks bad the morning of your session, text me before you cancel it. It's often the better day.

Booking

Family sessions run an hour, from $550, with 40 or more edited images and a private gallery with its own print shop. Sneak peek in 48 hours. Full gallery in two weeks.

If you want a Glenview family photographer who already knows where the light is at this park, I have a few fall dates left.