The August Issue: A 1970s-Inspired Poolside Editorial by Rayla Kay Photography
There is something about August that already feels like a memory.
The afternoons are still hot. The grass has faded from spring green to gold. The sun hangs around long into the evening, and swimming pools are still scattered with towels, sunglasses, melting ice, and the evidence of another day spent trying to make summer last.
But somewhere underneath all of it, you can feel the season beginning to change.
For the kickoff photoshoot of our Autumn RKP Membership, we decided to begin exactly there: in the final, sun-soaked days of summer.
And what better way to send off the season than with a vintage pool party?
Photographed at a private residence in Post Falls, Idaho, this creative editorial was inspired by the poolside summers of the 1970s—the kind preserved in old family photographs tucked into albums, where the colors have softened with age and nobody seemed particularly concerned about whether the picture was perfect.
Yellow.
Orange.
Aqua blue.
Gingham.
Stripes.
Polka dots.
Oversized sunglasses, one-piece swimsuits, lace scarves, inflatable pool floats and that unmistakable slightly-faded warmth of vintage film.
It felt like stepping into somebody else's summer.
A Little Bit of 1970s Summer
When we began planning this shoot, we weren't interested in recreating the 1970s perfectly.
We wanted to recreate the feeling of it.
The summers you imagine when looking through photographs from another generation.
Girls stretched out beside a backyard pool. Hair drying naturally in the afternoon heat. Bright swimsuits against turquoise water. Someone bringing out another pitcher of lemonade. Music playing somewhere nearby. Bare feet against warm concrete.
Nothing particularly important happening.
And somehow, that is exactly what makes those memories important.
For the wardrobe, we chose vintage-inspired one-piece swimsuits in the colors and patterns that immediately transport you backward in time. Aqua stripes gave us that classic resort feeling, while golden gingham brought in the warmer palette that ran throughout the photographs.
There were little details everywhere: red-tinted sunglasses, crochet textures, oversized pool floats, soft cover-ups and a lace headscarf that looked like something we might have discovered inside an old suitcase in our grandmother's attic.
Our three models each brought something different to the story, but together they felt like three friends caught somewhere in the middle of a long August afternoon.
Photographs That Feel Like Memories
A lot of our work at Rayla Kay Photography begins with a question:
What should this feel like?
Not simply what should the clothes look like or where should the models stand.
What should someone feel when they see the photograph?
For this shoot, the answer was nostalgia.
We wanted the photographs to feel as though they had already lived a life before you ever saw them.
Some images were photographed in warm, muted tones with greens, creams and golden yellows melting together. Others were converted into black and white, where the simplicity of a striped swimsuit beside a metal pool ladder suddenly felt almost timeless.
Then there were the photographs made with direct flash.
Those became some of our favorites.
There is something imperfect and wonderfully familiar about that hard burst of light—the look of an old camera pulled out after sunset because somebody decided the night wasn't over yet.
The photographs become less polished.
More spontaneous.
More alive.
Exactly the way a summer memory should feel.
The Beginning of Our Autumn RKP Membership
This pool party officially opened the new season of our RKP Photography Membership, where we create conceptual photoshoots throughout North Idaho centered around storytelling, fashion, nostalgia and the strange little ideas we can't stop thinking about.
Every session begins differently.
Sometimes with a location.
Sometimes with a piece of clothing.
Sometimes with a photograph we found decades after it was taken.
And sometimes with something as simple as a feeling.
This time, it was the feeling of an August afternoon we wished we could keep just a little longer.
So we did.
We photographed it.
And for a few hours at a backyard pool in Post Falls, summer belonged to the 1970s again.
