Senior Session

I had a senior girl session scheduled for Wednesday, and she and her mom and I debated back-and-forth all morning about whether to continue with it that day or not. I decided I could go ahead and do it, once we found out the funeral wasn't until Thursday (and I needed a break away from the stuff that was going on to focus on something like my work).

Anyway, the weather was awful (cold and misty), and I thought we would definitely cancel, but the mom and girl were so anxious to get it done. Eventually, we decided to go for it. I had to have Billy go to be a light holder, since we were working with essentially no sunlight, and I needed someone other than the mom to work with me on it.

I was so nervous before the session, because it was my first senior girl (first senior of any kind, actually). I knew that it was a defining moment - would I like photographing seniors or not? ..............I LOVE IT!

So nice - a client who wasn't running away throughout the session and who could be posed with proper lighting and stay where she needed to be until we got the shot. It was so smooth, and it felt so strange to set up, get my shots, and move to the next pose and/or location. I wasn't used to being able to truly set up my shots, execute the portrait, and move to the next set up. So nice.

The senior girl was a dream to photograph. She was cute and had a good attitude about herself. She had dark hair (my favorite to photograph) and big brown eyes and a big smile. She was open to and wanted some funky, edgy stuff mixed in with a little bit of traditional, more conservative. It was perfect for what I wanted to do anyway. We did some of the more traditional locations/poses first, and then we moved to the fun urban setting (what we both wanted mostly) to really play around and create some cool stuff.

The lighting was certainly a challenge, since the sun did not show through at all. It was cold - dreary and overcast. I did the best I could with what I had, and it worked for the most part. Billy was a trooper and did a great job following my direction when we needed some adjustments to the lighting, but it's hard to get it exact on each one because of location challenges, etc. Anyway, I couldn't have done it without him.

So, the girl will be a "model" for me in the future. When we finish the new studio space, she'll come in and do some fun, creative stuff in studio, which will benefit both of us.

I haven't done post work on the images, yet, but from what I looked over, I think we got a great portfolio for her. We'll see what she and her mom think when I get her preview book put together. I'm a little nervous, because her dad tried to do her senior portraits, and she didn't like any of them. (Well, she kind of liked about 3 out of 600 shots he took.) Of course, he may not have much technical photographic knowledge, etc., (somewhat evidenced by the 600 shots he took), but I'm afraid she'll be too picky about her expressions, etc.

In conclusion: I love senior photography (at least girl seniors)!

Oh, you can see one image from her session on the intro page to my website. It's on the intro tab for the future senior site. Let me know what you think about that one. I like it. It was one that kept standing out as a favorite when I was quickly looking over the session images.

I'll work on some of the processing later tonight, hopefully, so maybe I'll post a few more favorites on here.