Seniors 2012 - Kacie

Kacie's senior session was, no lie, one of the most fun I've had, and I love doing senior pictures.  They're all fun to me, but Kacie's was awesome.  I've photographed her sister before - for senior portraits awhile back and during my beauty shoot this summer (was it summer?  Spring?  No, summer.  I'm so bad with time....).  For Kacie's shoot, like Alex's, I went to their house, which is amazing.  They have all this land and beautiful scenery.  Normally my senior shoots have the studio shots first and then outdoors, but we switched it up and did the outside ones first.

The thing I really love about doing senior shoots is going somewhere that the person is comfortable and wants to be.  Not just "oh, look, this is my studio and the places I already have set up."  No.  It's so much more interesting to go and photograph in someone's natural environment.  Not only are they more comfortable, the images will be unique to them.  No one else will have pictures on that porch swing, with those flowers in the background.  Just Kacie.  And that's really cool to me.

For the studio shots, I set up in their living room with a similar lighting pattern as I used for Drew's portraits last week.  (Note: I am very proud of my lighting here, especially in this first image where she has on a white shirt.  White shirt + white background + good seperation = win.)  The beauty dish was more to the front than side, and the hair light closer to the background, but it was very similar.  The shoot, however, was very different.  Because we were having fun and Kacie's entire wardrobe was in the house, she changed a few times, grabbed hats and scarves and the camera clicked away for a bit longer than expected.  When she becomes a model for Abercrombie, I told her, she better give them my name!

Seniors 2011 - Roman

Roman, another student at OLSH, is a friend of Leah and Janelle, and loved the pictures of I took of them, so contacted me to do her senior portraits as well.  [Real quick, before I forget, I have to get the Garbage music video for "I Think I'm Paranoid" on my computer.  I have loved this song for years and the video is currently on TV and it is awesome.  Back to Roman.]  She's Indian, so brought some absolutely beautiful clothes and showed me traditional Indian dance poses while we talked about the Hindu religion.  I've always been into religion, so hearing about the Hindu gods from someone who is actually Hindu was really cool.  It was fun to photograph, too, because I hadn't seen such poses before.

After the studio we went outside, where clouds were amazing.  And I'm totally into the color scheme!  Bright yellow outfit + blue sky = win.  I might have to start bringing my Alien Bee outside and hooking up an extension cord though, as the sunlight doesn't always do what I want and my speed light just doesn't cut it.  Anyone want to buy me a Vagabond?!  After getting some pictures on the roof, Roman, who told me she's named after a male soap opera character (something I would do), changed into a cute dress/jean jacket combo.  We then hit up Hopewell Park to finish off our shoot.

Not long after we first got to the park, she decided she wanted some pictures on the swings, so once we hit some other spots, Roman and I ended our shoot at the swingset.  It was different, and definitely adorable.  I played with retro toning some more in post, which worked perfectly with this image.

Seniors 2011 - Leah

Seems a bit late to have my first senior shoot for 2011, but this Saturday it happened!  Leah is a friend of Janelle who I photographed late last year.  She was super sweet, and though a bit shy about getting her picture taken, definitely opened up as the session went on.  We started out in the studio using my white background and the softbox (note to self: buy another light).  She brought a sword!!  How cool is that?

After the indoors session, we took some pictures outside.  I'm a big fan of natural light, so mostly used that, though did pop my speedlight on occasion to light up her eyes.  That night, while doing post, I starting playing with different effects in LightRoom (note to self: upgrade to LR3) - this started with downloading some free presets and then figuring out how they were done and changing them to suit me.  For example, one preset faked rounded corners, which I tweaked and combined with a 1970s preset that, once I was done, didn't actually look much like the original preset at all.  I haven't used the split toning option to do much more than sepia (see above), so had way too much playing.  Yeah...I love LightRoom so much I spend my Saturday nights with it.

Anyway, enough of LR.  Back to Leah.  We also went to Hopewell Park, the back way because the main road there caved in, so that was different.  We hit up a couple spots that I've shot in before - they're good spots - but also some different ones, which was great.  I mean, I've never shot anyone sitting on a rock in the creek before, so it was a great idea on Leah's part, and definitely turned out adorable.  Go, Leah!!

She loved the first bridge (as do I, this is one of my favorite shots!) and, after some lighting issues on the covered bridge, we found this cool fallen tree near the creek.  She had told me earlier that she wanted a tree shot - they're pretty stereotypical for senior shoots though, so we tried for something a little different and this was it.  Especially with the glowing forest in the background, it made for a beautiful scene.