Seniors 2012 - Drew

I joked recently that I should do a "Zach's ex-girlfriend" senior special this year - Zach being my little brother.  I've photographed his first "real" girlfriend, a girl he hung out with in kindergarten and now his elementary school "girlfriend."  My brother and Drew were in the same class for years and she was his girlfriend because they played basketball together after school.  I love kids.  But now they're grown up and getting their senior pictures taken.

Drew and her mother came by on Sunday to do her pictures, but we ended up only doing studio shots because (like I mentioned in my last post about Jake and Melissa's wedding) the weather was horrid last weekend.  I had set up shop down in The Fallout Shelter, which worked really well because there's so much more room down there than in, say, a living room.  It was also my first shoot with a three-light set-up, as I just bought a third Alien Bee from a girl I went to college with.  From my point of view, I had a softbox to my left, a beauty dish to the right, and a hair light also to the right, but slightly behind where Drew was standing on the backdrop.  There's a photo of it on my Facebook page if you're interested.

We wanted to do more than just plain background shots though, so we cleared off the stage, grabbed the beauty dish and did some portraits of Drew and and her basketball with the brick wall.

Yesterday we finished up the shoot in Drew's yard.  I got a bit lost on my way there, honestly, but all was well in the end.  They have a pretty little garden and a big yard, and a basketball hoop.  Her mom Kelly told me she was glad to have me as their photographer because she knows we can work around each other's schedules.  Compliments like that are always so nice!

Wedding - Melissa and Jake

When I first was asked to photograph Melissa and Jake's wedding, I knew this was going to be a fun wedding.  They know Dawn and Brandon, whose wedding I photographed last year, and their (and my) friends Boo and Mason.  If they're friends with this group, I figured, it will be a blast.

It was definitely a chill, laid-back production - the wedding was in the afternoon, the reception was at a fire hall next door to the church.  Downside was it was cold and rainy.  The church was tiny, and there were a ton of people!  Everyone turned out for this wedding; Melissa and Jake have been together for something like 15 years, high school sweethearts, the whole romantic shebang, and you can tell they were thrilled to be finally tying the knot.  I love it!

We did photos inside the church, and then a few quick wedding party formals outside.  We had originally planned on going to a gazebo, but the weather killed those plans.  Definitely still got some wonderful pictures though!

The reception was so much fun.  There were a ton of people, everyone was drinking and dancing and having a great time.  I got all kinds of absolutely hysterical candid shots!

 This one just above is one of my favorites - I love how both Melissa is turned to her maid of honor and Jake is turned to the his best man.  They're married and excited and sharing that excitement with their friends and that's just awesome to me.

Seniors 2012 - Ellie

It's always a little weird doing senior pictures for my siblings' friends, because I've known many of them since they were young.  This was one of the odder ones, because Elizabeth is a family friend and I've known her literally her entire life.  When I was asked to do her pictures though, I was definitely excited!

For the formal shots, I went to their house, and almost the entire family was there, with the exception of Nora, who is my age.  Test shots were taken with Ellie's parents, which was very funny.  Landon helped me carry equipment in and Victor was cooking dinner.  I got an offer to stay, but had plans with my boyfriend so could not.

After headshots, we went to a park in Sewickley, which I wasn't too impressed by but we did get some beautiful shots of her lying in the grass and leaves.

After the Triangle Park, we decided to hit a nature reserve across the street from their plan.  It had all these beautiful yellow flowers and we took some absolutely amazing pictures!!  Had to put on my polarizing filter to get the sky to turn out right, so that was fun too.  I'm so happy with how they came out!

September

I've been meaning to update for three weeks now!  It's been a crazy month, and October is sure to be too.  Let's see....on September 3rd, I photographed Rick and Lisa's wedding - it was at Shakespeare's, this beautiful castle restaurant/gold course out near Ellwood city.  It was a small and sweet wedding.

That same weekend my friend Sherry came in from New Jersey to celebrate our 24th birthdays!  Hers is September 4th and mine is the 5th.  On the 4th we went with some of my friends from River Runs Scarlet to go see Evolove in Cleveland.  RRS opened for Evolove when we were in LA last summer, so it was great to see them again!

A week after my birthday, I moved.  Only about a mile away, but this means I currently do not have studio space, so shoots are all being conducted on location (studio shoots in people's living rooms, that sort of thing).  Luckily my entire set-up fits in my car and I just bought a portable power pack for my lights AND, yesterday, another light (thank you, Shannon!).  Neither of the new things have been used yet and I must admit I'm getting a bit antsy.

Let's see.....what else have I done this month?  ADORABLE pictures of a little boy named Nathan!  His mommy is in Afghanistan, so his aunt wanted photos taken of him.  In this one, he's holding his mother's dog tags.

I need to do more photos of children, they're so fun.

Yesterday I had a senior portrait shoot with my friend Elizabeth, but she's going to get her own post tomorrow.  I have a few more senior shoots coming up within the next few weeks, as well as a wedding, headshots and a band shoot!  Busy busy busy.

Seniors 2012 - Abbie

This weekend, I photographed Abbie, who is from the opposite side of the city.  She wanted me to do her pictures, though, as I had done her cousin Janelle's two years ago.  We met partway, at Janelle's mom's house and I set up my background in the living room.  Ended up using the prime lens (still on that manual kick!) and window light, and the pictures turned out beautiful!!

We went around the house and yard for a bit, taking pictures and trying to convince Abbie's little cousin, who is about two, that it wasn't her turn.  I had been photographing her on the background while Abbie was changing and the little one was all about it.

In my years as a photographer, and having a strong tendency to convert to black and white (probably due to my days in the darkroom), I've realized some people look better in color and some look better in black and white.  There's also sepia and faded color.  Vibrant color.  A big part of this is a personality thing, but there's also style/wardrobe (which plays into personality but can change) and even just physical appearance (face/body type/etc) or location.  Abbie is a sepia.  Sepia makes me think of pretty vintage things, classic portraits, World War II and the 1940s, and she definitely has a vintage kind of style.

We went to the old railway station in Coraopolis to shoot.  I've always wanted to photograph there - my bus drove by it every day for the two and a half years I rode it - but never have.  When we were emailing, setting up our shoot, Abbie suggested the station and I jumped on the chance.

How classic is that?!

Liv and the Downpour

When I first started having an interest in photography, I was about 17 and recruited my sister and her friends (who are 4 or 5 years younger) to be my models.  It's always fun shooting with them again because they've grown from silly middle schoolers to beautiful college girls.  Today I photographed Liv, one of these girls and my "happy model."  She's always smiling!

She came by apartment and we picked an outfit, figured out her makeup and headed to the local ice cream shop/mini golf course, The Windmill, to shoot in their overgrown driving range.  I'm still on my 50mm f2 prime kick, so had that on my Pentax K20D.  It was bright but overcast, so the natural light was beautiful - no flash photography, please!

We didn't really have a set plan, mostly just "pretty pictures in a field."  But the weather decided to give us a more exciting shoot than we had anticipated when it started raining.  It had POURED earlier in the day but cleared up.  This wasn't as terrible, so we continued shooting and laughed about the rain and thunder and how the sky certainly didn't look all that bad!

Thankfully the storm didn't last very long and there was even a rainbow after!

Luckily we got in the car before the rain started up again, because on the way home it absolutely poured!!  Gotta love Pittsburgh weather.

John Family Portraits

My cousin Paul and his wife Jen were in town from South Carolina and asked me to do family portraits of them, their two kids and dog.  Of course I said yes!  We went to Moon Park on Monday around 7pm so it wasn't terribly hot and miserable.  We did very sweet family portraits at a picnic table and a in clearing.

After the cute family stuff, I took some more playful shots of the kids.

Brian is 6 and Mikayla is 8 and I absolutely love them.  On Sunday, Mik and I had a paper airplane fight that ended up with her getting chalk all over me.  *sigh*  Adorable, right?  Most of my pictures were of the kids, because, well, they're kids and they're cute, but I got some nice ones of Jen and Paul too.

For the entire shoot I used my manual focus 50mm prime f2 lens.  I blame Chris Gooden, another photographer, who is friends with Trix.  They came to The Fallout Shelter last weekend and he let me try out his Canon 5D Mark II with an 85mm prime f1.2 lens.  I nearly died of happiness and really didn't want to give it back.  SO NICE.  Someday,  I will have equipment that fancy.  Someday.