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?!

Seniors 2011 - Kayla

On Saturday I had my first senior portrait session of the summer.  Kayla's actually graduating this year (2011) not next, but she needed senior portraits done, so I was glad to help!  She's a cool kid who likes zombies and is going to go to school to be a chef.  Because Kayla's so awesome and she and her mom were so prompt in coming to review the photos from our session, I let her pick which would go on the blog.  So here ya go, Kayla!  Facebook away!

Her cat, Tigger, is huge compared to my two little kitties.  I swear he was almost as big as Kayla and it was pretty adorable.  This shot is the only one like it and everyone (everyone being Kayla, her mom and myself) thinks it just awesome.

We also did some chef portraits in the studio.  Kayla and I were getting along pretty well because we seem to have a similar sense of humor and she ended up "executing" a stuffed cow she brought along to the shoot and then serving him up on a giant spatula.  So horrible, yet so very funny.

After all that ridiculousness, we went to the park for some outdoor shots.  What we didn't realize was that there was a Relay for Life benefit or some such thing going on, so decided against our original plan of bringing her fake gravestone and zombie head along with us.  It might have scared the hundreds of people who aren't normally there.  So instead we did some pretty normal shots, as well as a few variations on an idea she had gotten from a book cover.

I LOVE the tree/leaf idea; it turned out so well.  You did great, Kayla.