the latest in-studio & on-location MO, IL and beyond
Today, I get to share Tucker’s senior session with you. He’s just weeks away from graduation!!! We hung out around the high school to create a variety of looks to celebrate the end of his high school career.
Hey guys (like literally GUYS)… senior portraits are not just for the ladies! Sure, maybe you haven’t been thinking about your senior pictures for years (or maybe you have – we love that!).. maybe you think it will be uncomfortable or weird. I get it, for real… I have been a photographer for 15 years and with my husband for all 15. Luckily for him the annual photo sessions didn’t really start until after we got married and had kids but NOW I make this poor man have his photo taken EVERY SINGLE YEAR (I mean, he married a photographer, he should have known).
So what does that mean for you senior guys?!?! It means that not only behind the camera but also in front of it I’ve learned how to make you 100% comfortable… I’ll make sure you know what to do in front of the camera and then we’ll laugh and joke and hang out and make it way less stressful and boring than you may think it could be.
We do have to start with a plan, this is YOUR session and we need to design it to fit you and show off who you are. Love your truck? Bring it! Love your dog? You better bring him/her! Love your gun, bow, 4 wheeler, boat, sports, games, guitar, drums (you name it)…. BRING IT!
It’s Kolapo’s day in the spotlight on the blog! One fun things about senior guy sessions is that their wardrobe changes are typically a little quicker than our senior gals, so we tend to be able to fit a LOT of work into a single session! We kicked things off with Kolapo at his home (they have some gorgeous land with a fun red barn) and that’s always a great plan for the family pets so they are comfortable in their own space. And can I just tell you I fell in love with Winston.
Today, I’m sharing James’ senior album with you all! Our albums are a product that nearly every one of our senior clients selects and with options from 14″ metal cover Italian-made designer albums down to 6″ pocket albums we’ve got an option for everyone to take home one of these custom-designs. They are one of my favorite items to create for clients since I know loose portraits can easily end up dusty in a box under the bed, digital images are more often than not never even downloaded and I haven’t had a client yet with enough wall space to feature 30-50 of their images all at once!
So albums give us the chance to highlight ALL your favorite images in a custom-design that’s easy to display on an easel on a bookshelf or even out on the coffee table. Plus, we want to plan for now, for this session and this kiddo, but albums help us plan for all future sessions too. Imagine all your family’s milestones… senior years, engagements, weddings, new additions, growing kiddos, etc all ready and at your fingertips in your matching albums over the years. It’s hard to make time to scrapbook or make these yourself (I know, I do this for a living and STILL haven’t made my wedding album yet!) so this takes the work out of it and instead of a project we provide you with the finished legacy instead.
One of my favorite things about James’ session is that we worked in his bass fishing! This is the first session I’ve done with a bass boat and though we had a TON of fog for his early morning session it made for a really cool session!
I also had some fun creating sunlight where there was NONE. The fog was THICK all morning on this day and they’d really hoped for some sunshine (what’s the fun of getting up for a sunrise session with no sun right). So I decided to create a little (see the last album design above).
Today I get to share Garett’s senior portraits with you! We might have had a chilly dreary day (nothing like the 80 degrees and sunshine that decided to show up this week!!!) but we definitely made the best of it. Early spring sessions can be a bit unpredictable but by this time of the year I’m always itching to get the camera back in my hands and get outside after mostly indoor sessions all winter long.
We kicked off Garett’s session at the high school to feature his two sports, baseball and football. Construction on the brand new field made things interesting but a very accomodating construction crew let us get what we needed on the bleachers while they worked!
After finishing at the school we headed over to Whitmore Park. This little park is one of my favorite little forgotten spaces over here. I love it for spectacular fall colors in it’s nice dense forest but even this time of year it gives us such variety and being one of the less visited parks in town we often have the place all to ourselves for sessions (and play days for me and B too!). Garett chose this park as his second location because it’s a favorite spots to take his pup for walks.
You may remember the Morrison’s first session with me a couple years ago. I was so thrilled to work with them again for Garett’s senior portraits.