When approached by Lauri about senior portraits of her daughter Ava, I was a little reluctant at first. There is a trend happening with photographers and senior portraits that involve sunny fields, antique barns, and frankly, a look that doesn't look like the world I live in. I appreciate the photographs, but it doesn't fit my style, and frankly, there are many photographers better suited to that style of work than me. Perhaps I'm not sentimental or romantic enough? After some deliberation, I decided to take the assignment on one condition: That we photograph Ava in the studio where I feel most at home.
Lauri was all for it, and gave me artistic license and leeway. We arranged for a hair and makeup artist by the name of Traci Fine (who was outstanding to work with.) Not only did she do a fantastic job with hair and makeup, but went out of her way to assist me during the shoot. You can find Traci's website here www.finemakeupart.com We scheduled the session for a Sunday afternoon when we'd have enough time to try different hair, makeup styles and changes of clothes. I had sketched-out a number of lighting setups in advance, though did end up improvising on-the-fly as well.
“Lauri was all for it and gave me artistic license and leeway.”
We started the afternoon photographing Ava in her volleyball uniform and in her new University of North Carolina Asheville Bulldogs t-shirt (where she recently signed-on to play volleyball as a Bulldog!) Here's my two favorite images from the volleyball segment...
After a number of sports poses, we had a little fun. Ava changed into fringe and her favorite jeans while Traci assisted with "fanning" her hair. (We used a 36" gold and silver reflector which worked great.) In addition to being tall (over 6') Ava has really long hair which lent itself great to a little "wind"...
After some great images (and some hilarious hair images that didn't make the final cut) I wanted to try something bold and serious. While Ava changed into a new outfit and Traci styled her hair, I setup a three-light arrangement which included a daylight balanced strobe at camera right, a red-gelled strobe at camera left and a fill light just in front and slightly camera left...
This lighting setup gave me a lot of flexibility to have some "shadow play" fun. Standing on a step ladder in front of the fill light, I could cast a shadow on Ava's face with my arm and camera. While I was engrossed in creating different shadow patterns on Ava, we were running out of time and moved on.
The next segment consisted of Ava removing her white leather jacket and me re-arranging the lights. I introduced a large octabox (nearly 6' in height) to provide "wrap" to the light, and a strip light for a slight edge / fill at camera left and behind Ava. I opened up to f/2.8 for a really shallow depth-of-field. Here's my favorite image from that setup where I implied a slight Paolo Roversi style...
And another simple but great portrait...
We had one more change of clothes left, and with time running out used the same large octabox at camera right (with slightly more power so I could stop-down and brought it closer to center) and turned off the rim light at camera left...
We called it a wrap. All-in-all I spent about 7 hours in the studio that day (which included setting-up before and uploading images after.) Lauri had a lot of fun seeing the images of Ava appear in real-time on a tethered iMac, though I think Ava had enough of posing and was anxious to be finished. It was a great time in the studio and a lot of fun was had by all. Most of all, I appreciate Lauri's willingness to let me experiment — it's not often I have the chance to work for hours-on-end with a cooperative subject and multiple lighting setups.
Interested in senior portraits? Drop me a note here! (Here's a couple more images I couldn't resist posting. Enjoy!)
UPDATE 07/12/17: Since I photographed Ava, I've been busy photographing several more seniors and have introduced a new online reservation system for the 2017–2018 school year. Interested in booking your senior portrait session? Reserve online or read my recent post: "Senior Portraits: How It Works; What To Expect."