Senioritis...in its best form!

    Senioritis.  It's usually a bad thing.  It happens to teens during that last year of high school and seems to cause all kinds of trouble for teachers, parents, and students alike.
In this case I've caught senioritis and it's a GOOD thing.   I'm revamping my senior photography program to include a Senior Rep program, stylized senior sessions with hair and make up for the ladies, mini studio headshots for those seniors who are reluctant to have a full on senior session, and BFF senior sessions for those BFF's who just can't stand to be parted long enough to do a senior session alone.
     The first step in developing a good case of senioritis was getting a good senior rep to help spread the word about all the great stuff coming to Simply Me Photography by M. Etheredge. And boy did I pick a good one!
     Meet Savannah Solomon, a senior from Clements High School!  Bubbly, vivacious, and beautiful, Savannah jumped right into her senior year by booking a senior session with me months in advance. I knew after a few conversations that she was THE one!  A good senior rep program involves having a senior who is outgoing and outspoken in each school.  Since Savannah is on the yearbook staff at her school, is involved in the Greater Limestone County Youth Leadership Program, and is a member of several clubs at school,  I knew she had the contacts and the leadership skills to help me promote my senior sessions.
    We crafted two sessions for Savannah that would showcase my skills as a photographer and highlight her style at the same time.      The first part of the first session was about creating a fantasy location, so I built a swing draped in flowers and we waited for the sun to drop low enough in the sky that it would light her up with a nice golden glow. We played with the swing in the side yard of my my house for a while, waiting for sun to drop even lower for the second part of the first session: the pink Victorian couch.
This would be the last session I would ever to to use this couch since it was going up for auction to raise money for Perfectly Imperfect: Tyley Sue's Story, and it fit Savannah's style to a tee.   During our conversations and in her senior session contract she had mentioned several times her fascination with vintage clothing and furniture and wanted her senior session to reflect her love of all things boho and shabby chic, so pairing her fashion sense with that gorgeous couch was a no brainer. 

The next session was all about Savannah's vision for her senior portraits.   She wanted water pictures and she wanted something unique, something no other senior would have.  So we started at the huge gate at the Pennington residence.   It took several tries to let all the cars go in and out but we were finally able to set up 24 candles in the deeply shaded driveway to get a dark, enchanted  shot.

Next, we hopped over to a beautiful tree studded hill drenched in gorgeous golden light for a few shots.

       Finally, we headed over to the creek for the grand finale: the water session.
Savannah had chose a beautiful, long flowing, ivory lace dress and a stunning red and silver embroidered head piece for her boho look.  We carefully picked our way across slippery rocks into the shallow creek and began slowly working our way to having a thoroughly drenched senior on our hands.  Even Savannah's little brother got into the action, wading in with us to hold the reflector so we could get enough light on Savannah's face.

I am LOVING this senior rep program!

:) If you are interested in becoming a senior rep for one of the schools in Limestone or Morgan county, shoot me an email at simplymephotography@hotmail.com

I would love to have a senior in each school!

We're off to see the wizard!

One of my favorite things to do in photography is let my imagination run wild and put a new twist on an old tale.
This week I was honored to have budding young model, Caitlin C.,  ask me to build a session for her.  Something different, she said.  Something new, she said.
While the idea of taking old tales and adding new spins is not necessarily new to the world, it was new to her and will add a eye-catching layout to her portfolio.

I had actually wanted to do this session for a while.  I had played with it with a couple of children early in my career, but what I really wanted to do was take a dark look at Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz .

I only had a few days to pull it all together, so  I really had to work fast and get lucky finding the right accessories.

I started by shopping for artificial red poppies.  I found those for $3 a bunch at one of those gigantic superstores (which shall remain un-named!).  I also grabbed a bale of straw.  Then came the thrift stores---I needed red glitter shoes, so I bought a $2 pair of classically hideous pumps and a can of red glitter paint. Next, I stumbled across the perfect sequined evening dress--short, sexy, and dark.  I picked up a couple of other cheap dresses that would show off Caitlin's endless legs.  Together with a few odd and end props from my prop room, a plan came together.

The session was shot with a Canon 5d Mark ii, a 25-78 2.8 lens, and a 70-200 2.8 lens at 3 in the afternoon.
The results are just fantastic.  Thanks so much Caitlin for letting me have free run. (And thanks to her sweet momma, too, for being and excellent assistant!)

Nathan and Morgan's Engagement Session - An Unexpected Journey

     As we bumped along in the flatbed trailer being pulled by the muddy four-wheeler, I thought to myself "I hope it isn't far.  The sun is moving."  As we drove over ant mountains (not hills... MOUNTAINS) and battled our way through branches and briers, I thought "What have I gotten myself into?  The sun...it is MOVING and we don't have a single image on the card."  As we splashed through mud and swarms of mosquitoes, I began to think, "This is silly.  There is no way this pond is going to be worth all the time and trouble we have wasted getting here!  The sun is SETTING soon!!"
 
     I was wrong. I was very wrong.  Once we made our way a mile or so (could have been 10 miles for all I know!)  back into the brush there was a pond....and a flat-bottom boat.  Nathan had a plan.  He would be taking Morgan out on the pond in that boat for one very special image. He wanted them to stand in the boat in the middle of the pond for one of the images. After chasing a mouse from under the seat and removing a handful of crickets from the boat, they were in the water.
 
    Then suddenly it all made sense.  They stood, and then suddenly he dropped to one knee and held out the little velvet box.  He proposed to her right and proper there on that little pond in the middle of nowhere.
   
   To be totally honest, I missed a couple of shots. I was so moved, I think I gasped at one point and possibly jumped up and down a bit.  Kind of hard to take a clean shot when that happens.
     
     I  was so excited I could hardly stand myself.  No matter what happened for the rest of the session, I had this great story and these great images.  And then the rest of the session happened.
 
      We rode back to the house where Morgan and Nathan changed clothes.  There were cowboy boots and suspenders and khaki pants and an old newsboy cap. We were on a farm with old barns, rusted silos, and a donkey named Izzy.  My life couldn't get any better.  And then we began the poses.
   
    This couple is so ridiculously in love it just oozes out of them. They fold seamlessly into one another.  They gaze longingly into each other's eyes as if I am not even there and it isn't even awkward.  They are loose and fluid with one another.  And they are happy.   My life couldn't get any better.  And then he broke out the guitar.  And then she climbed up on a horse. And then they collapsed on the greenest patch of grass with the most perfect tilt.  Sigh.  This totally just happened.

    As I drove home almost 3 hours later, I thought, "I should have paid THEM to take those pictures."  :)  I will be photographing their wedding in September. Life just doesn't get any better.

Sandra's Pond

Footnote on lessons learned here:

1.  Don't go to a session prepared for what you THINK you are going to do.  Go prepared for whatever might arise!  I would give ANYTHING if I had brought my 70-200 zoom out to that pond!!

2.  This session was a raging success not because of anything I did or really even anything that Morgan did, although her being gorgeous and full of her own ideas was a huge plus; this was a huge success because NATHAN had ideas and because Nathan was INTO the session.  He wasn't just her prop, he was her partner in this adventure and that made the whole thing work.

3.  Anything...absolutely anything a kid does in a session will be precious!

Great Gatsby Inspired Senior Session

Themed sessions can often turn out so cheesy and so over-themed that the portraits really lose their inherent value.  Most people do not display portrait of the kids dressed in costumes.  Picture it....your 6 year old has a Cinderella themed session.  It's gorgeous...but how long re you going to want a 20x30 framed canvas of your baby dressed up as Cinderella, right?

I was very conscious of that problem when I decided to use the Gatsby-styled hairbows in my senior session with Camry.  She was the perfect Daisy...gorgeous, sleek blond hair cut in a vintage bob that framed her face and the clearest blue eyes!  Blue is a motif in the novel...it is symbolic and ever present throughout the novel, so naturally I used my blue flapper-styled headband  and my blue over-the-top shabby chic silk flower headband.  Luckily, Camry had the perfect blouse to go with the head adornments.  From there it was just about waiting until we had taken enough pictures for her to be relaxed and the sun to get low enough in the sky.

In the end they were perfect.  Even in black and white, which worried me because in my mind's eye the blue was so necessary, but something about the classic nature of black and white images really complemented the Gatsby theme.

Of course, since the Gatsby theme was completely self-indulgent, I made sure we took plenty of images that did not involve huge honking headbands. ;)

Senior Portraits....Again?

We probably aren't the first ones to do it.  I hope we won't be the last...in fact, I am hoping this will become a trend: senior portraits for college seniors.

My youngest daughter is graduating from Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky this year.  Since she was an athlete, she had to stay for a fifth year to be able to complete her internship once she finished her athletic eligibility.  She is bursting with a kind of energy and excitement about her future that I have never seen before.  LWC has more than prepared her to face the world and become a premiere force in her field.  So why not celebrate that and show that face to the world through portraits?

It took a while to get her to actually do the session. We had been talking about it since the beginning of her senior year.  One day while she was home for spring break, the mood just struck her and off we went. Ah, the benefit of having mom as a photographer: just grab her and her camera and go! In her case, the session was really small. She is a bit of an enigma--- a huge personality trapped in a body that sometimes reverts to its 8 year old painfully shy mode.  Fortunately though, she has a great eye and she knows her own style very well, so that short session was pointed and full of just-right shots.  We had very few discards.

In the end we have this great selection of photographs, an afternoon of fun memories, and a compare and contrast album with high school to college pictures.  I hope all college seniors will begin booking these kinds of sessions!

On a side note, one aspect of the before and after is that the change in my photography is quite evident! :)

Valentine Mini Sessions

Mini sessions are sort of like Christmas to me...only better.  You know how you spend weeks or even months getting ready for Christmas?  Choosing just the right presents for the children, planning all the right trips to see lights, visit family, sit on Santa's knee?  Preparing all the right foods and cleaning until even the dust motes sparkle as they drift through the air?  And then on Christmas morning there is this massive sense of the anti-climactic. The kids tear through the wrapped presents with nary a thought in their little sugar-plum filled heads for the time and attention you paid to coordinating bows with paper.  This gift has to be taken back because it doesn't fit and that gift must be returned because it doesn't work.  At the end of the day, the house is a wreck, there is literally no room in the fridge for the ridiculous amounts of leftovers.  So at the end of it all, instead of a feeling of satisfaction and joy, you are left with this very real, very urgent need to just cry.  Yeah, well mini sessions are sort of like that with one big exception: after all the planning, the creating, the painting, the arranging, the blogging, and the Facebooking, there is a studio full of clients and there is proof in your camera that all of those hours upon hours of cutting lace and burlap into exactly 8.5 foot strips were definitely worth the effort!
My really favorite part of the mini sessions is the wide array of people who come and they all want something a little different. One wants classic, clean portraits, while another wants soft focus images with texture and a little something extra.  No matter which one you are, I am grateful that you came today because now the REAL fun begins for me.  I get to play with the images.

P.S. Please forgive me if this blog entry rambles and has errors in it.  I refuse to proofread when I could be editing instead! :))

Here is a link to some of the sweetness happening over on my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.302331493222078.67676.204951702960058&type=3

What I learned during my first maternity session!

I wanted to get my feet wet in the world of maternity sessions, so I invited Lauryn and her precious family over to my garage studio so I could practice.  I knew she would be a good choice to practice on because she is confident and secure in who she is---very necessary characteristics for a maternity session. :)

I also wanted a chance to practice my lighting.  A chance to just play---to see what would happen if I did this....or this...or that.   For me this winter has been all about learning how to work with light, either studio lights or natural light.  

Here is what I discovered:  I am the photographer.  I control the light.  I can even control the sun-- wellllll, I can't make it wait for a client to show up, but I can manipulate it to get a desired effect.

Through a series of trial and error yesterday, I was able to determine which lighting to use to get the image out of my head and into my camera.  (Talk about a feeling of supreme satisfaction!)

I also learned that trying different angles of the same shot is well worth the effort, especially with a pregnant woman.  To get the lines of the belly to be accentuated so she looks pregnant and not just like a girl in an over-sized shirt you have to twist and turn and practically stand on your head at times.  Bless her heart, my little guinea pig had to get up and down in the floor a million times so I could get those lines just so.

I also learned that my camera is a LIAR!  I shoot with a Canon D7 (or 7D whatever---some professional eh?  I don't even know the name of my gear!)  Anyway, it's a liar.  It lies about the white balance.  There are a ton of white balance settings from which I can choose, but none of them are true.  They ALL still have to be corrected post-production.  AND my camera LIES about the image clarity---what you see on that little preview screen, is most definitely NOT what you will get.  You THINK you won't have to do any touch ups....the screen shows this fantastic smooth, milky, dewy glow, and then you get it in the PC to process and discover the clarity is through the roof and every single pore is there for the world to ponder. Whoops!  Thank goodness for those actions in Photoshop, right?  :)

The biggest thing I learned, though, is that I really need an assistant!  Someone to hold the swaths of fabric back, someone to hold the blow dryer to move her hair, and someone to hold a reflector.   Ah, I guess I will need to invest in some more clamps, light stands, extension cords, and maybe a remote for the camera!  :) 

Now my only problem is choosing whether I want this in black and white or color. :)

These images were processed using The Cosmetics Counter from https://www.facebook.com/ATwistedLenZPhotoshopActions 

Super easy way to clean up those pores and hair follicles and even some harsh shadows.  Heck, I even used it to change my floors in one set. :)