Several sessions to get on the blog, but here are a couple pictures of Chelsea.   Chelsea was a delight to photograph and a natural in front of the camera.

And a faded, vintage tone on one.

I get such great couples!  Here are Brooks and Kelly.  They are so sweet together and so in love.  I’m looking forward to their wedding in November.

I have three weddings to add to the blog, all previewed on my Facebook Business Page (link), but meanwhile, here are some favorites from my session with the Patterson’s.  Steve, Kate, Quinn and Graham.  I love how Graham has a Baby Elvis lip curl thing going on with his baby steps.  And Quinn is full of energy like all the best ones are.  Fun times! And a great family.

Here are a couple of favorites of Mallory, a senior at East Richland Highschool.   Mallory did a great job, and I really enjoyed photographing her.

Looking through all her pictures reminds me of a recurrent thought.  Namely, I take a lot of pictures.  A LOT.  People often ask me how many I take, and my answer should be, “As many as it takes.”  I have shot as many pictures during a senior session as at a wedding, looking for something, some expression, some settling of the person, something I think might rise to the surface if I’m just patient enough to wait for it.  I honestly never know how many pictures I’m going to take.  And one of the most common things I see in amateur photographers is that they don’t take enough photographs, don’t commit to it fully, don’t hang in there until they got the image they were after. The first impression picture is often not the best one, and I live in fear and dread of the “what it looked like” picture which begs the question, “So what?”

I take the occasional what it looked like picture, we all do, and I don’t think any of us will burn in hell for it, but I think there are bigger fish to fry, namely, “What was it like?”  “What was she like?”  “What was he like?”  Obviously, any photograph is going to be conjecture, but that’s what we’re after, isn’t it?  Otherwise we’d all get all our portraits taken at Wal-Mart. A  photograph is a thing we’re going to leave behind.  The worst of our photographs, more than likely will outlive us, even in this day with our 5,000 casual facebook snapshots.

Which is to say, I take it pretty seriously when someone asks me to take their picture.  Lol.

Last week I had the opportunity to shoot fashion in Chicago at a Shoot Fashion with Carlos Baez workshop.  We had four models, a makeup artist, Rachel Frank Design along with her wicked outfits and styling and a beautiful natural light studio to work in.  I loved it!  I always love to see how other people shoot especially when they are some of the very best in the industry, as is Carlos.  On this particular exercise I certainly felt the pressure of seeing eight photographers approach the same subject and setup, and trying to think if there was anything I had to say about the subject that was slightly different.

Here are a few images from the first setup.  The shooting space was so lovely it made me feel lightheaded.  And the model in these photos is a high school senior, Kaylee, so I was particularly delighted.   What an incredible experience she had!  I was so happy for her and impressed by how she did.  As for my pictures, well I’ll like these images right up until I see something someone else or several someone else’s (lol) shot that blow my little pictures right out of the water.  That’s why I figure I better post them now, before that happens.

I’ll post some from the other models a bit later.  I’m still trying to choose which ones.  We shot such a wide range of styles and setups, that I’m still a bit overwhelmed trying to figure out which ones I like best and why and what I could have done better.

The images in the first pair were shot with a tilt shift lens, which I’ve been experimenting with a lot lately, throwing parts of the frame out of focus to alter how it reads/feels.  Fun stuff.

And a through the window shot, where Brittney reminds me of a an exotic mannequin butterfly.

And the smoky beauty Oleksandra.

I am swimming in pictures right now, and behind on the blog, but here’s one from early last week of Alexandria, “Alex,” a 2010 senior at North Clay. I love Alex’s look, and she did a great job during her session.  Turns out Alex’s mom, Sharon, and I went to school together, but haven’t seen each other since high school, so it was great to get to visit with her a bit during the session as well.

Chloe and I had been trying to get  together to do outside portraits for much of the summer, since on the day we shot her studio portraits, it was raining, and she couldn’t reschedule.  Often, I find, these things work out for the best.

When I asked Chloe to describe her music to me, so we could style her outside session, she sat down and played me a song.  While I’d heard from others that Chloe sings beautifully, I was not prepared for how good she is.  She’s the real deal, our very own Miss Chloe Lucas.  She sings like an angel come down to set things right.  So we drove out to one of the quietest places I know to take some pictures while a storm rolled in.

I believe that the truly pure of heart have tremendous power.   And I believe that Chloe has a great gift.  Here’s wishing her the very best of luck when the time comes for her to head out to find her future.  Which is to say, Chloe, whatever you do, don’t stay on the porch with your guitar.

Zay is my neighbor’s niece, Rachael’s, son.   Teresa, Shelby and Tom brought him over to get some pictures.  Generally, Ada doesn’t get to help out during sessions, but we made an exception on this one.  And I have to say, she did great.  She brought out bribes (note the plastic sea turtles) as well as some newly hatched chicks not shown here.  The third image is a behind the scenes photo that cracks me up.

By the time we’d finished the session then later that day Ada helped Zay climb the inflatable wall/slide at the Cisne Reunion, Ada was introducing Zay as her little brother.  Pretty funny.  Suffice it to say, we all thought Zay was completely adorable.

I’m behind on the blog!  I’ve posted some highlights of my last two weddings on my FB business page, but haven’t put together the blog posts for them yet.  Meanwhile, here’s the lovely Brooke, from Noble.

Dad called me last week to tell me they were taking the old Spencer place down and asked me to come take a picture before they burned it.  The Spencer house was one of the oldest houses around where I grew up, we think as early as Civil War time.  Then it sat empty for a good sixty years in the field adjoining ours, so it was the main site of my first trespassing.  I wasn’t a bad trespasser.  I never wrote on the walls or damaged the place or left any indication I had been there.   Mostly, I ratted around in the attic looking for interesting fragments from old Saturday Evening Post’s and wandered around looking out the windows like a ghost.  It always felt, stepping into the house, that you might have just missed someone else stepping out.

I was glad to get to take Ada for a visit and to watch how she was just as enthralled with the place as I had been.  Old houses like that have a kind of magic in them.  When I think about all the abandoned houses I’ve known that are gone now, I wish I had photographs of them.  I may have to take this on as a personal project, because as land prices rise, local farmers push to put every acre they have into production.   As much as it bothers me, and it does, nostalgia doesn’t pay the property tax bill.  Corn does.