Jen Rinaldi arrives in Indiana

I’m so behind on my posts, lol. Yesterday, my sister and I along with our kids went to pick up my friend, Jen of Jen Rinaldi Photography, http://blog.jenrinaldiphotography.com/, from the airport. I can’t believe that she is finally here. I keep looking at her thinking, ‘I can’t believe your in my house and not on IM.’ It’s so cool. Last night was just like a slumber party. I actually stayed up until 12:30…..whoa, I know…….I’m crazy. LOL I only have one picture that I took, so I’ll be posting more as I take more pictures of our craziness this week.

Today we will be doing my nieces Senior shoot in Clinton so that is going to be a lot of fun.

Victoria S

This teen and I are friends on Facebook. I’ve known her family since 1993. She saw the little session that I did with my oldest and really wanted to do the same thing. Since she lives in Chicago, we had to wait until she came to Terre Haute to visit her dad to do her session. She is such a great girl. When she comes back for Christmas, Victoria and my oldest want to have their pictures taken together.

A big thank you to all my senior girls

I’m sappy, I know it, but as the end of the year gets closer and closer I wanted to thank my Senior girls. I had the most amazing time with each one of “my girls” and can’t thank each one of them enough. Each of you truly made my year. Because of the awesome time that I had with each of you, I am loving Senior shoots more and more each time I do one. Two of the girls are graduating mid-term in December and wish everyone of you all the best in the years to come. I sincerely hope that I get the opportunity to see you all again and maybe even photograph you again. You are each an inspiration and all of you have such good hearts.

Okay, I told you I’m being sappy, but I can’t help it. Love you all!!! God Bless!!!

Ashley L

Snowball Dance 2008

Terre Haute, IN

The city of Terre Haute holds a snowball dance every year for the kids in middle school, 6th, 7th and 8th grades. The instructor at my day job asked me to photograph her daughter and her friend before the dance. What a lot of fun. These girls were so excited and giggly, lol. The house was full of proud parents and grandparents. Thanks B for asking me to take their pictures.

Samara W~Day two~Outdoor session

Samara and I went to beautiful Parke county for our outdoor session. I’m so glad that the weather was nicer than when we did the studio session. It was windy and a little chilly, but the sun was out and it was such a beautiful day.

I could seriously do Senior sessions for the rest of my life. I LOVE hanging out with Seniors, they are so much fun. All the seniors that I photographed are full of fun and are willing to try new things. Samara and I had a lot of laughs. Poor thing probably has thorns in her flag, lol.

For this post, I’m going to try to include some information about the pictures about what I was thinking when I took the shot to maybe help other photographers.

In the image below, it was taken toward the end of our session. There is a field in Parke County with a bunch of old antique and rusty cars. I’ve tried twice to go and get permission to photograph in there, but no one is ever home. So, when we saw this old barn, I told her that we would go by there on our way back to Clinton. When I asked the permission, the guy looked like I had horns growing out of my head. There was a huge dog there too that looked like he could eat us for a snack. LOL When we were walking around the barn, there were two old cars that were so cool.

I always look at the sun to see where it is and how it makes the environment look. I told Samara to face towards it and in this picture, I believe I bumped my ISO up to 800 and used 100% natural light. I think it looks so wonderful.

Samara is in the drill team at High School and I had an image in my mind that I knew that I had to capture. We tried to find a hill where there wouldn’t be any trees in the background. Well, after getting lost briefly we found a hill. I asked her to climb it, only to find out that she had to go through sticker bushes to get to an open area. :o( Sorry Samara. This image came out exactly how I imagined it. I love the way she posed and the way she held the flag. I think it was worth the adventure.

I just love the way the light is hitting her face. So beautiful!

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I added a texture to the last one. I asked her, “Is this the look you give your mom?” She said yes! I LOVE it, so full of attitude.

Thanks Samara for an awesome time!! You are so great!

The M children~Christmas portraits

You all may remember these little cuties from the fall photographs that we took not too long ago. Well, with Christmas right around the corner, it was time for portraits for the Christmas cards. Their mom brought some really cute props and I think we had a good time. She even brought “snow”. It was everywhere, but thankfully, it is so easy to clean up. :o)

 

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Samara W ~ S.V.H.S. Sneek Peek

I am really starting to love photographing senior’s. I have to admit, at first, kids this age made me nervous. I’m not sure why, but they did. However, the more I work with this age group, the more comfortable I am becoming around them. They are sweet, funny, refreshing. They have big dreams and remind me of a time when I was that age.

Samara is no exception. What a beautiful girl! She was/is my first client using my studio set-up and the images came out so lovely. We did our session in two days because the weather here in Indiana was yucky and cold and because the lighting wasn’t good. So, on Wednesday, we’ll be doing our “urban” shoot in our local town.

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Looking for milkweed

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
~Christopher Morley, To a Child

We have a field across from our house and this year they planted milo. Well, they finally came and harvested it. “E” and I had tried earlier in the year to look for milkweed and explore that area but the weeds and crops were so high that we struggled to get through it. On this day we were able to get right to the milkweed and we also found this huge leaf. “E” is becoming quite the little model lately. I asked her to put the leaf up to her face so we could show how big the leaf was compared to her face. Well, I got a lot of shots of her because she is starting to love posing.

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More of Ashley H

I finished up Ashley’s Senior session and wanted to share some of my favorites from that day. She really is refreshing, sweet, and funny. I’m so glad that she found me.

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Studio portraits

Getting pictures of my oldest is just about as hard as getting pictures of my youngest. I secured a session with another Senior today, which I’m thrilled about. For this Senior’s session, we are going to include a little studio time. Since I’ve yet to do a lot of studio shots and my oldest wanted photos for her facebook, I though I would kill two birds with one stone. On my studio lights, I have colored filters which I used for these. I really love how the red filter made the photographs turn out. I also used blue, but can’t tell as much as I can with the red one.