We often joke, half-joke and sometimes even seriously ask our Iowa clients if they would like to have their beach senior pictures created at the Jersey Shore where we spend part of our summer shooting each year. And just about the time when the joke wasn’t so funny anymore, amazingly, one of our clients asked us. When Emily from Des Moines asked us if we could create her Senior Pictures in Ocean City, NJ, it was like being asked to the Sadie Hawkins Dance after giving up on dames. Fortuitously for all our schedules lined up and we were able to put our experience photographing seniors in Ocean City to good use on Emily’s behalf. There is something special about Ocean City that makes Seniors who have spent their childhoods vacationing there want to have their senior pictures done there and include the locations on the boardwalk that have special memories like Wonderland. We’re pretty confident none of Emily’s classmates at Dowling are going to have Senior Pictures like this.

Katelind is from North Jersey and wanted to have her senior pictures in both urban and nature settings. During her consultation we scratched our heads for a few minutes trying to think of the right location but all we could come up with was a lot of hmmms and uhhhs. Then it occurred to us that the mother of all urban locations was just across the river in New York City. Not only that, but it also has… wait for it… this place called Central Park which might present some interesting nature settings. Sweet! So try to imagine a senior photographer who loves urban settings and has been feeling a little confined by a mid-sized midwestern town bent on urban renewal and a beautiful high school senior who grew up in North Dakota. Can you say kids in a candy store? I think my 10 year old daughter Lanie, who assisted me on the photo shoot, was like the the only sober person in our entourage. She’d just look at me and say “What’s the big deal?”. So we started our photo shoot with a tour or Soho, took a subway up to Central Park and shot nature pictures until we ran out of light and then took a few more. So what do you think of Katelind in the Big Apple?

This New York City shoot also put new meaning to the phrase “There’s an App for that!”. I used iPhone apps to find where to park, where to find pizza, subway maps and timetables, and even photo opportunities in Central Park. Don’t know how I ever got by without my iPhone.

Brook’s senior portraits are all about fashion and flowers.  She is a great girl from a very nice family - all of whom came to her photo shoot.  And when my lighting assistant ran off to play in the fountains at West Glen with Brook’s little sister (it’s hard to find good help for 50 cents an hour :), Brook’s dad stepped right in and helped us create some great images.  Thanks Steve!

Samantha was so stunning in her blue dress and the gardens in and near her home in Wilmington provided such a great setting that I could have photographed her all day.  Samantha is currently in Ireland for a few weeks so we thought we would share a sneak peak of her previews.

Maddie is a great girl with some special friends.  In fact, half of our session was dedicated to creating traditional and lifestyle portraits of Maddie with her best friends and family which led to the creation of one of my all-time favorite fun friend images around the fire pit in Maddie’s back yard.  The second half of our session was at a state park on the Brandywine river, whose name still escapes me and which I could probably not find again if I tried.  Anyway, the pedestrian bridge crossing the Brandywine spoke to us and led to some interesting and dramatic images.  We didn’t exactly plan our session going for the maximum security look, but we both found all the iron bars and chains and rust inspiring and leading towards more serious and dramatic images.

Danielle literally could have gone anywhere in Iowa for her senior portraits.  She really wanted unique senior portraits and was interested in everything from sports senior portraits to fashion senior portraits to lifestyle senior portraits to nature senior portraits to urban senior senior portraits.  Danielle does more than pretty well in school and in life.   As a reward, Danielle’s mom told her she could go to any studio for her senior portraits and we were delighted to get the call.  Our photo shoot was the classic zig-zag across town chasing locations and light.  We began at the Grand Piano Bistro in Des Moines (www.thegrandpianobistro.com) where the manager was kind enough to allow us to shoot on their piano stage.  After visiting our studio, downtown Des Moines, some dark alleys and bridges, we finally ended up at the capital for some cinderella pictures.  Danielle is a delightful, bright-eyed beauty with a bright future.

We love creating senior portraits in and around seniors’ homes.  Everyone’s home is different and brings elements that are both unique and meaningful to the senior portraits we create.  Seniors are often more relaxed at home than they are in our studio or on location.  Try being yourself when you’re fashion modeling in a busy urban district with dozens of onlookers watching you while they eat their dinners at the local sidewalk bistros.  It can be pretty unnearving.  And the best part about shooting in homes is the seniors have all their stuff their and can typically call upon any outfit I can think of to match an interesting settting.

When is comes to Abby, one of our senior models from Wilmington, Delaware, we needed to go no further than her own back yard for most of our photo shoot.  Her property is adjacent a farm and the fields, hay bales and hedgerow gardens provided most of the scenery for her nature senior portraits.  Abby is a truly beautiful young lady, but even better, she is a makeup artist, which was quite fortunate as we have not yet partnered with a makeup artist in Delaware for our senior portrait clients.  Thanks Abby for showing us what great senior portraits you can create just by staying at home.

Meet Tya - a traveling drum major, doodle-owning, fashionista from Smyrna, Delaware with a Kool-Aid smile.  She’s a high school senior with many interests and really challenged us to capture a wide variety of images in a relatively brief session frequently interrupted by thunderstorms.  Tya’s interest in traveling led us to start at the Wilmington Train Station. While we intended to create some lifestyle images of Tya catching a train, we found the underbelly of the station provided a great setting to capture her second interest - her drums.  Tya has been a Drum Major at Smyrna for the past two years and her passion is the snare drum.  After crawling around on French Street trying to capture the perfect urban drum image and completely covered with dirt and oil, I followed Tya to Rockwood Park where she got her fash on ad played with her doodle (Dante her dachsund-poodle :).  We didn’t intend to shoot sports portrait but we did get to see Tya run the 40 yard dash in about 4 seconds in a dress and heels when a thunderstorm came through the park. 

Dayna hails from Johnston, IA and chose Seniors by Photojeania to create fashion, sports, urban, nature, classic and lifestyle images for her senior portraits.  Needless to say it was a lot of running around but well worth it.  Dayna is 6 feet tall (6 feet three inches in heels) and challenged us to get our studio lights high enough for her.  Dayna could easily be a fashion model, but insists she wants to become an Orthodontist and was able to arrange for part of her photo shoot to be done in her Orthodontist’s office.  Thanks to Dr. Willham at Willham Orthodontics P.C. for making their offices and equipment available to us for Dayna’s photo shoot.

Austin is a Senior at Johnston High School in Johnston, IA and like Dayna (see Blog post for Dayna), his girlfriend, he has a lot of interests that he wanted to incorporate into his senior portraits.  Austin plays baseball, hunts, boats, likes cars and is looking forward to a career in law enforcement.  The Johnston police were kind enough to make one of their cruisers available for some of Austin’s pictures.  I am continually impressed at how generous people are when it comes to making locations, clothing and props available for senior portraits and grateful to the Johnston Police for making this happen for Austin.

Storm’s pictures came just in time because he busted his face in a baseball game right after he finished his senior portraits.  Fortunately Storm is a quick healer and looking good already.  Storm comes to us from Waukee High School in Waukee, IA.  He plays baseball and lives in a baseball family of sorts.  His step brother, Devin (see blog post for Devin), is a senior at Valley High School in West Des Moines and also plays baseball for his team.  That pretty much makes mom and dad full-time baseball fans.  Both boys are senior portrait models for our studio.  The boys have competitive spirits as you can imagine and it was amusing to listen to their witty banter as we did much of their photo shoots combined.  The photo shoot sometimes resembled scenes from Zoolander as the boys were competing for top model status.  Our photo shoots took us from our studio for classic images and sports composites and downtown for some urban senior portraits and our first session ended with a slam dunk contest in their back yard for some fun lifestyle images.  Storm was a great model and created some of my favorite sports senior portraits and urban senior portraits of the season.

Meet Devin from Valley High School in West Des Moines.  Devin, along with his step brother Storm, is one of our senior models and came to us to create urban, clasic and sports senior pictures.  Like Storm, Devin created some of my favorite sports images of the season and did a great job modeling for our studio.

Sami attends Valley High School in West Des Moines, IA and came to Seniors by Photojeania for nature and fashion senior portraits.  We had an awesome senior portrait session in the studio starting with our makeup artist, Shealynn, and our singature WOW (white on white) headshots.  Sami asked us to focus on her eyes, but she had such great modeling instincts, we couldn’t help but create some great full-length fashion senior pictures before leaving the studio.  Sami loves the outdoors and so we took her to one of our favorite parks outside of Des Moines abundant with wildflowers for some nature senior pictures.

Jackie and Jeff are twins from Wilmington, Delaware.  Both are certified photogenic but have very different personalities and even go to different high schools.  Our photo shoot began at their home and moved on to Rockwood Park where it seemed everything was in bloom.  I can’t say enough about what the park staff does to keep the grounds so beautiful.