Sneak Peek Senior Portraits!

Last weekend I shot my little cousin's senior portraits.  This weekend I'm starting to go through and edit them and I'm pretty pleased with the results! She is the youngest out of all the cousins so it's pretty exciting to see her finish out high school and prepare for the next chapter in her life. 

We photographed some popular locations around the Pearl District in Portland such as Jamison Square, Tanner Springs Park, and the Ecotrust Building.  We also went down towards the Portland waterfront and across the Steel Bridge.  Finally, we went north to Ester Short Park in Vancouver, WA to finish out the day.  It was a little bit less cloudy than what was forecasted for the weekend, so that made for some challenging lighting as we approached noon.  But I think we were able to make due with what we had.  The whole session was photographed with an 85mm f1.4 lens.  I had contemplated switching lenses for certain shots but the 85mm is such a good portrait lens that it stayed on the camera body the whole time.  

I try to mix in a range of emotions into portrait sessions so that they aren't all smiles that appear to be more and more forced as the day goes on.  I don't usually like to pose people either because I'm terrible at it.  I don't shoot portraits consistently or frequently enough.  I usually just stick with some basic directions of what to do and then they tend to produce more natural and comfortable results.  It also helps that all of my cousins are very photogenic!  These are some of my favorites so far.