Janina's Senior Pictures!

Alright, everybody! It's been a hectic couple of weeks since I moved and was without internet for about a week (THE HUMANITY), but I'm back up and rolling and today we have Janina's senior pictures! They were really fun to do--we hit up Navy Pier and then spent a good chunk of time at a beach, which is where we got most of my favorites, and then headed over to Millennium Park for a couple at the bean.

Janina's cousin came along with us, and the funny thing was that she was totally like my friend Amy, who always knows where she's going and helps me find stuff. It was SO helpful. And Janina's little bro came along too, and he was probably my favorite 12-year-old boy ever, including all the ones I knew when I was 12 myself. He and I bonded over Harry Potter, which I just read in the past year and which, obviously, was awesome.

Well, as you can see, this was a really easy job for me. Janina is completely BEAUTIFUL and about as sweet and mellow as they come.

I showed this pic as her sneak peek, but it was so cute I thought it warranted a second viewing.

OMG THE CHEEKBONES. In the words of Rachel Zoe, I die.

This was something we gave a shot at the stained glass museum on Navy Pier, and it did something kind of weird to her eyeballs, but I love the light and I thought it was a really cool picture. I showed it to Janina and she and the entourage that day, and they totally oohed and aahed over it and made me feel good. :)

Well, it probably goes without saying, but I would totally kill for that hair.

Man, it was a gorgeous day. And, so long as you're not judging by the past few days, fall in Chicago is gorgeous and it's not too late to get your senior pictures done! Hint! :)

Okay, now does this, or does this not belong in a magazine? (Hint: it does.)

Janina has probably one of the most gorgeous smiles to ever hit my camera.

I loved this--something about it seemed very European for me.

I know I'm not really commenting as much as usual, but it's because everything is just so gorgeous that it's speaking for itself. And everything with Janina and company was just so easy, and such smooth sailing, which is kind of rare, actually. :) Normally when you're out and about in public, at least one or two weirdos are requisite, but that day, Chicago was on its best behavior.

STUNNING. This is a GREAT example of a lot of expression being conveyed without a big, over the top kind of face. Tyra would be proud!

Another one that seemed European to me ... or maybe Mediterranean! (Funny that I say these things since I've never actually left the country. But I want to, and I will someday!)

Alright, seriously, she's SO FREAKIN' CUTE! But I'm going to shut up about it for a minute and just let you look at the pictures. :)

Unshutting up to say ... does this not look like the side of an American Eagle shopping bag? Loves it!

Unshutting up again, for good this time, because WOW. I love this. Most of these pictures look like they could be in a magazine, but this one looks like it belongs on a full-fledged billboard. AMAZING. Love the model wind, and love the expressions that she makes with her face. She was an absolutely perfect model.

Awww, I thought this was fun! Love that lens flare, too! But the bean is hilarious to take pictures in front of because it's always surrounded by people, so you're pretty much guaranteed a lot of random butts in your picture. But it's also SO fitting because that's what the bean always looks like, you know? So here I like it because it's her front and a bunch of backs, with a neat shot of the bean and the sun coming through, and she's just a little removed from the craziness! Very fun picture, I think. :)

And the last one! I full-on tortured this poor girl, and had her bouncing her ball on her racket, which yeah, she makes look easy, but it was not. Friendos, I can barely walk up a flight of stairs without incident, and here she is, smiling, bouncing a tennis ball on a racket, making eye contact with the camera, ALL WHILE WEARING A DRESS! It truly boggles the mind!

Thanks, Janina, for a very fun session! The full gallery is at my Instaproofs site, and the password is Janina's last name (which should be easy if you know her, and tough if you don't)! Online ordering is available, and enjoy the pics! They're super amazing!

Alex, Umbrellas, and the Parking Garage

Okay, so I SWEAR I narrowed it down as much as I could but the honest truth is that I ended up with 187 pictures of Alex that I posted to the gallery (here), and I could've easily put 187 up on the blog. But I figure at least one or two of you reading this have lives, so I TRIED to keep it to a minimum. Did I succeed? Well, it depends. If you mean did I succeed at keeping this blog short? No. But did I succeed at getting awesome pictures of a totally hot babe? Heck yes I did!

Alex and I tried basically all summer to get together and take pictures, and it kept raining. We finally just said screw it and went out one day after work and took pictures entirely in and on a parking garage. Seriously, we never left the garage, and I'm so impressed at the variety we came up with. Check it--



Love this, up to and including the car in the background. I saw a discussion on another photographer's Facebook page about how they don't like including modern cars in any of their pics because they feel like it dates them, but someone else pointed out how glad they were for all of the cars in their old family photos for exactly that reason, so I'm just totally embracing it. And also, isn't Alex GOOOORGEOUS? YES!



WHAT?!?! This picture is totally stunning and I can't get over it, but then I have to try because there are a ton in here just as beautiful. Alex was a fantastic model, no question about it--I feel like I should go try to sell these pics to a magazine like ... now.



SHUT UP! Do you see what I mean?!?! She was so good at expressing with her eyes, it was just incredible. A lot of people take awhile to warm up during a session, but these pictures with the umbrellas were the first set we took and she was already killing it!



Aaaahhh, she's so cute! And she had trouble not laughing at me because I'm so funny. :)



This just kills me. Definitely one of my faves. And I love how the rainbow umbrella turned out--I keep it in my trunk and I've been dying to bust it out.



My big secret is that even though she's 21, I'm TOTALLY going to pass Alex off as a senior. She's so youthful and vibrant that it isn't even a stretch. And it's pooooossible that I've got a new senior picture site launching soon ... at least that's the word on the street!



Okay, so here, we were in a stairwell with a big window, and I LOVE how these came out, and besides, how bad ass is a girl with a guitar? Do you know ANYONE who doesn't love a girl with a guitar? Thought so.



A little tuning action. I just liked the mood. And the wet pant legs. :)



This one was totally Alex's idea and I LOVED it and wanted to make sure everyone got the benefit of her art direction. :)



Oh, this is so great, and SO a look that I regularly get from Alex. And do you know, I didn't even know until that day that she played the guitar? I mean ... how did I MISS that?



I remember loving this even when it was in the camera because everything is in such clear focus, except for her hand, which is strumming and you can just tell is rocking it out. I'm always saying dumb things like, "Wouldn't it be cool if they made pictures that moved, or that had SOUND?" and Billy's like, "Ummmm ... it's called MOVIES." Don't you just hate it when he's right? But seriously, I think this picture is as close as a picture gets to moving and having sound without actually being a movie. :)



So fun and GORGEOUS. This one I also pictured as a magazine shot. Love it.



She just looked so fresh and cute here, and I thought this was a great, natural picture.



Alex has probably never even HEARD of M*A*S*H, but in the words of M*A*S*H*--HOT LIPS! I am soooo jealous. And also, don't try to strike up a conversation with me about M*A*S*H* because I always turned it off whenever it came on TV when I was a kid. All I know about it is that there were characters named Hot Lips and Hawkeye, but that won't stop me from exploiting what little knowledge I have when it benefits me. :)



OMG, I am DYING OF HOTNESS here. Seriously? HOT. Girl has some attitude (in the good way)!



At this point, I'm just like ... WOW. These are amazing. I am like, patting myself on the back, tooting my own horn, giving my own butt a "good game" pat ... you name it. Although, I should probably give a little shout out to my newly upgraded camera, the Canon 5D. It's totally rad.



Although, I will also say that the person BEHIND the camera may have a trick or two up her sleeve as well. :) Alex posted this picture as her Facebook profile pic, and she was immediately flooded with comments about how they thought it was Shakira at first. TOTALLY. And I love Shakira--me and Amy once got in a huge fight about Shakira and whether she got enough play (my vote was no, she does not get enough play). We were totally serious and didn't talk to each other for like fifteen minutes after that fight. MAJOR drama! (Yeah, we were like ... 24. Judge away.)



Alex happened to have a change of clothes in her car, which was somehow not at all shocking. A single girl's gotta be prepared! But I loved this--loved the light, loved the scene behind her, and like I said, she's great at being expressive and yet also really subtle. Step 1: Call Tyra Banks. Step 2: Collect finder's fee. Step 3: Live it up. :)



Beautiful. Worthy of hanging in a gallery somewhere. I LOVE this.



And finally ... wow. I LOVED this session. Seriously, Alex was an incredible subject and it was the perfect thing to get the creative juices flowing for me, what with the insane weather and being limited to the parking garage. Those forced creativity situations, while obviously not ideal for all the time, can be so fulfilling and challenging and I was glad we got to do it. AND I'll be glad when we get to go out and see the sun for our "real" session. :)

Thank you so much, Alex! You're such a good friend and I had so much fun!

Kylie

Oh man, you all are in for it today! I've been telling everyone that I don't want to blog these pictures because then it'll be over, and I love this shoot so much that I don't want to let it go! It's kind of like when you buy some cute new clothes and don't wear them right away, because then you have something new and cute to look forward to. I CAN'T be the only one who does that, right?


Anyway, Kylie is my cousin and she's the middle child in her family, and she's the only one I haven't taken pictures of yet. Her older sister, Chelsea, helped me in one of my student projects as a scary person who appeared in the mirror behind me (which was very fun and actually pretty cool, and she was AWESOME at being terrifying), and I took pictures of Izzy when she turned one. Kylie is super cute, and I was going to be back in Indy (to shoot the puppies from the previous post!), and I wanted to do some portfolio work so I called her up (actually, Facebooked her up) to model for me.

And oh, she worked it.

We found this weird little back road that ended up leading to a train yard, which I was beyond thrilled about, because everyone knows how much I love trains. We didn't actually go very far back there but I'm totally going to go back ... there is some serious untapped potential there.

ANYWAY. We started out the shoot and I loved this picture of Kylie biting her lip, because I think she was still a little nervous with the start of the session, but it looked so model-riffic that I was in love.

And here's the same basic picture with a different facial expression that I also LOVED. You know, I didn't think that Kylie was looking much like Chelsea, but in some of these pictures (like this one), you can really see it. Also, this picture convinced me to try to let my hair go au natural, since we have about the same amount of wavy. The difference, of course, is that Kylie's falls all beautifully and perfectly and mine is kind of ... uncooperative, but I'm hoping that one day it will learn. Now, if I have the patience to make it that far is a whole other story (read: unlikely).

We took a couple shots out at the park in Avon, but mostly I just wasn't really feeling it (although I did get a sweet picture of some ducks that I'll post up later this week), but this picture was cute and I think it's how I mostly picture Kylie in my head.

Anyway, like I said, we weren't really feeling it at the park, so we went to downtown Danville to take some pictures around their square, and I LOVED how great this wall turned out to be as a background. I liked the hood up, and her eyes (well, eye) looked so pretty. I thought about cropping this to be more centered, but I liked the slightly off-center thing so I kept it.

This one is for my mom, who liked it because Kylie's eyes look pretty and you can see her dimple. And, you know, gotta keep the moms happy. I was talking to my mom about how Kylie and her sisters are pretty much my mom's grandchildren, since my grandma isn't as mobile anymore as she was when I was a kid, and my mom takes them out shopping and hangs out on their birthdays and they do fun stuff. She agreed, and Kylie did too. Plus, according to my mom, Kylie is sweet and smart and perfect and good at everything and beautiful and talented. If that doesn't sound like a grandma, I don't even know what does.

This is kind of a classic senior picture shot, and it's weird to think about how much different she'll look when it's time for ACTUAL senior pictures. (She's going to be a freshman this year, which I don't think I mentioned earlier.) I mean, I know that at the ripe old age of 28, with one foot in the grave, I'm getting worse at judging ages and all the young whippersnappers look the same to me, but I totally think these shots can serve as examples of the bad ass senior pictures I take. Woo!

(I don't know why I just wooed. It seemed appropriate.)

Loved this B&W. Isn't it amazing how even when you're smiling, you can have so many different expressions?

OMG, one of my absolute favorites. I love everything about this.

And here's what I had her perched on. I thought this one was so cute and youthful, and I am IN LOVE with her shoes. I swear, every time I see cute shoes that I am in love with, they are made by Rocketdog. These, naturally, are no exception. Some people have Jimmy Choo's, I have Rocketdog. What can I say?

You know, sometimes I think I'm over brick, because it's everywhere, but it does occasionally make really nice backgrounds and I love how rich it looks here.

Essentially a different shot of the same basic set up, but I couldn't pick so you get both. Trust me, I did a lot of narrowing down for this post given how in love with it all I was, but I am not a miracle worker, people, and I only have so much willpower!

Alright, now this marks sort of a turning point in our story. I ended up with this picture, I think, because it reminds me a lot of stuff I see on my friend Erin's design website (http://www.designformankind.com, total plug, go check it out, it's AWESOME). But Kylie and I were driving around kind of aimlessly and we were about ready to throw in the towel. I told her, you're an awesome model and I have great pictures of you, but I'm just feeling kind of uninspired by what's around, so what do you say we get some drinks and go home? And also, when I say drinks, I mean of the variety appropriate for a 14-year-old and a person driving a car, so no one freak out on me.

Anyway, as I was trying to get all turned around and going the right direction, we spotted this building, and it was empty and for sale, so I drove through a minefield of potholes in a gravel lot so we could trespass on it. And that's cool, what self-respecting Hoosier doesn't like a little mud on the tires, but I didn't want to push the car too hard so I thought I'd take an actual road out of there. But when I tried, all I kept ending up on were dead ends.

AND THEN.

Oh. Oh oh oh. We ended up on a dead end with a junk yard, and sitting right out in the middle of the road like a gift from God Almighty Himself, at the perfect time of day with gorgeous sunlight, was the most majestic, rusty old tow truck you have ever seen. I squealed my car to a stop and actually clapped my hands like a little kid. This was the find that made the entire trip out of control perfect for me. And here are those shots.

Every single one of these shots is magic for me, so much so that I didn't even offer commentary. I am in LOVE. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I know, I'm in love all the time (also, I have a song on my iPod called "I'm Always in Love" by Wilco, and I totally recommend it), but this love is SERIOUS. It is MAYJAH. It is ... so, so perfect.