Non-Cheesy High School Senior Portraits

Like most high school seniors, Jack needed ‘senior photos’. He picked out Council Crest Park, the perfect setting with views of the city. And we began our one hour senior session around the park.
It’s always great to do some warm up photos with my clients this way it also gives me a chance to test settings and achieve the best lighting on my camera. During this time, we chatted about his future, classes and plans for the holidays. This interaction aided perfectly in getting him to warm up to me as well as be distracted from the camera, (‘cuz a camera is so daunting especially when you’re not used to it). I find this technique really working for me since it produces some fun un-staged looks for my clients.

Since, the main thing that Jack wanted was not to have too many “cheesy-senior-looks” for his session, I approached them from a lifestyle point of view… like he was modeling, which actually turned out to be fun for the both of us and he was a huge fan of the kinds of looks I was helping him pose.

As he changed into his second outfit, we moved to a more fall-like background, the bright orange leaves popped just right and honestly, these turned out to be our favorites. Plus, we kept agreeing about how unstuffy, un-staged and unique his senior photos turned out.

(Of course, we ended up complying with the standards of the typical high school senior portraits, taking a couple mainly for the parents, grandparents and the school yearbook!)