As a business owner, I never stop thinking about ways to grow our photography business in a direction that makes sense both fiscally and creatively. The majority of our business focuses on weddings. A close second is portraits. We’ve made some attempts to jump into the senior portrait business, but to date have only had mild success. Well, we turned up the creative juices and got busy. The best idea we came up with was to create a promo video to appeal to high school seniors.

A few weeks ago (yes, I’m completely behind with my blogging!), George, Alana and I set up a senior portrait session with Alex. We asked our fellow wedding vendor Russell Smithe of Mavid Productions to shoot the session as we all photographed Alex. He was happy to oblige and made the drive down from New Hampshire for the shoot.  We’ve worked with Russell several times now and always enjoy working with him.  He shares our business philosophy of doing everything possible to make each client happy.  And he does.

We’ve never considered ourselves "typical" photographers. And we don’t want to be the photographers that every high school senior comes to for his/her portraits. Our goal is to appeal to the senior who is looking for something different, fresh, dare I say edgy. Granted, we can take that "typical" headshot for the year book, but we want the seniors we work with to say, "That was awesome!"

In order to push our creative limits, we decided to shoot the senior portrait session in one of our favorite places – the abandoned factory that you’ve seen many times on this blog. Before Alex arrived, we gave Russell a tour of the place and he said, "Wow! I bet you could shoot all day here!" He totally got it. We just hoped Alex would have the same reaction. She did.

Alex and her mom Julie showed up excited and ready to shoot. Alex had several different outfits with her and was anxious to check out the location. I explained our game plan and then took them over to the factory.

The shoot went fantastic! George, Alana, and I all took turns working with Alex while Russell taped the whole thing. Since he mostly shoots weddings, he was excited to do something completely different.

A huge thanks to Alex and her mom Julie for their willingness to shoot with us. A very special thanks to Russell Smithe for making the drive south and spending a whole afternoon with us!

If you know a high school junior who is in need of having his/her senior pictures taken this summer, we would love it if you would send ‘em our way!

The video should be up on our website later this month, so keep any eye out!

 

 We couldn’t have asked for a better model! Alex is stunning!

 

 Love her eyes in this shot!

 

 We had some fun with this red chair.

 

 Love the intense expression on her face.

 

 My absolute favorite from the session.

 

 George captured her beautiful smile!

 

 Goofing off!

 

 And a little more goofing off…

 

 My favorite from George’s set.  The light in this shot is SICK!

 

 Alana getting started with Alex.

 

 Alana captured the environment and subject so well in this image.

 

 My favorite from Alana’s set.

 

 Alana had some fun in post-production with this one.  Love the effect!

 

 Alex said this was her favorite part of the session.  She’s a bit of a dare-devil.  We like that!

 

 

 

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