Wednesday, May 8, 2013

High School Senior Portraits in NYC

Taking high school photos for this years graduate were fun, they are a wild bunch and are always up for a silly picture and also want the best for themselves and want to look their best.

How do you do it?

I think that these are the hardest age to photograph, they are self conscious of their looks and every details matters, from what i've done, I will share with you a few tips for photographing high school seniors.

1. Trust.
They must trust your work, believe in you that you can make them look good. Sound simple? uh not really.
I had a long story of how I did it, but I got other girls in the class to sell my photography and so they came to me asking for the picture that I take, and I told them "The pics are the best I can get, no complaining"

2. Making them comfortable.
There must be many ways of how you can do this, and im sure everyone does it "their" way.
I always tell them to bring a good friend so they are not on the spot, the shoot starts off as a "Im testing my lighting" - so they have no pressure and i delete the photos on the spot.
I also have the friend talk to her, saying only positive things about the way she looks, this works like a charm.
I like to think of it like this - They trust you, they are comfortable, no pressure, ready for some fun.

Once you have all of that, you own their imagination and trust. This is how you get them to laugh, I would tell them a made up "story" of something really imaginative and ridiculous, in this case it was their principal jogging down the main street of the town, for some reason they would all burst out and laugh out loud and eventually they start to complain about stomach pains from laughing so hard.

I would also add the rule "Never say smile" and tell them that its a serious photoshoot, and if you want them to give you a tiny smile you will ask them nicely.

Here are a few from the bunch that let me show their pictures.
 






Was this blog post helpful? Let me know how you used this for your work.

Till next time, keep snapping!

L

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