© eunice brownlee 2011

We met up at Sterne Park in Littleton and wandered around the pond. The whole time we were shooting, I couldn’t help but think about how much Ben looks like his dad – tall and lanky.

© eunice brownlee 2011

One of the things that I like about shooting the guys is that it’s a challenge to go to a setting like this park and not be drawn to the field of sunflowers or the pretty blooms in the rose bed.

© eunice brownlee 2011

Ben didn’t disappoint though. We got quite a few really nice shots. So many that his mom had a heck of a time trying to decide on which ones she wanted to buy.

© eunice brownlee 2011

Thanks for such a great session Ben! Best of luck to you next year!

So John and his lovely wife Belinda brainstormed on how they could help. John decided that as photographers, we can put our talents to use and raise some money. John’s thought was that we use our senior portrait packages to raise money for this organization. I think it’s a brilliant idea.

© eunice brownlee 2011

Since I also do a lot of family portraiture, I would like to include a part of my profits from those sessions as well.

From today through June 30th, 20% of all session fees and print sales from Family and Senior sessions will be donated to Colorado MESA. Please help us raise a good chunk of money and support this very worthy cause. Click here to get your booking started!

I wish I could find the image right now (I will look for it again), because I know my description won’t do it justice, but the best commentary on this fact was a lighting assignment I did in college. The assignment: a portrait using a single lighting source. I may  have been a little lot vocal about my lack of desire to do it.

My image was a picture of a guy holding an exposed lightbulb, closing his eyes and cringing from the light as if it were going to melt him. The comment from my instructor was, “this pose tells more about you as an artist than it does the subject. It communicates your disdain for the exercise very well.”

I also cursed the number of hours I spent in the darkroom burning in that damn lightbulb.

But I love that image. It does say a lot about me at the time, as well as my feelings about the subject (my now ex-husband).

Now that I have begun shooting portraits as a specialty, I love it. I have so much fun working with the clients, posing them, laughing with (and sometimes at) them, and having a great time getting the shots. I love how when I get an idea and express it, there are clients that surprise me by doing things like scaling a six foot wall…in heels.

© eunice brownlee 2009

My favorite part, though, is when someone feels less than confident, when they hate having their photo taken, when they think that there haven’t been very good portraits of them in the past, and I can give them the image where they say, “wow, I love this!”

© eunice brownlee 2009

Pulling together a powerful image that makes people feel proud of who they are is why I do what I do and why I love doing it.

This session was awesome. I have known Emily since she was about five years old, but I was truly floored when she came to me and said that she wanted me to take her senior portraits. Knowing her family’s “usual” flavor for portraits, I wasn’t sure that accepting was a great idea. I didn’t want her to be disappointed when her photos weren’t of the cheesy-background-in-a-department-store-studio style. She insisted.

I haven’t slept in three nights in anticipation of this shoot. I had a ton of ideas, but still wasn’t sure that my client and I were on the same page. So we headed out to the beautiful ponderosa forest of Northern Arizona this afternoon and went in search of some decent places to take pictures. I wanted to avoid, at all costs, the typical senior portrait of my generation: letter jacket wearing senior leaning against or hugging skinny pine tree.

Let me tell you this girl did not disappoint. She climbed up rocks, mossy wet slopes, laid in rotted out tree stumps, and ventured down a dark and muddy wash, all for the sake of some great portraits.

As we hiked and talked, I asked her why she wanted me to shoot her portraits so badly. She said, “because I’m not an ordinary person. I don’t want my senior pictures to be ordinary.” Ahh, a girl after my own heart. Her reason for wanting me to shoot her photos were the exact reason I wanted to start shooting senior portraits. To take a step away from ordinary.

I have to be honest: I didn’t get the best start on this portrait session. Fighting sleep, the elements, and copious amounts of traffic, I was a little frazzled when I arrived to shoot this gorgeous gal, my first senior in the class of 2010.
A funny thing happens when you have the coolest gal in the world to shoot — you forget all that was wrong with the day and just focus on capturing her beauty. We quickly jumped into our session and started talking and laughing and having a blast.

Katie is one of those girls that’s just darn cool. She was an excellent subject, taking direction and posing as if she’d done it her whole life.

And the thing I love most is that she was adventurous. If I asked her to climb up something, she did, despite the fact that she had on four inch stillettos. Lean on a hot piece of metal, hold it while it sears your flesh? You got it.

I had a great time in this session, and am enjoying going through all of the images. The problem is, when you have someone that doesn’t take a bad photo, it’s hard to narrow them down to a reasonable number to work with. At least I don’t have the burden of picking the one for the yearbook (sorry Katie).