Jo-with-it's Portfolio

April 19, 2012

Mercedes {Class of 2012}

This shoot was so much fun! Mercedes for basic portraits and some pictures with her dog Abby. Mercedes' mom asked for some black and white images. I asked if she was ok with water. And guess what? Check, check, and check! She brought along her brother Andrew to watch the dog so I brought my brother Nathanael who is friends with Andrew. And... you guessed it! Mercedes and Andrew are also from our homeschool co-op. :-)

Abby is 91 dog years old, so it was nice that we were able to get some pictures with her!

Everything flowed very naturally on this shoot and she was completely fine with getting soaking wet and a little sandy toward the end. :-) I asked her to pretend she was in Florida.

Mercedes is one of the people who will give that great dramatic face and then burst in laughter at the drop of a hat. She was so easy to work with that way.

Andrew is her only sibling, we grabbed some fun sibling shots while we were at it.

Andrew is showing some Hallstrom team spirit with his FIRE basketball shirt. :-)

I love the cool tones and creamy light in this shoot. It was lots of fun to edit. The sun was playing peek-a-boo the whole time so I was freaking out about my white balance at the time, but then I would just talk to her and get her next pose until another cloud rolled over.

Check out those eyes! They are SOOOO blue. I was dying. The eyes are my favorite part of the face.

Park bench love.

Stunning, just stunning.

Congrats Mercedes!

April 18, 2012

Andrea {Class of 2012}

Meet Andrea! I only met her at the beginning of last school year, she is quickly becoming a good friend. Her family was new to our homeschool co-op and she was in my drama class. I think everyone is drawn to her. She has such a contagious laugh and beautiful smile. She is the oldest in her family and has only one sister, so she brought her along and we got some pictures of them together.

I took my little sister along since her sister Rose was coming and I think they had fun following us around. :-) We went to Jarrett Prairie Nature Preserve for her pictures. I hadn't been there before, so I was a little on the fly for locations, but it worked out beautifully. There was one ravine/gully area (behind Andrea in the first photo) that was absolutely stunning. I'm planing to do more there in the future. It was so dramatic looking.

It had been sunny and warm all week until today. It was cloudy, cool, and extremely windy. Even though it threatened rain we decided to go for it. I'm so glad we did! The cloud cover was perfect and the wind gave us some beautiful hair action, even if it was really annoying at times.

Andrea was such a good sport the whole time! We climbed through wild raspberry bushes (which have thorns, in case you were wondering), fields, and walked quite a deal. Oh, and she went numb is various places. :-) In between practically every shot she threw on a warm fleece sweater.

I loved all of her outfits too. Great styling! Oh, and I love her hair too. ;-) I'm probably going to get mine cut in a couple of weeks so I'm keeping this in mind.