When he saw this one, though, he said “ZOOM! ZOOM!”

This is Stephen, one of the twins whose senior portraits I shot Sunday. It was something very different for me, because they wanted to include their new passion for motorcycles into the shoot. I was totally game–I love trying new things!

Stephen really wanted to do his first burn-out in one of the photos, and at the very end of the session his mother (whose bike he was riding) gave in…and here’s the photo! His sister was a little worried that it would be the last we’d see of the bike and her brother, but I’m happy to say that everything went according to plan and this is the proof!

You may recognize this one from my main site:

I love it much.

This next one is the promised jump shot from my first post about Laura. She is a cheerleader, so I expected her to do an awesome jump…and she didn’t disappoint.

I like to ask the girls to kick up their feet at the top of their jump, like they’re kicking themselves in the behind…I love it when their feet get motion blur!

I’ve been playing around with bracketing a lot lately to get these dramatic skies…we have beautiful blue skies in Colorado, but if you expose the photo for your subject correctly, your blue sky will just be white. There are a couple of ways to deal with that, but I’ve been playing with bracketing so I can have one photo where my subject is correctly exposed (and the sky is white) and another where the sky is correctly exposed (and now my subject is far too dark) and then I merge them together to get this:

And…another sneak peek at a Colorado Springs senior portrait!

You may or may not have noticed this about me, but I’m obsessed with The Laughing Shot. I feel like a failure if I come home without at least one great laughing photo…and luckily my seniors have almost always been game for a laugh! (Not that I’ll disclose what it is that they’re laughing about…or I should say, at.)

This is my second Laura of the season, and she not only gave me lots of opportunities for laughing photos…but as a cheerleader, she’s probably been my best qualified to do the jump (my second of three current obessions–laughing, jumping and sun flare). If you’re lucky, I’ll share a preview with you some day.

And there are lots more to come!

Meet Tucker, another Colorado Springs high school senior. He came to me via Brittany after his original set of senior portraits didn’t come out as well as he’d hoped. So there was just a teeny bit of pressure on me!

He’s an awesome guy and we had great time–we laughed a lot, and he was all over the jumping shot, which I am very much in love with!

I hope you like these, Tucker!

She also has something in common with my little guy–she’s an Air Force Baby, born to two USAF parents. She is here in Colorado Springs visiting her cousin, Ashleigh, whose senior portraits I took earlier this summer as part of my senior rep program.

I should be hopping in the shower right now, but I wanted to share one of my many favorites from her session:

Try not to hate her when I tell you that’s her actual real natural god-given hair color! (God and I are going to have some words about that one.)

I just got back from our session, but had to toss up this sneak peek:

I always say that I like shooting on location because it keeps things from getting boring. Today’s shoot brought that phrase a whole different meaning.

I should have known that it was going to be an abnormal day when we saw The Pink T-Shirt Guy (as he will forever be tagged in my memory). A middle aged man, either homeless, drunk, crazy, or some combination of the above, was walking down the street in a short pink t-shirt…and nothing else. No shoes, no pants…no underwear.

Now, I love shooting in Manitou Springs, because it offers all the fun of a grungy urban location, but I’ve still always felt totally safe shooting there. Until today.

At the end of our shoot, Ariana realized that she’d misplaced her cell phone, so I helped her look for it on the grounds of the public library (where I always start my senior sessions). We were minding our own business, looking around for her cell phone, when I saw a drunk guy hop the (very short) wall around the grounds and come walking towards us. Following behind him at a run was an overweight policeman.

At first I thought that it couldn’t possibly be what it appeared to be…mostly because the overweight middle aged cop looked too much like Will Smith’s cop partner at the beginning of Men In Black (remember that scene?).

And then things got more interesting. The cop yelled out “tackle”…and since Ariana and I weren’t more than three feet away from both of them at the time, we looked at each other and then both walked in the other direction.

The cop tackled Mr Drunk to the ground and cuffed him. The other policemen arrived a few minutes later, no doubt very excited to be doing something other than arresting men without pants (which I can only assume happened moments prior). I couldn’t help wondering if maybe the overweight cop could have used better judgment and waited a few steps before jumping on his suspect. It seems like if you have a big grassy field, you might want to wait until the guy is more than three steps away from innocent bystanders. Then again, if you’re worried you might have a heart attack keeping up with your suspect (whose walk I wouldn’t even call brisk), you would probably feel the need to tackle him as quickly as possible.

And that, my friends, is just the sort of experience you could never have at a portrait studio. I’m thinking about incorporating that into my company’s branding somehow. Like “Come get your picture taken with Traci. You’re taking your life into your own hands, but you’ll be able to take your picture as you wet your pants in fear!” Or maybe not.