Senior Photoshoot: Thomas

Last weekend I took the senior pictures of Thomas, the big brother of Tessie's friend Hope. He plays football with his highschool team, so first we took some sports shots.

Then we went downtown for more pictures.

Finally we went to my favorite park for photos.

Thomas was a super easy and cooperative model, and we were all happy with the results!

Four friends

As promised, here are the Maria & friends photos! These four have been friends since our family moved to South Dakota in 2005. Now the twins are off to college, so the girls came up to accompany Maria on her shoot and so they could get some photos together too.

They're just too cute.

Then we had a twins picture, per my mom's special request.

After that we moved onto some individual shots. I just did a 2 minute shoot with each girl while Bia took a posing break. I shot Nicole last year and it was fun to take a few pictures of her again!

Cecilia is off to study nursing in Cleveland this year.

And twin Susannah will study Biology in upstate New York.

The twins are leaving tomorrow and we wish them the best!

 Hooray for good friends!

Senior Photoshoot: Maria

My lovely little sister Maria will be a senior in high school this year! She's 10 years younger than I am and it's crazy how much can change in a 10-year interim. She has friends who are off to college next week and she wanted to have them join in on her senior photoshoot, so last Sunday they came over and we headed downtown. I'll be doing another photoshoot with her later on in the fall outdoors, but this was a really fun start. In my next post I'll share the pictures I took of the four friends, but for now here are the first batch of Maria's senior pictures!

It's so fun shooting family members and close friends, because I'm in a unique position to really draw their unfiltered personality out of them, and I'm able to get such natural photos as a result.

We got some really lovely shots, and her friends did a great job of making her laugh!

Towards the end of the shoot, my camera was almost out of battery, so we decided to head to a local coffee shop for some post-shoot treats. But as we walked there I was happy I had the dredges of battery juice to get this very last photo, which I just love!

What a beautiful sister I have!

Senior Photoshoot: Sheila

Last weekend I had a session with Sheila, who is the daughter of my dad's colleague and is half-Brazilian, just like me! I did a really quick photoshoot with her last year, and this year she contacted me asking me to take her senior photos, which I was really excited about, especially with my new lens on order. Tessie and Maria came along as my assistants, which was fun, especially because they see her at school. We had a fun and successful photoshoot!

We loved her map shirt from Brazil, which meant a lot to her, especially because she travels a lot.

At first we wandered around downtown, which has some lovely backgrounds.

The whole shoot was relaxed and had a great feel.

After that we went to the Nature Center close to town for some more outdoorsy pictures. Sheila swims competitively and she wanted a picture in her swimming jacket next to the water.

Throughout the night I captured some really lovely shots, and was so pleased!

She was such a great model, and we had so much fun all together!

The next day I shot Maria and friends—stay tuned for that!

New lens!

I am very, very excited about my new Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens that arrived a couple days ago! I got it with a package that included a new camera bag, a lens hood, 3 filters in a storage case, a cleaning kit and more, so now I'm feeling pretty equipped for my next photoshoot!

I've been reading up on how to shoot in AV (aperture priority) mode since I don't usually, and have been just doing lots of tests to figure out how the lens works. No matter how much you read or know in theory, the best way to learn about a new tool is to practice! What is special about this lens is that it's perfect for portraits because it gives you that smooth, blurry background with the foreground in sharp detail. For example:

Here's an illustration of all the F-stops. That's what the photography world calls each widening or narrowing of the aperture, which is the hole through which the camera captures the image. When the aperture opens wider the background becomes blurrier, and the amount of the frame that is in focus gets smaller. So the first picture in this series at F/1.4 has the blurriest background, and the smallest area that's in sharp relief. The last is F/22 which has the sharpest background with the majority of the shot in focus. The difference is enormous! 

I've been practicing with my family members too, not just flowers! This lens is great for capturing pictures in low-light settings, like this one of my dad working late the other night:

But it can handle bright conditions too!

This is a fixed lens which means it doesn't zoom at all. Because of that it takes a lot of moving around to get the shot right, which is fun!

My sister's cats are honorary family members, but mostly they were being cooperative, so they got some photos too. This is our mama cat who is tiny and still looks like a kitten despite having had a couple litters herself already.

Kitten #1 looks just like mama.

But #2 takes after dad.

They were so cute playing together.

I'm loving this purchase and can't wait to use it during photoshoots! I have a few that are coming up, so stay tuned for more pics soon!

Happy 24th Gus!

Happy birthday little brother!! 

Even though you're probably desperately missing your family (right??), I hope the road trip you're on has all sorts of fun in store for you! I always say 24 is the best year, it's a really good age to be. Enjoy it! Have a happy day and happy year!

Engaged!

This little sister of mine...

feels like this about a certain guy...

so not long ago this happened!

Which, of course, meant that when they came for a 24-hour visit this weekend I took them to the park down the street for a quick engagement photoshoot! 

We even took some photos on our road,

and in our yard.

When they come back for more extended visits we'll take a few more, because Matt is a good sport. And what girl wouldn't want a million engagement pictures??

Plus these two are so cute it just melts my heart.

Congrats again you two!