Taking Your Own High School Senior Portraits. A Maine Photographer

A few years back a friend of mine asked me to take her sons' senior portraits.  She shared with me that when referring me to her friends she was kind of shocked and saddened to find many families were forgoing the past tradition of having senior portraits done professionally and were doing it themselves.  This friend viewed senior portraits as a right of passage, something you do with your child prior to their senior year, no matter what.

I'm grateful that some families still think this way, a little job security for me :)

But I also know, for many reasons, why some folks choose to do it themselves...so that is why I thought I would publish a few DYI tips right here on my blog.

Last month I talked about photographing your child in good light...not too much sun...avoid dark shadows and squinting, and best of all make sure you can see their eyes.

Today I want to offer a few more basic tips.
If you find a nice shady spot, be sure you don't have sun speckles all over their face.  These can be fun, but personally I believe in keeping the senior portrait a bit more sacred.  So, although this example is a nice photo of my son, he does have distracting sun spots on his face.

 
Big advice next.  Pay attention to your background.  I think this was one of the hardest things for me to learn.  When I first started taking photographs (for money) I was so focused on my subject and making sure I got that part right, I may not have noticed the tree branch going right through his head. Some backgrounds can be distracting and compete with your subject.
See what I mean?

Doesn't it look like that door hinge is about to stab him in the head?

In the next photo below I pulled him away from the background, I also centered him off the backdrop so he wasn't near the distracting hinge, and I opened up my aperture to blur out the background a bit.
I do teach all about aperture in my digital photography class starting September 16th, so please, if this is something you are interested in, sign up at this link!
http://www.westbrookcommunitycenter.org/info/activities/program_details.aspx?ProgramID=29253

if you don't know how to use the aperture on your camera yet, you can use the little portrait symbol on your scene mode.

 the scene modes on your camera are there to help your camera understand what type of photo you are taking.  If you pick the portrait mode...that's the lady with the hat, then the camera knows what is most important in the photo is the person, and the settings used in the scene mode soften the face and blur the background, as much as is possible with the lens being used on the camera.

In my first example below I have moved my subject away from the background and blurred it out a bit to emphasize my subject.

in the next example there appears to be a branch traveling through his head...but because it is blurred, I think it looks kind of cool :)

A couple more notes about backgrounds.  Be careful of brick walls...unless you move your subject away and blur out the background, there can be some pretty good competition between your subjects face and the lines between the bricks.

And one last trick.  Sometimes a photo might seem completely ruined by a distracting background.  Before you toss it out...try making it black and white...you just might be surprised by the results.