Emily's Senior Project

Last year I mentored Katlyn Buser with her senior project of wanting to learn what it might be like to become a professional phtographer. We had a ton of fun and made some cool photos. Of course she wowed the review panel and passed with flying colors.

This year I'm mentoring Katlyn's best friend Emily. Emily wants to get into modeling and was the subject of much of Katlyn's portfolio last year. So Emily asked me to be her mentor this year, also to learn photography, but her thesis is directed towards modeling from the photographer's perspective. We just had our first outing this past Saturday and it didn't take long before Emily discovered that just because you're not in front of the camera that you have have it easy! The photographer must control all aspects of the resulting image with a specific purpose in mind. It is our job to photograph our subject in their environment and through the use of light, composition, color and posing, create a compelling image that will speak to the eve
n the casual observer.

In this shot, meet Katlyn's little sister, Caylee, who was kind enough to come along as our model. Keeping in mind this is Emily's first time behind the camera and Caylee's first time in front of the camera, we only tried to cover some basics. An important lesson we learned is that sometimes a model is naturually photogenic and may require very little direction from the photographer. Here is a shot I made of Caylee as she relaxed "between takes". :-)

Sisters tough...