Oh-9, Oh-9, Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-9...

I had my very first "Senior Portrait" shoot today. I was so incredibly nervous -- mostly, I figured out, because I have no idea what all the young kids want nowadays. Looking at other photogs' samples I became a little distraught. "I can't put a teenage girl in a Hustler pose," I said. "I can't airbrush some perfectly fine kid into oblivion."

So I decided to approach it like I have weddings: Do what I know how to do, and produce photos that I would like. Some of them turned out pretty nontraditional, like this one:

I took her to this abandoned field during the "magic hour" before dusk. The lighting and the girl were both gorgeous; it wasn't hard.

This was another one of my favorites. She was as uncomfortable posing as I was posing her, so she kept breaking out into this adorable embarrassed teenage laugh, which gave great expression to the photos.

Some were a little more old school. I present to you:

That's one for dad's desk. Plain and simple.

I like the sweet-n-gritty in this shot:

Between you and me, here's one of my competitors -- the self-proclaimed HQ for the Class of 2009. I have yet to figure out how to do the flaming card/aces in the sunglasses effect, so I don't think I'm quite in his league. But I'll get there, dammit, I'll get there.

Bon soir, mes amies.

Bliss

The peonies in my yard are so gorgeous and fragrant this year that I feel I don't fully deserve them in my life. We're in the middle of an awful storm -- we spent the entire afternoon yesterday in the basement during five consecutive tornado warnings -- and today it's raining like nobody's business. Peonies are hardy but sensitive creatures, their giant blooms already nearly too heavy for the plant supporting them, so I worried they might not make it through the storm. I ran out in the rain and clipped six or eight more blossoms, putting them in little vases around the house. I played with the "curves" of this image in PhotoShop until the background didn't show. She deserves nothing less.

Like a monkey, or a cat

Eli has taken up tree climbing. The only climbable one in our yard is a young ash, or poplar, or something small and bendy that seems to cry out, "Why me?..." whenever Eli starts his ascent.

Here, you see his tree-climbing face. It says to me, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna boy you up, tree. You best watch out."