Abbie >> 2017 Plainview Senior

I’ve been taking Abbie’s pictures for several years now, and I almost couldn’t believe it when her mom Amy contacted me about senior portraits! It’s crazy to look back at the first photos I’ve taken of Abbie and see how much she’s changed and grown up. I arrived at our location a little early and was super excited to shoot, when I had a serious “uh oh” moment– I didn’t bring my reflector. Any of my previous KC Photo seniors can tell you, the reflector is LIFE. It brings in light when I want to shoot in interesting places that are a bit dark, and it makes everybody glow like little baby angels. So yes, I was devastated that I was an hour round trip from home and couldn’t get it without running out of daylight. At that point, I knew I’d have to get creative. The easiest thing I could do was find natural reflectors in our surroundings– white walls, light colored pavement– things of that nature. We also got REALLY creative by using my white SUV to bounce light, and having Amy hold a sheet of white paper (and at one point, a white dress) near Abbie’s face to brighten it up. Yes, I have these behind the scenes photos, and yes, they are hilarious.

Despite my absent mindedness and being forced to improvise, I love the way Abbie’s images turned out! She had so many cute looks, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s built like a supermodel. Her outfits are perfect examples of how to layer in hot weather! You don’t have to add a sweater or scarf to get a layered look; sometimes all you need is a cute bralette peeking out or a flowy sleeveless vest. And the two outfits we ended with at Little River Canyon were simple but stunning with all the natural surroundings.

The canyon gets dark early since it’s down in a hole (ya know, as canyons are) so we were racing against the setting sun once we got there. By the time we shot the last few images, it was almost dark and I was having to do some serious camera magic to get decent images. But what looked like decent images in camera turned out to be gorgeous with a few Photoshop tweaks. So despite fighting light during this entire session, we made it work and the end results were beautiful, just like Abbie.