Senior Portraits

I photographed seven seniors for their yearbook recently at the Fullerton Train Station. I’d like to share a few tips about Senior Portraits and photographing groups of people.

The first image shows life, fun and action. Without something for your subjects to do, you end up with a bunch of subjects standing around trying to look cool(even though they are).

Let’s see if we can find a better situation for our teens.

Finally, we have our last image…
I choose to show how a static pose can actually work. The inside of the pedestrian bridge works to enclose our subjects and draw the viewer’s eyes to the group. I carefully placed each subject where the camera could see them and asked everyone to stare directly at the camera to achieve a more confrontive pose.
The result is a cool and somewhat aloof image.

The next time you have a larger group to photograph, try having them do something to achieve an image that has action and great expressions. Enjoy!

In this image we have the jumping into the future etc. pose. The area really had busy backgrounds. I tried to use as wide open a depth of field as possible, achieving a very shallow depth of field. Or to clarify further, as little of the background is in focus as possible. Jumping in unison is sometimes the hardest part of this pose. Fortunately, this day the seniors were in rare form and jumped together.

The next image shows the guys. You can never go wrong asking boys to show how strong they are or to show off. I asked them to jump on each others backs and stay there as long as possible. A great pose with great expressions!

Moving on…..
How about choosing the tallest or smallest person in the group and doing something interesting with them?
Here I choose the tallest boy and had the entire group, or the majority of them, hold him up. It works for good expressions and the pose looks good, too.

The next pose or idea was to change my point of view. Having your subject lie down changes everything. The viewers perspective changes as does the perception of your subjects. It really is an all-around winning situation.