Taking Junior Portraits

Until I get better and busier, weddings are still too far between for that to be the only thing I rely on. I constantly look for any opportunity to practice and progress. I actually like children's photography and would love for that to be my specialty, but weddings are way more easier to book...especially here in Hawaii

My niece Darilyn just turned sixteen on Thanksgiving Day. Last year as a sophomore, she asked if I would take her senior pictures. I have some ideas and I took few pictures of her outside our rental over thanksgiving vacation. Man, the new challenges that this presents:

teenagers are a lot more unsure about what they should do. She automatically hits the pose in the second picture. It's cute..but she seems unsure of what else to do. I try to direct her but you can sense there's a lot more uncertainty. She doesn't want to look uncool.

2. Second challenge: I cropped the first picture because it showed her stomach. I wasn't too bothered by modesty concerns but I was more concerned if she didn't feel it flattered her. She's so petite and skinny but the side profile might have her saying "auntie I look fat!!!" Which she's not.

I do take pride in my post-processing. I used a "overlay" layer over the second picture and painted with a low opacity black brush and created two vertical lines on her stomach to give more of the illusion of a "toned" stomach. Then I selected the area of her tummy right below her piko (belly button) with and lightened it just a tad to lessen the shadown and make her tummy look flatter.

I was not happy with the colors. The golf course was right behind her and had such beautiful greens....they came out too yellow in the picture for me. I tried to green and darken it up but not super happy. And there's a grayish tone to her skin tones in the black and white conversion. I suck at black and white conversions, i use an action to get them but I don't know how to get the look I want.