Every summer we take some time to do some editorial senior sessions just for us and our own creative release. One of the things we obviously need for these sessions is models! So how do we pick our models? The seniors who come to us and book their senior session with us in their junior year or even earlier will get a chance to be a part of these shoots on top of their booked session. We don't charge have to be a part of two or maybe even three sessions for the price of one. Plus you get some amazing images that can be outside the box! How awesome is that?!?!
That brings us to Alexandra! We have wanted and wanted to find a ballerina to work with and we finally found one! Once we found out Alexandra did ballet and could stand on pointe we started working on a concept. We started looking for inspiration and kept finding the same thing. Plain leotards, pink tutus and these bright airy soft images of beautiful ballerinas in gardens and things like that. They are beautiful images, but we decided that we were going to try and do something different. So different that it was out of our own comfort zone and even outside of our usual style of more bright, airy, and fun images. For this we wanted something raw, edgy, and gritty. Ballerinas are strong and train incredibly hard. We wanted to portray that in these images. One of Brandy's favorite movies of all time is Center Stage, so we started thinking about all the training they went through in that movie and how amazing the scene in the red leotard was at the end of that movie. When Chris was thinking about training he immediately thought of all the training montages from Rocky with stairs, alleys, meat lockers, and dark rainy places. Then it hit us...why not do both!
We pitched the "Center Stage/Rocky Mashup" idea to Alexandra and her mom and they were super excited about it. The night we met up with Alexandra and her mom it was cold and raining and it took a bit to get everything set up but once we got into a groove it was absolute magic and Alexandra was just killin' it! We started out with just her tennis shoes on because of how wet it was and we didn't want her to slip, get hurt, and then end up losing half the session, but by the end when we took that final shot down the alley way along the train under those awesome overhead lights. That was the image we wanted. That was the entire concept we had come up with in a single image!
Every time we pick up a camera to do a shoot we try to think: If we could walk away from a session with only 1 image, what would that image look like? What is that signature image that our client might hang over their fireplace. That was the image.
If you are a sophmore or junior this year and want to have truly unique, incredible Senior photos during your Senior year, and also have the opportunity to be a part of our conceptual shoots like this one! You gotta book early! Email us today! And then leave a comment below about YOUR idea for a concept shoot!