Meet Andrea. She attends Mesquite High School. She is another 2013 senior spokesmodel for Jared Rey Photography.  Andrea simply rocks. We had a blast during this mini-session in Sunnyvale and she did a wonderful job in front of the camera. Check out my fav images from the session and make sure you vote and comment on your favorites.

If you are friends with Andrea and are interested in booking your senior session make sure you speak with her first, she has some great gifts to pass along your way.

Enjoy.

Welcome to my first of several senior mini-sessions to come over the next week. Gemma attends Poteet High School in Mesquite, TX and she is one of my senior spokesmodels for 2013. I couldn’t be more excited to have hear aboard this coming school year as a representative for my senior photography. We had her first mini-session in Sunnyvale, we found some amazing locations and just had fun capturing some images with two other friends who will be gracing the blog soon. Enjoy some of my favorite images from her session. Go vote, share, and comment!

If you are a high school senior and interested in being a spokesmodel for the 2013 school year, give me a shout, I may be looking for one more high school student that attends Sunnyvale High School.

If you are a 2013 senior and are interested in booking a senior session and you are friends with Gemma, you should contact her because she has some great deals she can pass your way!

If you have been following my facebook page you would know that I just launched my own studio magazine this week named SENIORITY. What is SENIORITY magazine all about exactly? It is basically a magazine geared for teenagers to get fun information such as hair & fashion tips and see some great photo inspiration for their future portrait sessions.

I also wanted to throw in the advantages of choosing a professional boutique photographer who can customize the experience based on the person to create long lasting memories that are unique. I not only want my photography to stand out from the crowd but I also want people who hire me have their images stand out from all the rest.

I want this magazine also to be a source of inspiration, encouragement, and promote positive messages for teens that are not centered around lots of the values our society tends to promote. I want to accomplish this by allowing teens to submit stories that can be included in the magazine that talk about success, triumph, hard work, or anything they have done to make a mark in the world. If you are a teen and would like to submit a story or know someone who you can recommend please fill out the contact form above and let me know the details.

This first issue I released was a mini-issue and the summer should be my first full issue release. I am excited about this project and I got lots of ideas and dreams for the future. I truly hope it can be a great source of information for anyone who reads it. Thanks so much for the support and compliments so far. I look forward to the future. If you haven’t had a chance to read the magazine you can click the picture below to be taken to the digital online version!

Also, if you are a hair stylist, make-up artist, florist, clothing boutique and would like to partner up with the magazine I would LOVE to hear from you. We can discuss getting you into an article and/or advertising opportunities!

This whole concept came one day to me from an ad I saw from BHLDN. It inspired me to want to do something creative from teens on their prom night. We are all used to the standard backdrops you see at prom but I wanted to take it one step further. Why not make prom a night to really show off your tux or your special dress. Why can’t prom be a night to have a little fashion-inspired photo shoot, you already look fabulous! So I got some wonderful teens together and asked them to bring their prom dresses and we had some fun on this custom created backdrop. Now I can probably only take 10% of the credit for how awesome the backdrop looks. I need to give a huge thanks to Vanessa Warren of butterflyspArks for creating all the paper pieces and a bigger thanks to my wife Jessica for putting all these pieces together in a visually appealing way. My wonderful friend Ashley Kirk of Ashlilium create all the beautiful corsages for this shoot. If you need any awesome bouquets or corsages for your special day, please be sure to give her a shout! I also had a great make up artist and fellow photographer friend named Rabiah come out to help make these girls look beautiful, thank you so much for lending your skills! Finally, I want to thank my wonderful models Maegan, Lexi, Ashtyn, and Gemma. You all rocked it out!

So what is next? Well I just didn’t want to create this test shoot for nothing, I want to actually give teens the chance to use this on their prom night. So I am renting a studio in Mesquite and asking teens before their prom night begins to stop by for 10 minutes with their date for a quick session. It will only cost $20 per person and they will walk away with two 5×7′s and the rest of the images will be placed on facebook later that night to share with friends. I want to make this backdrop exclusive, so it will only be available this year and only 20 couples from each high school will be allowed. If you are interested in having this on your high school prom night just fill out the contact form above and let me know your high school and the time you prefer between 4:30-6:30 p.m. Spots will fill up fast, especially for Sunnyvale High School, so make sure you contact me soon!

If you want to see some behind the scenes video from this shoot check out this video below:

Spread the word and share with your friends!

In case you missed me sharing about this on my Facebook Page, I wanted to share this behind the scenes look at the high school senior session I shot with Lexii, Calli, and Jordan. It is fun to watch what goes on behind the scenes to get the shot. Hope you enjoy!

I mentioned this senior session with Lexii, Calli, and Jordan would last Monday-Thursday but I also had a post coming on Friday. How was that going to be possible Jared?! Well I have a SURPRISE senior session blog post to share with you as well, a little bonus if you will. Meet Madison Moore who is also a senior at Sunnyvale High School. I originally wanted her to tag along to my original session with the other girls but she has previous commitments that prevented her from participating. So I planned a separate session just for her to continue working on my senior session development. This time I didn’t want to focus so much on a theme but rather simply capture beautiful portraits. Sometimes a senior may not know what they want to incorporate or find pressure to come up with something creative on their own before booking a session. I did not want that ever to be a fear with anyone interested in having a portrait session, the most important thing is that we focus on capturing who you are as a person. That was my mission with Madison, pick out some outfits and help make her feel comfortable in front of the camera in order to capture some nice, simple, lifestyle portraits. Madison was a wonderful person to work with and I think I accomplished what I set out to do! Enjoy my favorite images from the session and take a moment to vote for your favs as well.

I hope you have enjoyed all the senior portraits from this session so far, each of these girls held their own and did such a great job modeling. We held this session out in my neck of the woods in a tiny area of Forney, TX. It is one of those little patches that is so easy to overlook and I drive past it everyday. It wasn’t until I did some location scouting the day of this session that it hit me that THIS location would be perfect. It is also one of those locations where you could probably see me shooting and wondering why in the world I would choose this area to shoot, but when you see the final images you can totally see what I saw in this place.

Well now it is time to check out all the girls posing together as a group in order to get the full scope and picture of what I had in mind. I especially love the ‘fashion-inspired’ portion of this session where all the girls are working together to find images and pin them up with clothespins. It was a fun concept to do and think it turned out great. Our last location is something I hadn’t discussed yet in previous posts. The weather took a turn for the worst as the shoot went on and caused us to have to move a little quicker than we wanted. I also had these awesome HUGE 2012 balloons I wanted to incorporate but hugely underestimated the amount of helium it would take to fill up all the balloons and by the end could only use ’12′. So I only used it very briefly so that I could redeem myself and the idea for another day. In Forney there is this large abandoned barn out in the middle of nowhere that seniors love to spray paint and use for senior portraits, so I thought it would be fun to incorporate the barn into our shoot but do it in more of a high-fashion way. I asked the girls to all get into dresses and we did our modeling thing in front of the barn and then I had them tag the barn in different color spray paint with their names. We then took some plexi-glasses and spray painted ’2012′ on it to complete the session. They each had a ton of fun throughout the entire time and I was impressed at how great they worked together. Thank you all so much for helping me pull all this together girls! Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Today’s senior I have the pleasure of blogging about is Jordan Goodnature. When I first started planning this session I knew I wanted to invite and have Jordan along. I have known Jordan for about 3 years now, I first met her when I was leading a high school bible study at my old church. She is such a sweet girl and one I can trust to be honest when I need some feedback on senior photography. She rocked this session and was able to turn on that modeling switch with ease. During the back to school portion of the shoot I wanted her to be the ‘book nerd’. But I didn’t want to portray her as a nerd, maybe more like ‘book nerd chic,’ if that is even a thing? As abstract as that may have sounded she did a great job with it. Show your support for Jordan by voting for your favorite images!

I was so glad when I got in contact with Calli Green about joining us for this session. I was struggling to find a 3rd girl to come out with Lexii and Jordan (who you will meet tomorrow) that was available on the date I had scheduled. Calli stepped up to the plate at the last moment and I couldn’t have been more happy for her to join our group. She was a wonderful addition and was a natural in front of the camera. For the back to school portion of the shoot I wanted her to be that ‘girl next door’ or ‘good student’. She has this real cute, fun, sweet personality and I wanted to have that come out in this portion of the shoot. She did a great job that role and was another girl that made my job a breeze. The very last image of this post you will notice her in a beautiful dress and wearing some headphones and listening to some music. This was another original idea that didn’t reach its full fruition due to some time constraints, weather, and not having an idea fully developed which can happen every so often. I did this type of thing with each girl but didn’t spend time editing all of them, even though the whole idea didn’t work out I still thought they were cute pictures, so I wanted to at least share a couple. Enjoy these pics of Calli and vote for your favorites!

I love shooting senior sessions. They have changed so much since I was a senior in high school which really isn’t that long ago (I just had my 10 year high school reunion last year!). I will admit that mine were pretty cheesy and not something I am proud to show off to just anyone, I do not even keep copies of them at my home. This is the type of senior photography I want to run away from and set myself apart from the pack. I want to offer senior session to the Forney, Sunnyvale, Mesquite, and Rockwall area that is fun, personal, and fashion-centered. A senior session is a chance to be creative and fun, it is a time to incorporate ways to tell YOUR story, and most importantly these sessions are meant to be something you can be proud to look back on for years to come. I love flipping through fashion magazines/blogs to get inspiration for my sessions and I want my images to feel as if they belong in a magazine. I want my senior clients to have a session where they feel important, special, valued, and have fun feeling like a model with our time together.

I was inspired for awhile with an idea back in the summer that I wanted to incorporate with some seniors but I got busy during wedding season and other life events that I wasn’t able to do it when I had originally planned. My big idea centered around a ‘back to school theme’ to get high school seniors thinking about senior portrait sessions. I did not want to completely ditch the idea or what a whole year to do the idea, that is no fun! So I operated under the old saying ‘better late than never,’ and recruited 3 wonderful high school senior models from Sunnyvale High School to participate in my senior session. I also wanted to recruit some help for my big senior session and work on incorporating some other ideas so I asked stylist, Vanessa Warren of Butterfly SpArks to help style the girls and the session.

I have separated this session into 4 blog posts, one day for each girl, and the last day will feature the group shots. Today I will be introducing you to high school senior Lexii Jackson. Lexii actually has a background in modeling which helps make the photographers job just a little easier. For the back to school portion of our session I wanted to give each girl some sort of personality type to emulate. After seeing this awesome jacket Lexii had paired with her black top and jeans, I wanted her to be the student with ‘attitude’. That student that is too cool for school and knows it. She did a fantastic job getting into that type of character. Our second theme that we worked with had to do with fashion. I had mentioned earlier how I am inspired by fashion magazines and want to incorporate this type of feel into my senior photography. Since Lexii is a model, Vanessa came up with an idea to tie it all together, we would set up a scenario where Lexii is flipping through fashion magazines and finding her own inspiration and pinning them up with clothespins as inspiration for her session. We also included the other senior models into the scene as well which you will see at the end of the week.

Lexii did a killer job in the session and so happy with the way the images turned out. Stay tuned for all the other girls hitting the blog this week because they all did a spectacular job. Show your support by voting for your favorite images from the session!