I had the honor of writing my very first guest blog post for Courtney Delaura, who is the creator of a wonderful educational blog for photographers named Get Schooled. This blog post was all about backing up your photos on your computer in an easy way that gets rid of all the anxiety and stress of having to remember what files you have backed up and when. Plus nobody enjoys deleting old files when they can’t remember if they have properly backed them up. Read the blog post to find out my stress free solution to the problem!

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!

Roberto and Jesica were married on 11/11/11 at Cross Timbers Winery in Grapevine, Texas. I had the pleasure of meeting this couple through their Dallas wedding coordinate Rachel Leuck of Rachel Events who just so happens to be a friend of mine in the wedding industry! It was fun to capture this wedding on such a memorable wedding date, I know it is one of those wedding dates that you will never forgot. I should know since I was one of the ones married on 7/7/07 at 7 p.m.!

This was another great outdoor wedding that was small and intimate with only the closest family and friends in attendance. One of the most memorable things I remember about this couple was hearing about how hard they have each worked to change their eating and health lifestyles. They have both worked hard over the years to each lose over 75 pounds, and to top it off they had to rise bright and early the day after their wedding to run a MARATHON! Now that is some dedication if I don’t say so myself. I was very encouraged to hear all of this and how they have helped each other in such a positive way. It makes me want to get my butt back in shape in 2012 for sure. Thank you Jesica and Roberto for allowing me to capture your wedding day! Here are some highlights from the day and a slideshow will be following tomorrow. Get to voting!

All I can say is that the family and friends of Jordan and Brooke know how to have a good time! This reception was an absolute blast to cover. Brooke’s dad spent 6+ months working on making his home the dream location for a wedding and he certainly did not disappoint. The backyard looked amazing with a waterfall/brook coming through the back yard, an infinite pool, open bar indoors and outdoors, a place to dance, beautifully decorated tables! I was impressed with all the hard work that went into make this the perfect wedding day for Jordan and Brooke. I am sure once the wedding day came that it was nice to simply kick back and enjoy all the hard work once the reception started! Everyone had a great time as it is more than clear to see in these images. I was cracking up at so many of the friends and family members just being silly. Thanks to all the amazing friends and family members who made me feel like part of the family! Enjoy reliving the good times had during this night!