Meet Alyssa.  She is two years old and 100% amazing.  She and her mother met me at Holiday Park to take some fun and creative portraits.  I had lots of great ideas for artistic portrait poses to try, but this little girl only had one thing on her mind: play!  Well, I didn’t get into children’s portrait photography to force kids into uncomfortable poses and bribe them to make fake smiles for the camera, so I suggested we take a play break and visit the playground.  We ended up having a blast together, she played, I chased her around with my camera, and her mom watched us and enjoyed!  The fun candid portraits we made together on the playground ended up being some of our favorites from the day.

What I love most about creating candid portraits of children is being able to capture their natural expressions.  I love the picture above because it shows so much joy, fun, and mischief.  Isn’t that what being a toddler is all about?

These little shoes…so precious!

Alyssa loved the playground telescope.  This shot might be worth something one day if she grows up to work for NASA!

A lot of people say I must’ve gotten lucky when I capture a shot like this.  The truth is it isn’t luck, I planned for it, positioned myself, and waited for it.  It often takes several tries to capture a great action shot, but perserverance pays off!

Some of my first professional photography opportunities were senior portraits.  These days, I don’t do nearly enough of them, which is a shame since seniors are some of my favorite subjects!  Of course I love all the work I do, but I was very excited to go out and shoot some senior portraits with James this year.  James suggested one of his favorite downtown locations for his session, the Indiana World War Memorial.  I instantly loved the idea, and the monument provided us with a great variety of portrait locations.

I’m not sure if this pose is actually “allowed” or not, but we knew the end result would be cool so we decided to try it anyway!

I thought it would be cool to take a picture in front of this engraved cornerstone, an while we were taking it, I noticed the shot below, which I think I like even more than the original.

This was taken by the fountain in the park next to the war memorial.  I love how the blue in the water brings out the blue in James’ eyes!

As a side note, James’ father happens to be my gardening neighbor!  He provides great company and conversation during my long hours of weeding.  He also writes a blog called A Commoner’s Life full of warm and humorous stories which you should totally check out.