Perfectly Paige

Happy Tuesday everybody! Hope you’re all sitting with your feet in a cold swimming pool free of flesh eating bacteria and eating ice cream unscathed by a stranger’s tongue.

Shifting gears away from all of the disgusting events of this summer, today I’m going to chat a little bit about a photo session I did way back in 2012. It’s funny how you spend years striving towards improving & educating yourself in some way. Somehow, I can look back at the beginning of my photographic journey and still find products of my past to admire. 

Curiosity & confidence just filled my soul and I wanted to try everything. I reached out to many people to try and make my goals come to life. Just glancing through my old files, I’m reminded of so many projects from that year, like a baptism, a calendar for a historic society, some family sessions, a boudoir shoot, newborn shoots, etc.

 I opened a few old folders to find an image to talk about today and I went with a senior session I did with this really amazing girl that I got to watch grow up. Paige Castle crossed my path when she was just four years old and totally won my heart over. When she became a senior, she asked me about doing her pictures. We divided her session up into two different sittings; one on the farm where she was raised and another at the mall, where there was a bright & colorful carousel, with her very special person, her niece (Kaitlyn Kinard).

Not only does Paige have a great sense of humor, she’s down to earth, silly, and always smiling, but she is also very musically gifted. She can sing like an angel and play several different instruments. One of her favorite instruments at that time was her acoustic guitar. So we incorporated her love of music into some of her session.

She had a lot of patience waiting on me to set up in the empty packing house on the farm where she lived. We tried a lot of things like glitter, using the industrial setting, implementing a tinfoil crown, and we did a few shots with a backdrop, her guitar, and music sheets. Paige was so much fun to work with.

There are a lot of images I took that I would never use in portfolio now because I’ve changed a lot in my skill set and preferences, but honestly there are a few that I still just love. Here to the left is an example of one such picture. It’s simple. I just put up a couple of white sheets on a backdrop stand and spread out a ton of music sheets on the ground for her to lie on. With the simplicity of her set, she really pops.

If I could redo this now, I’d have someone throwing some music sheets while she sat centered with an instrument with the light coming in more from a distance, from the side of the camera. Hmmm…maybe you know some musician in need of a session? Tell them to message me! 

But until I get a new client with similar interests, I’ll opt for revisiting this session with ya’ll. I do love the image, but I hate that stylistic filter. These days I prefer pictures to look more natural and, very often, film like. I like rich (not over saturated) colors, a little grain, & some moody light. 

So I took this image back down to bare bones and started over. To be honest, it took maybe 10 minutes to update it and that includes waiting on my slow computer to open my software. In Photoshop I enhanced her eyes, fixed my white balance, edited out a tiny piece of blue fabric that wasn’t supposed to be seen, smoothed the wrinkles in the white sheet & exported it to different software for color toning. I added a smidgen of glow to her skin, popped the highlights a tad, and added a little punch of color & contrast and ta-daaaaa! It's not perfect; the hand being cut off is aggravating me, but I can live with it and love it anyways.

I didn't have to touch her skin, or smooth her hair. Such advantages to being so young and vibrant! And below you have the updated final product. Isn't she absolutely beautiful? 

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