Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Vanessa - Kids Kouture

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This weekend I had the priviledge of shooting not one, but TWO Kouture portraits. The two I worked with are cousins and we shot some of it together and a lot of it separate, but at the same location. If you're interested in this, there's a discount involved, so email me to get it setup! There's an EXTRA discount if you're in the Santa Clarita area too! Back to the portraits... I'll be blogging them separately, so I'll start with Vanessa first.

She's got to be one of my favorite kiddos I've worked with yet. Gorgeous, funny, and a reader like me, it didn't take more than a few minutes for us to start laughing and playing. I shot over 600 images of her in the space of about an hour, so clearly we were connecting! Here are some of my favs:

Trampoline goodness!
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I love her smile! This was a candid moment while I was checking light, but I really loved the moment - she wrinkles her nose the exact same way I do - yay!
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This was actually the backside of their fireplace at her home. I love brick.
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Her sandals were adorable. They were actually a bright aqua color (so summery!) and I kind of wished they had some in my size...
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I always try to encourage parents to let their child choose something that is a favorite item or sums up their personality or favorite thing to do. It's helpful for me to get to know them and it usually makes the kids more comfortable too. Besides sticking to natural light whenever possible, I also strive to capture kids the way the REALLY are - their personalities, their attitude, their take on life (as opposed to stiff poses portraits with backdrops, etc.). For Vanessa, she wanted to have her book (I SO get this kid!) -
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Vanessa also told me that she's growing out her hair to eventually donate to Locks of Love. How amazing is that! She has gorgeous hair too. It's so impressive to me that an 11 yr old thinks about things like that and wants to help other kids. Only a few more inches to go and she can cut off the required minimum of 10 inches!
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Sometimes capturing their personality means capturing this! (LOVE it! - and don't think I didn't take that as a challenge to show her I could roll my tongue while crossing my eyes too!)
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Btw, this beauty looks just like her mother!
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So gorgeous! Her mom & dad are totally going to have to beat the guys back with sticks in about 5 years....
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Thanks again Vanessa & fam for letting me do this! I'm so thrilled to work with you ANYTIME! Pics of Vanessa's cousin Brandon coming soon.... ;-)

~B

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So freakin' talented is all I am gonna say! We love, love, love you Brie!
~Lizard

Anonymous said...

I love her hair in the trampoline pic! She was a lot of fun in the last session you did with them too, where she did the cartwheels. It was fun making her flip across four pages of that album! LOL

Stephen Hernandez said...

Oh man! Way to go! Way to Go! I'm definitely diggin these shots... they're just so fun and expressive ... I also see someone enjoys the saturation feature on photoshop :) hahaha you'r awesome kido! ... needless to say a yao is in order... Yaoooooooo!

_Blessings

Stephen

~G~ said...

I love your pictures! You are so good at getting good pictures and getting real life. They are fantastic! (About the guy in Starbucks... get used to it! I had a guy ask me out, when I told him I was married, he told me that my husband didn't have to know! And that is the nicest one I've had!)

Brienne Michelle said...

Hahaha! Nice! I must have been naive about what a wedding ring meant to other people... lol.

And Steve, for the record, I actually didn't use the saturation tool on these images - it's why I love my Nikon. ;-) I have custom setting setup in my camera to help boost the sensors dynamic range slightly, but it's still done by the camera and the amazing nikon lenses (they have the best glass in my opinion - it's why I went with them in the first place). In fact, most of these images are straight out of camera (thanks to Dane's workshop) with only minor editing like vignettes, and b&w conversion.

Looking forward to photoshop talk though with you, Nate and possibly another friend Claire!

YAOoooooo!

~B

Anonymous said...

This is one of my gorgeous cousins and i must say Brie you did an awesome job!!! The hair in the trampoline is awesome... i wish my hair did that normally! ... but they are all gorgeous photos and it looks like she had fun which to me is the important part!
~Christal