JOANNA

If a smile is worth a thousand words, then Joanna is an entire novel series. ‘Jo’ (if you are her family or are blessed to know her as a friend) is simply smiling… All. The. Time! Try to NOT smile in her presence. I can assure you, its difficult. I was smiling the entire time I was capturing her Seniors.

I will often take a quick break at the beginning of my sessions and let my seniors peek through the first set of images on the back of my camera. It’s a way for us both to feel a little more comfortable with how our time together is going to go. I’m incredibly open with my seniors and ask for their ‘brutally honest feedback’ with what they are seeing. If they have a ‘side’ they don’t like, maybe a part of their body that makes them a little more self-conscious. I want them to tell me straight up. We ALL have things we aren’t in love with when it comes to our appearance, myself included. My good friends know I complain about a ginormous vein in my forehead that makes an appearance in photos, SLR and iphones alike. It’s stealth. You never see it in real life, (it’s fun to watch my clients try to spot it after I’ve shared this story with them) however it appears in literally EVERY SINGLE PHOTO of me that exists. Drives me nerts, but I know that certain angles and lighting make a difference and I try to minimize it. If my seniors feel comfortable enough sharing their own likes/dislikes with me, I know what to look for and how to make them fall in love with their images.

With Jo, we worked through a series of poses and expressions right off the bat. I was getting the vibe from her immediately that she wasn’t a super ‘serious’ expression kind-of-a girl, but we still gave a few of those a try. I asked her to take a look through them, along with mom and grandma. Between the four of us, we were 0/4 in love with Jo’s serious looks. Because… really, she is never NOT smiling.

(Although, I did sneak a few more of the serious in during the session as she was better pulling off the look than we all originally thought;)