Melissa’s senior portraits from her mom’s perspective
I was pleasantly surprised by a lovely testimonial this evening on one of galleries of a senior portrait session.
Here is Melissa gallery from our session together (Melissa, her mom, my assistant and me) at Cox Arboretum near the Dayton Mall. Melissa’s Gallery Click here
Melissa is a lovely young lady and was delightful to photograph. She has been posting about her plans for the future on her Facebook wall. College will be here in no time at all for sure.
Peter DeMott • Peter DeMott Photography • Greater Dayton area • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
Equine retail supply company buys photos with unique feel and style from Peter DeMott Photography
Capturing the emotion of the moment
When I do portrait sessions or take pictures of people with their horses I do my best to capture the emotion of the moment. If I can capture JOY or LOVE or COMPANIONSHIP in that photograph I consider that a win for everyone involved.
This week I sold images from a senior portrait session (with permission of the young lady who wants to become a model) to a large retail equine supply company to be used in consumer promotions in late 2011 and early 2012. Another image that was purchased was from a session that I did with Patty and her horses (Patty is my wife and we have 3 beautiful arabs). But, in both cases it was not just the image, but the emotion expressed in the image that caught the eye of the business.
I’m looking forward to sharing the images and where they will be published once I have samples from the promotion. That will be fun to show you.
In the mean time, fall portrait time is now. For seniors and for seniors with horses, this is a great time for those cozy outdoor portraits in sweaters, scarfs, jeans, etc. For the horses, there are fewer flies and everything has greened back up in pastures and farms again with all this rain in mid September in our area.
For seniors wanting to consider modeling, having a good mix of styles of images for your portfolio is important. As you can see from my news above, my style and photography capture attention and show personality a little differently than the glamour and glitz that some photographers are known for. I hope you will consider me in the coming days and months as you consider where you will have your horse and rider portraits made or your senior portraits. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about your portrait session.
Peter DeMott • Peter DeMott Photography • Seniors, families, equine, and children • Greater Dayton area and the region • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
Early Fall is another great time to have horse and rider portraits made in Ohio
This spring I mentioned when to have horse and rider portraits made in Ohio. That was when there was still lots of mud and I suggested two things. First that you wait for your horse to shed out his winter coat of fur, then to wait for the foliage to get green and the grass to look nice.
Well early and late fall can also be a great time for horse and rider portraits and senior portraits with horse as well. Evenings are cooler now and the flies are less of a problem. It is more comfortable for both horse and rider.
If you want color in your portraits, please call and schedule with me early as this is a fairly popular thing to do in the last week of September and the first couple weeks of October. Since it starts getting dark sooner in the evening we have to schedule a bit earlier in the evening than when I was taking portraits this summer. Sometimes if things get timed perfectly, there are colorful leaves in the trees and on the ground, but this can be difficult. One year I took some lovely fall portraits and there was a carpet of colorful leaves on the ground and still in the trees as well, but twenty minutes after the session it became blustery and the wind blew all the leaves from the ground and the trees became almost bare of any color.
In early fall, when there is color in the trees is easier to time than trying to plan for a carpet of leaves on the ground. Also, there are fall foliage color calculators on the internet which will tell you when to expect the most color in the trees.
If you want fall color in your horse and rider portraits or in your senior portraits call me now.
Peter DeMott Photography • 937-478-6222 • peter@photosbypdemott.com
This weekend (8/27-28, 2011) I am am at the Abi-Kahn Competitive Trail ride near Caesar’s Creek Park in Ohio
Flamingos are the theme of the Abi-Kahn Competitive trail ride at Caesar’s Creek Park in Southwestern Ohio. I am shooting on trail for the event, buy when everyone is finished riding I am taking mini portrait sessions for those who want portraits with their horse/s.
One of the girls that I photographed with her horse said, “Do you do senior portraits?”. My answer was, “Yes, I do on-location senior portraits in the Southwestern Ohio area, where do you live?” As it turns out she lives right near me in the Centerville area and she would love to have senior portraits with her horse. I gave her my business card and hope to hear from her soon.
More pictures from this event can be seen and purchased here: Abi-Kahn Competitive Trail Ride
Peter DeMott Photography in Southwest Ohio near Dayton • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
Lindsay Steiger senior at Bellbrook High School – great outdoor portrait session
Lindsay was concerned about getting some casual outdoor senior portraits that captured her. What we discovered when we were doing the session was that Lindsay had an fun, outgoing, and energetic personality that I was able to capture in beautiful senior portraits.
Lindsay’s mom Norma was there to watch and carry Lindsay’s clothing changes. When Lindsay was off changing clothes we found that Lindsay will be going to Wright State University and plans to study biology. Her mom is a nurse and we wondered out load if their close relationship might mean that Lindsay would be headed in the same direction for her career choice.
What ever Lindsay ends up doing with her life, it was a delight to be able to record this important times stamp in her life. She will be graduating shortly and we were able to schedule the session fairly quickly so that she would be able to place her orders and use express shipping to get them back quickly.
Best wishes to Lindsay as you goes forward with her life. She will definitely be going places.
If you would like to see other photographs from this session go the bottom of this post and click on the link to her gallery. Just for fun, if 15 of lindsay’s friends will post a comment on this page (Not facebook where this will link, but here on this post on my web site), I will give her a bonus credit to use for additional purchases. So go ahead, say something nice, tell he that she is going places or that you appreciate her in your life. Once you have made your comment, it will be approved and show up at the bottom so that she can see them.
Here are more portraits from her session. I hope you enjoyed these examples.
http://pdemott.smugmug.com/Portraits/Lindsay-Steiger
Spring is here and flowers and trees are blossoming. It’s a great time to schedule your senior portraits for 2012 seniors and for others who are in a hurry to get senior pictures that really capture your natural smile and personality.
Peter DeMott • Dayton and surrounding communities • Senior portraits, families, and children • Equine portraits • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
Casual family portraits and high energy little boys
I did some casual portraits for a family I know. They have two lovely girls and two young boys who were full of energy at the time of the session. I’d rather have high energy than tired and grumpy, but we had to come up with a way to focus their energy so that we could capture them in the portrait.
I asked Chris if he horsed around with the boys sometimes and after he said yes, I organized the family (without the boys) on the sofa. Then I told the boy, go climb on dad which the gleefully did do.
You can see more portraits from the session here: http://pdemott.smugmug.com/Portraits/Chris/15809800_umdxb#1185311621_CJQKu
• Peter DeMott Photography • Dayton, Ohio • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
When sorting your photos give it some time before the throw away too many images
Woke up this morning with very cold temperatures outside. Cold and windy with just a little snow is not good for much around here.
After cleaning out the horse stalls and balancing my checkbook I went exploring pictures that I took last year. It seems like when I look at photographs that I took some time ago, there are always a couple that look better than they did when I first saw them. In fact I found that it is important for me when gleaning through my images that I not throw away too many images. In the past I would end up trashing some of these incubating images before they “grew on me” so to speak.
Now I throw away images with focus issues, images that are clearly under par, but I keep many more images than I used to. Now when I go back, there are many images that mature over time.
I thought I would share a couple.
This is an image that I took at a FEO shoot. FEO in Dayton is a support group for photographers willing to share and grow. There are FEO groups that meet all over the country as a result of Dane Sander’s book Fast Track Photographer. The initials stand for FOR EACH OTHER and locally, most of the members are wedding and some portrait photographers. They meet on the second Tuesday of each month to go over selected topics together. This particular meeting was a photo shoot with models at my home near Germantown, Ohio. The thing that I like about FEO is that the other photographers challenge me and keep me fresh. One of the things that I experimented with at this meeting was back lit portraits like this one. If I had an assistant with me I might have used a reflector to bring a little more of that warm light back onto the subjects.
This is just a quick snap shot of Sarah Wheeler at a Starbucks when I delivered an 11×14 stretched canvas print to her. Sarah is now at school at Wright State University and we were able to meet up at Starbucks so I could give this to her. Sarah is still very active in horse sports at Dancing Horse Farm in Lebanon, Ohio. If you would like to see more from Sarah Wheeler’s session go to this link: http://www.photosbypdemott.com/2009/09/sarah-wheelers-senior-portraits-at-dancing-horse-farm/
Follow-up from Sarah Wheeler 1/19/2011. My question: Hey girl, what does your mom think of the canvas print?
I’m still working on trying to find the time to start a podcast about equine photographers. I’ve been thinking about audio clips and video clips as part of my other web site as well. My other web site is about growing your business in Dayton, Ohio. Actually the posts there can help any business except for the parts about the coupon magazine that I work for. I post a lot of facebook tips, internet tips, and other tips that are important to businesses in general. That web site is Grow Your Business in Dayton – http://www.gybindayton.com
Hopefully you got something from this post. I think that I am in a cold winter funk which makes it difficult to come up with more interesting material.
Peter DeMott • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222 • http://www.photosbypdemott.com • http://gybindayton.com •
Allie and Lizzy annual portraits for Christmas cards
Each year I get an email from Allie and Lizzy’s mom. When can we do a session over at the Trails End Equestrian Center? So we came up with a time and a date and I was able to take pictures of Lizzy with her horse. Allie could not make it, so we set a time for them to stop by my house and do Allie’s portraits.
Best friend seniors, senior boys, seniors with horses, senior girls
I just wanted to get some samples of senior portraits up on the home page of my web site. Several of these students are from Miamisburg High school. My senior portraits are on location usually at local parks, but also at farms and urban settings. Where every you want to be photographed works for me. Once we finish you will be featured in one of my blog posts and by sending your friends to make comments, you can earn bonus points to buy more portraits. In addition, I always give you a sneak peek with several of my favorite images on facebook which you can tag and share with your friends. I encourage you to FRIEND me on facebook so you can see who I am photographing and participate in the sneak peaks.
So if you would like a fun, relaxed yet exciting senior portrait session at a location of your choosing, give me a call or send me a note. Miamisburg, Oakwood, Centerville, Springboro and all the suburban areas around Dayton you can have the senior portrait session you want.
Lovely senior portrait session with Jennifer McElveen senior at Miamisburg High School
As we were progressing through various places and posses my wife asked Jennifer what was next, where was she headed after high school? Jennifer wants to go to college at the University of Cincinnati. We suggested that she could then hang out with Kile and Evan who are both going to school in Cincinnati, Evan at Xavier University and not too far away, Kile at the University of Cincinnati. Jennifer wants to major in pre-med. Wow, that is exciting.
Jennifer had three changes of clothes. We started with her relaxed and casual look. Each look was just lovely. Jennifer has a great smile and a wonderful personality. We walked around the park finding senior pictures ideas for girls. I’m looking forward to doing more senior portrait sessions with Miamisburg students. I’m hoping that Jennifer’s friends will see her senior pictures here and click on the link to her gallery as well as explore my web site to see other examples of my work.
I loved her more formal looking outfit too.
I think this look over the shoulder pose turned out just lovely, but like I said, Jennifer has a lovely smile and personality and it just comes out through these portraits. I also know what this looks like large and her eyes look amazing in this girl senior portrait pose.
If you know Jennifer leave her a comment (see the “Leave a comment” or the “Comments” link near the title of this post) and wish her well. Or tell her which portraits you love best.
I’d also love you to sign up to receive my web site updates in your email box. Just enter your email address in this Subscibe Link
Additional portraits from Jennifer’s session can be seen here: Jennifer’s Senior Portrait Session
If you have some special ideas for your senior portrait session, don’t hesitate to give me a call at 937-478-622 or email me at peter@photosbypdemott.com