Teachers love snow days too when they can ride their horse in the snow
The infamous “SNOW DAY!”
My wife Patty is a teacher and like her students she just loves a snow day. It’s relished because it is completely unplanned and spontaneous. Another teach who is a Facebook Friend has created a list of things that her young children do when they are hoping for a Snow Day. They have to wear their pajamas inside out for one. And this week she had them run in their front yard and yell “SNOWWWW DAYYYYY!” as loud as they could as the snow was falling from the sky. Patty said that she tells the kids to put ice cubes in the toilet.
It’s all in fun, but what do you get to do on a SNOW DAY?
In Patty’s case she recruited her husband and photographer to take some pictures of the beauty all around us (that would be me!). Tell me what you think of what God did here in SW Ohio and how I was able to capture it in images.
Natalie with Leo senior portrait session with horse and rider near Hamilton Ohio
Natalie & Leo
Natalie clearly has a lovely relationship with her horse Leo. This senior portrait session with horse near Hamilton, Ohio was just a delight to shoot. Natalie is a lovely young lady and her horse Leo is quite handsome as well. From the portraits you can see that they spend many hours together.
The session started at 5 p.m. which is ideal because the sun is not directly overhead and the light is warm. I am scheduling most of my senior sessions around this time in the fall. In the summer it’s more like 7:30 p.m. , but now it gets dark between 7:30-8:00 p.m.
Telling the Story
There is a lovely woods surrounding the stable where Natalie boards her horse. We were able to go exploring and find lots of beautiful backgrounds for her portraits, but I also like to capture “candid moments” throughout the session that tell the story of their relationship.
As we discussed some other portraits that Natalie wanted to try she showed me the soy bean field on the other side of the fence. The sky was beautiful and the bean field was almost ready to harvest. It was dry and yellow. With the sun beginning to set I decided to try some back lighting. When I do senior portraits, as much as possible, I want to have something unique for each person. The soy bean field and the front porch of the stable owners home were perfect for some great unique portraits.
Getting a Sneak Peek on Facebook
I usually put a few images on Facebook as a sneak peek of the images that I am working on. It is just too exciting working on the images, not to share a least a couple. In this case Natalie and her mom have about 70 portraits to choose from. But, just for fun, here are some comments about this last image on Facebook. Natalie is a beautiful girl inside and out and was a delight to photograph.
You can see more sneak peeks from other senior portrait sessions on my Facebook page. Peter DeMott Photography
If you would like to schedule an on-location senior portrait session, please feel free to just call me at 937-478-6222. I can tell you how things work. We can discuss any ideas you have for location and we can schedule a time that works for you. You can go to my contact page to send me an email if you would prefer to contact me that way: Contact Peter DeMott
Lizzie’s senior portrait session with her horse named Signature on My Heart
This is a senior portrait session that I will remember for a long time
This was a senior portrait session that inspired me. Lizzie’s mom had called me to discuss doing her senior portrait session at The Riding Center in Yellow Springs Ohio. I explained how things would work and about my pricing and such and we set a time a couple of weeks ago.
Lizzie is a soft-spoken young lady, but was very sure of herself and very comfortable in her own skin. As we walked around selecting areas to photograph her with her lovely mare Sydney her mother explained to my wife Patty and me that Lizzie had earned and save for several years to buy her own horse. Wow, this young lady knows the value of a dollar and she was determined to get a horse. And you can see in her eyes as she looked at her horse that they have a great companionship relationship.
In a recent email with Lizzie, I had forgotten her horse’s name, she told me her name is Sydney, but that her registered name is Signature on My Heart. Well as I photographed Lizzie, I could see that Sydney is a signature on her heart.
On the quiet road that passes by The Riding Center I had Lizzie walk toward me with her horse.
Since this was a senior portrait session we took some portraits with some different outfits and without the horse.
Since Lizzie was so comfortable, it was easy for Patty and I to come up with poses for her to try. We had an absolutely wonderful time and we were honored to be her senior portrait photographer.
Thanks Lizzie.
If you would like learn about senior portrait sessions with Peter DeMott Photography please visit this page: Senior portrait session pricing
I have to tell you about some out-takes from the session. It was a real challenge to get Sydney’s ears perked forward. Whenever I see senior portraits by photographers who don’t know anything about horses, they typically have their ears every which way and the eyes of the horses look bored and uninterested. It’s difficult to see the connection when the horse seems to not care. Anyway, Sydney was a real challenge, but Lizzie never got impatient with Sydney. We all had a laugh now and then throughout the session and it challenged my trigger finger as well. I would fire of a couple of shots and then Lizzie would look up and see the ears looking like this:
As it turned out to Lizzie’s surprise, there were many great images with their companionship showing and with her horse alert and ears up.
Investing in my photography business with training in Senior Portrait photography
Jen Hellinga all day workshop sponsored by PPSO
I just finished up an all day workshop learning more about running an effective and popular portrait studio. Our workshop leader was Jen Hellinga (pronounced Hell-ing-gay with emphasis on last syllable). She also has the business JensFabulousStuff.com which sells templates and textures and many other tools for portrait photographers to use with Photoshop. This is the third PPSO all day workshop that I have participated in since joining PPSO as a professional photographer. Hands on training, in my estimation is 10-20 times more effective than the same time spend reading books or exploring online sources for information.
Jen has a very successful studio and does children, families, senior portraits and more. She shared with us about how she got started in photography and about going through several studio disasters before landing where she is now. She has a business partner that does the business side of the studio while she stays in the creative and photography side of the business. They both agree that if they wonder into the other person’s area or tried to run the business alone, they both would struggle, but together they do great.
It was really fun trying out some new posing and seeing Jen interact with the seniors as she might on one of her own senior sessions. We also spent some time indoors using studio lighting and discussing posing there as well. One of the models was a senior that I had photographed earlier. The other two were two of three triplets who had been photographed earlier for their senior session by another one of our photographers, Toni Forgue. I have to say everyone did great and they were all great fun to photograph.
Here are some of the portraits that I took during the workshop.
Senior picture ideas are many times about posing the person so they look great, rather than having dated props that will make the senior portrait seem dated within a year or two.
Senior picture boy posing is about strength and making the kid relax and enjoy the session.
For girl senior pictures, creating an “S” curve in the image is a great want to add motion and interest to the image.
Messing up a girl’s hair can add some pizzaz to the image for sure.
In this senior picture reflections and lines on the ground add interest. Again the “S” curve gives this image motion and emotion.
Spending more money on your training, and your equipment, and computers can mean much better images for your clients, but they also have to know that your prices have to generate a profit. Today, many people are satisfied with “it’s good enough” images of the people they love, but we have to show them portraits that are far better than “it’s good enough” so that they will be willing to invest in photographs that capture cherished moments for a lifetime.
Noel’s senior portrait session with beautiful white dress
Noel seems so comfortable in her own skin. At her school in Wyoming Cincinnati all the girls graduate in white dresses so they wanted to have some of her senior portraits taken with the white dress.
I have to say, that Noel was just lovely. In this first portrait, I just think that she looks like a model, so elegant and yet comfortable being photographed. Once those braces are off, Noel is going to break the hearts of a lot of young men as she goes off to college in the fall.
After the family makes some selections, I will be having the braces removed from her teeth. Noel explained that her braces were supposed to be off by June 1st, but that when she went for her last orthodontics appointment they explained that they would have to stay for another 6 weeks.
If you would like to schedule a photography session for your senior student please look around my web site: Senior Portrait Pricing
You can contact me by phone or the contact page: Contact Peter DeMott Photography: Contact Peter DeMott Photography
Creative family poses, creative senior portraits, creative equine portraits
Great examples of portrait photography posing and ideas
I’ve been having fun on Pinterest over the past month or so gathering examples of creative family poses, creative senior portrait poses and even creative equine portraits. On Pinterest when you re-pin something it always takes you back to the original pin and usually it shows you the originator of the actual image. If I pin something directly from another photographers web site, I always add the name of the photographer in the comments section under the photo. I think this is only professional courtesy as I do not want anyone to think that some of the images were taken by me.
At the same time, I have many of my own images represented on my pin boards. Images that are my own always have “© Peter DeMott, www.photosbypdemott” right on the image in a non-obtrusive way. If you are a photographer and you rely only on the meta data on your image your images could be doing a little more work for you. Place a logo and web address on your images when ever you place them on the internet period. It is only wise.
Creative family portrait poses:
http://pinterest.com/pdemott/family-portraits/
Creative senior portrait and senior pic poses:
http://pinterest.com/pdemott/senior-portrait-photography/
and
http://pinterest.com/pdemott/portraits-by-other-photographers/
Here are some lovely equine and horse and rider poses for photographic portraits:
http://pinterest.com/pdemott/equine-portraits/
I hope that you will visit my Pinterest boards frequently as I add new portraits almost daily. Almost all of my boards are about portrait photography and better posing and learning about photography as well. Please leave a comment here if you enjoyed your visit to my pin site. Much appreciated.
Also, if you are in the area of the photographers that I have pinned as examples, please schedule a portrait session with them to take advantage of their talent to create lasting mementos of your family, your children, and your equine companions and pets. Have fun on Pinterest.
If you would like to see all the images that have been pinned to other people’s pin sites from my web site:
http://pinterest.com/source/photosbypdemott.com/
Peter DeMott Photography • Dayton area and SW Ohio • Portrait and equine photography • 937-478-6222 • Contact Peter DeMott
Pins from Peter DeMott Photography
It was actually pretty fun to explore the various PINs from this website onto Pinterest. Pinterest is a pin board for photography. Although it does provide a link to my site and a citation under the photograph as to where the photo came from, I am also glad that I have chosen to put my copyright, name and web site on every portrait that I put on the web.
Here is a portion of the page and link so you can see: PINS for photosbypdemott
It is also fun to see the different pages that the photographs are pinned to:
and more..
When I click on one of my photographs that has been PINNED, it shows the image like this:
There are sometimes comments under the photographs like this one, “Great ideas found here” and my web site is hot-linked above the image. In addition you can tweet the image of drop it into Facebook or perhaps embed in on your blog or web site. I am assuming that the hot link remains when the images are embedded this way. It also shows the first person to PIN the image and also if the image has been re-pinned 2 times (or however many times people have re-pinned it under various categories).
Since the pins point back to this website, and since I have my name a web site on every portrait that I post here, I guess that I can count it as free advertising.
Not everything is peachy keen though. I see some pins that have copyright information chopped off or which reference “uploaded by user” even when it is clear the user who created that particular board is not the person who actually created the image. By downloading and then uploading the image instead of pinning the image, the reference website is effectively removed. If copyright information is also removed there is then no way to track the photograph to the original source. As I looked at the Pinterest terms of service, this is both copyright infringement and Pinterest abuse and it can be reported. If someone is reported doing this more than a time or two, they can be banned from the site or removed.
I think I will have to try Pinterest soon. Are YOU a member of Pinterest? Are you enjoying creating some pin boards? Have you seen people abusing the terms of service on Pinterest? What is your take on this new sharing utility?
Spring is almost here and so is on location senior portrait season and equine portrait season
Ohio in late February and in March
This is the most frustrating time of year for location photographers and for horse owners. I’m hoping to make things different for me with the addition of my country barn studio in coming months, but that won’t change things for my equine portrait clients here in Ohio.
So what is the frustration with on location senior portrait photography and equine photography in Ohio in February and March?
All through the winter in Ohio we have had rain and very little snow this season. Everything is gray and dreary and nobody really wants to be outside. When it snows a lot, there is enough photogenic things outside to motivate me to bundle up and go outside. You will find some great posts about taking pictures in snow on this website, but this year we have had mostly rain, rain, and more rain and the snow has not been here in quantities that would be worth of my effort to photograph.
Then next season before things start greening up is the MUD season in Ohio. Horses are caked with mud and still have their furry winter coats. Just cleaning a horse to ride them can be a monumental task, let alone trying to get them ready to take pictures. We have to wait for their winter coats to shed so that nice summer, shiny, beautiful coat of fur shows before the equine photography (on location portraits at your barn or stable) begins.
I hope that there are many people anticipating the green grass and foliage that can make for great on location photography sessions. If you own a horse and you want beautiful pictures just call me as soon as their winter coat is gone. Don’t wait for summer. Sometimes people wait and finally call me after everything is starting to burn out. The grass is not as green. Finding good places for the portraits becomes more challenging (I can do it, but it can be more challenging).
Here is an example of a portrait taken later in the season. No pretty grass to be found here, but we were able to find a good backdrop on the porch of one of the stables.
I’m looking forward hearing from you soon as the weather changes here in Ohio.
Peter DeMott Photography • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
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
Megan’s senior portraits created a dilemma for her and her mom Lori
After having several conversations with Megan’s mom, Lori, Megan and Lori were finally able to placed their order for her senior portraits taken this fall. Their order is arriving within the next couple of days and they are very excited to see everything and get their canvas image framed and hung.
Megan chose several different images for wallets to give friends.
Here is the image they chose to make into a canvas print. It was fun to have a Megan in her prom dress with her beautiful horse.
It was fun talking with Megan’s mom about the portraits because she and Megan were having such a difficult time narrowing down their order. I said, of course, that they can order everything if the wanted. But, they didn’t take my advice and order lots of prints of every portrait. That was their dilemma, how to narrow their order.
Here is a link to her gallery. Megan’s Senior Portrait Gallery
Seems like spring will be here soon. If you have a horse and it is time for your senior portraits, remember that many photographers don’t know much about photographing horses. Since I do senior portraits and I am an equine photographer here in the Dayton, Ohio area, I can give you the best of both worlds.
Peter DeMott • Peter DeMott Photography • Located in Germantown, Ohio near Dayton • 937-478-6222 • peter@photosbypdemott.com