Meet Pittsburgh Senior Toma

A week ago today, I had the pleasure of doing the senior portraits for a friend’s daughter, Toma.

Jenny and I met Toma, her mother and grandmother at her home.  Her front porch had a spot with an interesting-but-neutral background, so I set up some lighting and we took a few photos there with Toma and their dog June.

I had provided a few suggestions on places where we could take some additional photos, but I always like to ask the client if they have any ideas, too.  I’m not always familiar with their local area, and sometimes they’ll have a favorite place or will know of a place that might be interesting.  In this case, Toma’s mother and grandmother mentioned a location in South Park that had several interesting features, so while Toma changed, we packed-up our stuff.  Since I’m not familiar with South Park area, we followed them to a pretty spot with some great scenery.

It was great working with Toma.  With an easy smile and a quick laugh, we had fun traipsing all over the place and trying all sorts of poses.  Some worked, some didn’t, but even with as hot and muggy as it was, Toma just kept smiling.  Sometimes I just wish I had just half of that energy!

Jenny had the back-up camera and took a few shots of us on-location.  It was nice to have some documentation of what we were doing.  When she wasn’t helping by being a voice-activated reflector stand, she was off taking some pictures of me taking pictures.  One of the features in this area was this bridge over the pond, which provided a few good shots.  We kept getting great sunlight at just the right angle to make for pretty back-lighting, so I took as much advantage of that as I could.

The weather managed to hold-out just long enough for us to finish.  We noticed a few other groups showing up to take photos in the area, and we were just about finished, so we wrapped-up and headed back to the cars.  We had a GPS to help us out of where we were, so we sent Toma and family off to home while Jenny and I re-packed the gear into the car and prepared to leave.  As I was getting into the car, I noticed that it had become suddenly much darker outside.  About five minutes after we started driving, the serious rain started.

Thank you, Toma (and Toma’s mother!), for allowing us to take your portraits.  We had a great time, good light, and the camera really liked you!  Coming later this week, we’ll have a slideshow with our favorites from the shoot, so stay tuned!