As a photographer, I’m always looking for the most interesting and beautiful backgrounds and places I can find, and New Hampshire is certainly a great place for beautiful locations. Unfortunately, sometimes these beautiful locations are not easy to get to. This is why I give my clients full “veto” power if they think any of my ideas are a little too crazy or adventurous.

But I’ve been lucky. Extremely lucky to have some of the most adventurous clients who appreciate my creative vision enough to go along with all of my ideas.

Take Haley, for example. When discussing potential locations for her senior portrait session, we decided on the Chesterfield Gorge, in Chesterfield, NH. The gorge has beautiful creeks and waterfalls, some of my favorite natural subjects to photographs, but it takes a very adventurous spirit to go into these places. Lucky for me, Haley was totally up for it! And it was so worth it. We had a lot of fun and were able to capture very unique portraits using the beautiful surroundings at the gorge.

It was a beautiful morning at the gorge.

This is one of my favorite portraits from Haley’s session. I just love the beautiful scenery at the gorge.

It may not look like it, but this was a tough spot to get into! Thanks for being so adventurous, Haley!

After a quick outfit change we wandered back near the water.

Creo was very camera friendly. Sometimes he sat and pose but sometimes he just wanted to play!

We also did a few photos at the studio in Keene. Creo loved being photographed.

I always love when a client includes a prop or something very significant as a part of his or her session. It really makes the photos that much more personal, and that much more unique. So I was excited when Megan told me she would like to include her horses in her senior portrait session.

We had so much fun. Megan brought so many ideas and I loved her rockstar attitude. It was crisp and cool late-summer morning when we met but we took advantage of the beautiful morning sunlight to capture portraits of Megan with her horses.

We ended our session at her mother’s house with gardens blooming with very pretty colorful flowers, and lovely textures to use as backgrounds.

We had beautiful morning light in the field with her horses.

This one was a favorite from the day.

At her mother’s house there were great textures, such as this cool stone wall.

I loved all the outfits Megan chose for her session. The colors were bold, fun and vibrant. Much like her!

I had so much fun photographing you, Megan!

The relationship I have with the people I photograph is one of the most important components of good photography, so I was thrilled when Kim contacted me about an anniversary portrait session. I know Kim and her husband Craig well. I first had the opportunity to work with them during their engagement session two years ago, and then again on their wedding day last year. Each of those times were filled with lots of laughter and smiles with a couple that is an absolute pleasure to photograph.

For this session, Kim liked the idea of doing something different than what we had done before, so we headed to downtown Keene, NH for an evening session. I have photographed downtown before, but I am always excited by the new creative possibilities available within a relatively small section of downtown. The laughter and smiles continued this year. Here are some of our favorites from the session.

During senior portrait sessions, seniors will sometimes bring a prop that has special meaning or significance. For BriAna’s studio session, she brought one of her owls. She loves owls, and we had fun posing the owl in a few of the photos. After her her studio session, we discussed ideas for where to go for her on-location session that we had scheduled. I then remembered that at the Vermont Institue of Natural Science (VINS) you can set up a session to photograph the birds. Would they let us photograph a real owl as part of a senior portait session? Yes!

The Barred Owl we worked with was wonderful, as was the staff at VINS. We got some great portraits of the two of them before heading into the fields of lupine with just BriAna.

I always love photographing children, and I recently had the opportunity to photograph two sisters in the garden at my studio in Keene. When I work with children, my goal is to make it a fun play date for them. We definitely had fun during this session. I knew I was successful when they asked if they can come back for another play date!

Here are a few of my favorites.

Living in New Hampshire, I’m lucky to have a huge variety of outdoor locations for family portraits. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend time photographing a wonderful family at one of my favorite spots in Surry just down the road from the studio. We had fields full of  wildflowers, trails through the woods, and the Ashuelot River as areas to explore. The kids had fun playing outside, and we got some great photos that capture each of them individually and as a family.

Here are a few of my favorites from the session.

 

Are these the coolest cowgirl boots or what?

 

Sibling harmony.

 

I always love including dogs in family portrait sessions.

 

Three kids, each with their own unique personalities.

Happy Summer Solstice! This is always one of my favorite days of the year that reminds me to celebrate the beauty of life, and I thought today was an appropriate day to share a recent business headshot I did of someone who has the wonderful job title of Celebrant. Amy Benedict recently became certified as a Life Cycle Celebrant and New Hampshire Justice of the Peace and was looking for a professional headshot for her new practice Marigold Ceremonies. Amy creates personalized ceremonies to celebrate marriages and other important milestones for individuals, couples, families and communities. I look forward to the day I have the opportunity to photograph one of her events.

 

Amy Benedict of Marigold Ceremonies

We created this relaxed and natural looking portrait in the garden at my studio in Keene.

I began my professional career photographing children, and they are without a doubt still one of my favorite subjects to work with. My approach when working with children is to make the session a fun play-date and capture them as they truly are. We definitely had fun during this session with three siblings! I photographed the girls and their brother in their backyard, which had beautiful natural light. We entertained ourselves with bubbles, tag, hide-and-go-seek in the bushes and lots of laughter.

Each child I photograph is unique, and I love the challenge of connecting with each individual in a way that helps them relax and be themselves. The photos we created definitely show each of their different personalities.

Blair was excited to get a good diversity of different types of photos for her on-location high school senior portrait session, so we split the time outside into natural and urban segments. The natural setting she chose was the Ashuelot River Park in Keene, which has a great variety of lighting and backgrounds. We then headed to downtown Keene and created a number of unique photos including some really fun night shots.

In addition to great locations, I really had fun with the technical aspects of this session. As a portrait photographer, I am always looking for great lighting for photos, and I find lighting to be a never ending fascination. For this shoot, we used natural light, strobe balanced with ambient light, strobe as the main light source, and a video light for the night shots. It was a lot of fun to experiment with so many different possibilities.

Blair was enthusiastic about all the different things we tried and was great to work with.

At the river park with the Ashuelot River in the background.

In the Ashuelot River Park.

Great color and buildings to work with downtown.

These were some really fun shots in the boulevard downtown.

At night in downtown Keene, NH. I’m enjoying working with my new video light.

Vintage. That was how Julia described the outfits she had in mind for her high school senior portrait session. She made the clothes herself, and they really added to the character of the photos.

Julia chose to have her session all on-location in Surry and Alstead, two towns just north of my studio in Keene. We spent a bit of time in Alstead photographing near some rustic New England buildings, which worked well for the vintage look. We then headed to one of my favorite fields in Surry, which I was happy to see was full of beautiful yellow flowers.

This was a really fun senior portrait session, and I was excited that we achieved the look Julia was after.

On-location in Alstead, NH.

A rustic old building made a great background.

Vintage clothes and accessories created a unique look.

The flowers in the field and the golden
afternoon light really added to this portrait.