Looking for senior portrait ideas? Look no further than our photoshoot with Madison West Senior Elia. Elia spent most of a day at the hair salon getting her hair hand-painted purple for her senior pictures. The purple bayalage technique combined with her outfit choices, including a fun floral pattern romper with overlay, 2 beautiful natural locations, AND her french bulldog resulted in a fantastic and unforgettable senior portrait experience.
When it comes to hair, outfits, locations and even pets Dave and I have tons of experience and ideas to help guide you. We love hearing our clients ideas and interests and then working together to craft the perfect senior pictures experience.
Looking for inspiration? Contact us. We’d love to chat!
At studio indigo photography we love it when seniors bring their pets to the portrait sessions. In this senior portrait Elia and her dog are backlit by the sun which creates a long shadow coming toward the camera. There is really no pose involved in the picture, we just liked the lighting and thought it would be a cool effect for this senior picture with her french bulldog.Elia works at a hair salon and decided to go for a beautiful purple bayalage treatment for her senior pictures session. The purple looks amazing with the arboretum as a natural location. This senior girl pose is a simple idea with her naturally pulling her hand through her hair. We love trying different posing ideas with our high school seniors to create authentic, natural and candid expressions.Elia wore a beautiful floral pattern romper with overlay for her senior pictures outfit. Choosing your senior portrait outfits can be difficult and at Studio Indigo Photography we help our Senior portrait clients choose the best outfits and offer lots of ideas. And with so many great locations for portrait photography in madison we work with clients to find the perfect spot. In this pose, we have our Madison West senior sitting casually on the dock at Wingra Lake for this natural light portrait.The uw arboretum is a gorgeous, nature location for your senior portraits. There are so many places with different backdrops and colors that work with any senior portrait outfit ideas. In this photo, Madison West Senior Elia is walking through beautiful yellow grasses. This is one of our favorite senior girl pose ideas to have the client slowly walk through the grass while running her fingers through her hair and looking down and to the side. This portrait also has the setting sun skimming over the grass, creating a wonderful warm glow in the senior picture. And Elia’s purple bayalage hair just pops out of the picture!This half length sitting senior picture pose was photographed at the UW arboretum in Madison, WI. This is a simple senior girl pose idea where we have the senior naturally run their fingers through their hair while looking down. Often times the senior girls will feel a little silly which will result in a nice natural and authentic smile. Elia decided to have her hair dyed purple for her senior pictures session which contrasts beautifully with the yellow and greens of this natural portrait location.Elia looks amazing with her purple hair and brown and orange floral pattern romper with maxi overlay. This sitting pose is on the dock at Wingra Lake for a natural senior portrait in nature. We photographed this portrait using a shallow depth of field to create a soft senior picture that separated Elia from the background. The oranges and blues from her romper contrast nicely with the blues of Lake Wingra in Madison.We loved the colorful canoes and kayaks at wingra park in madison and how they played off Elia’s floral print romper with maxi overlay for this standing senior portrait pose idea. We used the photo merge panoramic brenizer technique to increase the shallow depth of field effect. This simple senior girl pose has the client kick their hip to one side, bend the other leg, have a relaxed arm and then run their fingers through their hair. We use this pose for all of our girl high school senior pictures clients. This wasFor this senior picture Elia is posing with her french bulldog Charlie. We love it when clients want to include pets in their senior portraits. they always make memorable photos with natural smiles and some crazy looking animals. This senior portrait of Madison West student Elia was photographed at the UW arboretum in Madison which is an amazing nature location with so many beautiful flowers, colors and grasses to use as your backdrop.
What a fabulous photo shoot with Verona high school senior-to-be Nikki. Nikki and mom Robin were great partners as we traveled throughout the Epic campus in Verona. We loved Nikki’s outfit choices. Her prom dress gave the shoot a princess vibe with the Harry Potter Hogwarts architecture. Nikki’s cute white-eyelet strappy summer dress worked great with the sun-drenched fields and pool. Thanks Nikki and Robin!
Fabulous, fashionable, windy-hair, senior portrait session with Taylor. We started with a gorgeous apple farm and ended up in downtown Madison for some awesome night shots. Thanks Taylor for a fantastic shoot!
This location had everything we could want for an urban senior portrait shoot; Brick walls, old buildings with lots of texture, rusted out stairs, train tracks and why not, a food truck! We photographed Mariah at Union Station in St Louis as part of a fashion, urban senior portrait photoshoot. And don’t worry…this station is no longer operating so we were 100% safe when on the tracks.
We love brick walls for backgrounds. We usually like them to have a little more texture and wear and tear then this one, but it’s still a cool looking senior portrait. Mariah’s eyes just pop off the screen and the cross processed effect creates a grungy, urban, cool senior picture. We photographed Mariah for a fashion senior portrait model shoot in St Louis.
, tarin Fashion senior model photo shoot with Mariah. Mariah is in the Class of 2017 and is posing outside of a food truck. We’re always looking for ways to create unique or trendy portraits and sometimes that’s by incorporating the urban environment into the shot. Check out the hipsters in the background!
Urban, trendy, fashion senior model photo shoot on stairs in old train station. Mariah looking great with a cross-processsed effect from Alienskin Exposure 7. Shot with Nikon D700.Love this senior portrait in profile of Mariah. Mariah is a gorgeous model who posed for this senior model shoot in St Louis outside Union Station. This senior portrait was processed with this trendy, vintage slide film cross processed effect using Alienskin Exposure 7. I made the shadows a little cooler than normal and I like the effect.Standing high school senior portrait pose outside vintage train at Union Station. Trendy, fashion look started with interesting natural light and then post-processing down with Adobe Lightroom and Alienskin Exposure 7.Sitting on the stairs unique, fashionable, urban senior portrait. Mariah is sitting on a set of old stairs with tons of texture. Love her pose and we shot this with the nikon 35mm 2.0d wide open.Sweet high school senior pictures post with Mariah during our fashionable senior portraits photo shoot. This was outside Union Station in St Louis with Mariah running her fingers through her hair. Shot with the Nikon D750 and Nikon 85mm 1.4d prime lens.Gritty, grungy, urban senior portrait on the train tracks strongly back lit in early afternoon sun. The sun creates a cool hair light and we’re able to achieve flattering flat light on the model’s face. This was part of a series of fashion model senior portraits that we photographed in St Louis with the Nikon D750 and Nikon 85mm 1.4d, our favorite lens.Love this senior portrait pose and the cool effect created with the shallow depth of field. Mariah is leaning up against a vintage train and is open shade creating flattering flat light on her face. Added contrast and some other cool, unique effects to give the image some pop with Alienskin Exposure 7.
Wanted to post more of the photos from Serena, Alli and Jenna’s High school senior photo shoot. These photos focus on Serena with Alli and Jenna’s coming soon. Love the urban, fashion, photo-journalistic vibe we got with this shoot. Thanks for working with us ladies. You were awesome!
Beautiful light hitting the side of MG&E matched with soft softbox lighting Serena. Used yongnuo flash in a small chimera softbox to light Serena for this cool, artistic senior portrait.This was early in the photoshoot and everyone is always a little nervous at the start. We start off with some simple, natural poses to help everyone get in the flow. Our location was downtown madison for that urban senior portrait look. Serena is standing against an old warehouse with great texture and color.Serena standing outside a metal warehouse in downtown madison for this urban, industrial high school senior photo shoot. We’ve known Serena and her family for a long time so we were excited that we were able to take her senior portrait.We use something called flow posing when working with our senior portrait clients. It lets us take a number of shots in a natural way. We give direction and ideas with our clients but try not to pose too much.Our approach is to be very natural with our senior portrait posing. Simple direction like “Play with your rings or hair” are a good way to get some natural relaxed movement and expressionSerena wasn’t interested in giving us a big toothy smile since her braces won’t be coming off for a couple months. But those are the images that both we and Mom’s and Dad’s love. With our approach to shooting senior portraits we definitely are able to get those natural smiles and expressions, it sometimes just takes a little bit.I love the color of the garage door on this warehouse. I think it works really well with Serena’s outfit. My post processing style is a little more muted in colors but I could see someone really emphasizing the colors, cranking up the vibrance setting. Another relaxed natural standing pose in this portrait.An example of flow posing. Start with the wide shot, then get closer and change point of view. The senior model doesn’t have to move much, just changing position and now leaning against the garage door.Last shot in the flow posing series. Changed lens to the Nikon 85mm 1.4 for the tight headshot with soft background. All 3 photos took maybe a minute and we get a variety of photographs to show the client.It’s always nice to have friends or family along for a senior photo shoot. It’s a great way to get your senior to relax and generate some natural smiles! And we love working as a team, coming up with posing ideas or different locations.We always try to incorporate movement into our senior photo shoots. In this shot we asked Serena to start walking and drag her fingers along the fence. We’ll usually do this a few times, using the continuous focus setting on the camera to grab the whole series of shots in focus.Serena was whispering something to Jenna during this series of shots. I said I wish I knew what they were saying which created the natural laugh and smile, so you know it had to be bad! The smile and laugh lasted for just a second. Always have the camera ready to grab those great candid expressions.Shooting with the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda is always a popular high school senior request. For this shot we decided to make it a little more dramatic, shooting at night on King St outside the Majestic Theater. Used a speedlite with small softbox as key light. I really like the backlit effect from the streetlight on the upper left.Photographing this senior portrait walking down the street with the senior model swinging her arms. And she doesn’t have to do big movements, even little movements get the job done. This is one of my favorite shots with the photo journalistic feeling and dramatic lighting.Love this senior portrait sitting on the curb in dowtown madison at night. All the funky lights from the capital rotunda and theater marquee. Still using the speedlite with small softbox for the key light. Love Serena’s pose which she came up with on her own. Later in the shoot your high school senior model is usually getting into the flow and is doing their own poses.All 3 ladies posing for a selfie in this stylish senior portrait. On camera flash on manual setting created the high key fashion look. Love this unique senior portrait with friends. Great location and all 3 girls were getting into it. They kept coming up with new ideas. What a blast!Gotta do duck lips, right? Again, using a speedlite on camera, set to manual and blasting them with light. Normally not a go to lighting set up for senior portraits but works great for this kind of unique, gritty, high fashion look that we were going for. So much fun!
Sarah is a class of 2017 high school student we were lucky enough to photograph while in St Louis. Jen and I were attending the Shutterfest conference and held this senior photo session at the old Union Station. Don’t worry! Union Station is a non-operating station so for the photo on the train tracks the only danger was tripping on the tracks. The black and white photo of Sarah is one of our favorites. Thanks Sarah and Mom for a great shoot. We had a blast!
Medium tight portrait of Sarah holding on to train at union station.High school junior Sarah on train platform for her Senior Portrait photo shoot. Pictures shot outdoors with natural light and a small reflector. Gear used is a Nikon D750 and Nikon 85mm 1.4 D lens.Sarah looking into the sun with eyes closed for this artsy black and white senior portrait. Used Nik Software Silver Efex Pro for black and white treatment.On the train tracks at a non-functioning train station so no worries about trains suddenly showing up. Sarah very carefully leaning on the tracks for the high school senior portrait. Shot entirely in natural light with the NIkon D750 and 85mm 1.4D lens.Wide shot of Sarah showing more of the location. Senior portrait photo shoot at Union Station using natural light and small reflector. Nikon D750 and Nikon 35mm 2.0D lens.Sweet senior picture of Sarah on stairs in union station. Beatuiful smile and light filtered through station roof.Medium length portrait of high school student Sarah leaning on train. I would call this a senior “fashion” style portrait session. Shot entirely with natural light and post processing with lightroom, photoshop and alienskin software.
This summer was all about neighbors, friends, family, film and shooting with the rolleiflex and hasselblad. Watch for future posts from the summer of 2015!
We did it all for Anika’s senior portrait session! Olbrich Gardens, Monona Terrace, Downtown Madison! Thanks for spending your afternoon with us. We think the shots turned out great!
Had an amazing time working with Nashville musician Emily Gatzke on a recent shoot. Unbelievable talent, great person and beautiful! Can’t wait for the new album.