Monochromatic Magic // Pittsburgh Children's Photographer
Wooooo, boy. 2020. What a year, guys!
This is my first blog post in the green phase (…a sentence that wouldn’t have made any sense to me a year ago). Like a lot of you, I went through a bunch of stages throughout lockdown and the following months. There was the “drinking wine in my pajamas and doing jigsaw puzzles all day” phase. That was followed by the phase where I felt helpless and disconnected, so I did everything I could to be a helper to others and to reach out to people with love and support. Then, there was the phase that I’m still in: the “girrrrl, get your butt in gear” phase. No more wine day-sipping (sad face). No more pajamas all day (double sad face). After losing months of time, I am so excited to be back to doing what I love, even if it means putting on real clothing. Haha. Right before the pandemic hit us hard and we shut everything down, I had two sessions that I love love loved. Unfortunately, they were directly followed by the wine/pajamas/puzzle blur, so I never got around to blogging them. Now that I’m back in the studio and creating a ton of images that I’m excited to start sharing soon, I wanted to be sure to give these sessions their due.
We had such a fun day at the studio with Luca, Michael, and Alessia creating this series of images. Mom’s personal style skews more towards modern/streetwear and she was looking for some simple, classic black and white images to display in her home. That combination made my heart sing when I heard it. I decided to photograph the session on a black background and use some moody lighting to help elevate things and pump up the drama. For the first look, I chose a more casual, streetwear-centered wardrobe, while we got a bit fancy with the second. (I always like to have that variety and range in wardrobe for a session. A lot of times, our first intuition for a portrait session is that we want to get dressed up for the special day ahead. While that photographs beautifully and will make for adorable images, it can take us by surprise just how much we also love and end up gravitating towards images that are photographed in casual looks.) We mixed up the posing with some hard and soft (I’m a sucker for a “serious face” group portrait) and included some sweet poses to better show their adorable bonds as siblings.
I was so SO impressed with just how well these three kiddos took direction. Luca instantly understood everything I asked of him and nailed every pose. Alessia is so young and precious, but listened like a little adult and did amazingly. I was most blown away by Michael - what a ham! A lot of the time, the fellas won’t be as “into” the portrait session as the ladies, but Michael couldn’t get enough. HE directed ME and had multiple important wardrobe pieces that he wanted to be sure he was photographed wearing.
This one left me craving more black and white sessions. If you want some beautiful black and white portraits of your babes on your wall, please get in touch!
Three words to describe the session: Simple, Classic, Stylized
(All of my portrait clients choose three words from a list of how they'd like to describe their finished images. You can click on any of the three words at the bottom of this post by the little tag icon to see past sessions that chose the same word. You can also see how different combinations of words lead to the creation of different images.)
