Irish and dylan at Kualoa Ranch

What: Senior Portrait Session with Dylan and his sis, Irish
When: Prince Kuhio Day, March 26th, 2009
8:00 am
Where: Kualoa Ranch

I have to give props to bow, Bow, whose maternity session . She worked it by sending out emails linking to her maternity session post and it really generated great word of mouth. She also gave birth to a beautiful little baby girl, Mikaela (not one of the two spellings we were working with in their session hee hee). Stay tuned for some pics for little Mikaela's newborn session.

Anyways, after Bow's maternity session, I received an email from Gina, a friend of Bow and a friend of mine. I've known Gina for a few years already, we both volunteer in the baby nursery at Hope Chapel Kaneohe Bay every other Sunday. She's also a good friend of Bow's and loved the pictures. She asked if I would consider taking senior pictures of her son, Dylan, and doing a portrait session with her daughter,Irish, on the same day. Um, Gina, of course. I knew Irish because she, like her mom, also volunteers in the nursery but I hadn't met Dylan before so mom had to email me his school picture. We set the day for Prince Kuhio Day, a State of Hawaii holiday, for which I'm not really sure why. Scott is going to mock my hawaiian education, considering I went to a school only for part-Native Hawaiians, but I don't know who or what Prince Kuhio did. I think Kuhio was from the Big Island too because we have a mall named after him in Hilo.

It was realy awesome for me because Gina chose the day and the location. When people leave it up to me, it's so much harder...you can go in so many different directions depending on the location. Beach casual? Urban sidewalks? Woods? I was super nervous and I studied up (flickr my favorite place) on poses and angles. Gina chose an awesome location, she knew someone at Kualoa Ranch and was able to get a permit. Good thing, because it's got so much variety, I went on overload. And they are pretty strict, someone drove up to kick us out but Gina shouted out the magic word "permit." I met her, Dylan and Irish there at 8 in the morning. Poor things, having to wake up so early when you don't have school. And I was a little nervous because Gina claimed that Dylan and Irish didn't like taking pictures. If that's the case, I don't know who she swapped in for them because these two teens were complete hams. Seriously, you can never call these two shy. The location was so awesome and just fun to explore. They climbed trees and walls so I had the easy job of just chasing after them. We were done in no time at all and I LOVED their pictures.

My biggest downfall, I used a really small fstop which means completely short depth of field. It makes for great blurry backgrounds. But, up close, their eyes would be in focus but not their mouth. I should have closed down my aperture a bit. Lesson learned.

Dylan is laid-back, his mom says always reading a book or playing a video game. Once the camera turned on him, he gave Zoolander a run for his money.

We don't have fields of wheat but I finally found a field that I could get this shot. I'm always tempted to let our yard get seriously overgrown so i can use my backyard, but I think my neighbors would glare at me.





I love this next one...I don't know why. He just looks like he's the king of the castle.

Irish, the slightly younger sister, is not shy at all. She's an avid volleyball player and you can see her every other Sunday in a room full of 2 year olds at church. She's also gorgeous, just look at the photos.

Irish was resisting the urge to play up her farmer side...she cracked me up.



I love this next shot, I wish I had taken a few more and had them pose. But Irish was just climbing up and I got nervous and had her come down. There was a significant drop on the other side.

This one...MY FAVORITE!!!


This was my first senior portrait session and my subjects are usually well over twenty or under the age of three, so I was a tad nervous. Can I just say, that was the most fun session ever!!! I had to call Scott on the way home and just gush about the entire experience. Thanks to Gina for raising beautiful kids, and Dylan and Irish for being totally cool with my crazy ideas and going with it. You guys rock!!!

PS. Scott and I both have sore throats. Pray for us.