Julia’s Senior Session in Downtown Cincinnati

My streak of strong, creative young women continues! I already knew Julia was exquisitely pretty and a wonderful dancer. What I didn’t fully appreciate until her session was how versatile, resilient, and fearless she is. A little too fearless for my comfort, sometimes.

Julia wanted to wear her cowboy boots as a subtle tribute to her Texas roots. She’s a mix of a country and urban girl, so we chose Smale Park and Covington for an extended session.

Julia is a natural model and has plenty of experience performing in front of a crowd, first as a gymnast, and then as color guard. At the start of the session, the posing was probably a 50/50 mix of her ideas and mine, but as we went on, it was mostly her. She would pose, and I would figure out background, lighting, and composition. Her mom was invaluable holding the portable softbox, which we broke out really early in the session. We needed to balance the nearly cloudless sky, and I knew Julia wouldn’t be intimidated by the light.

When we crossed the Roebling into Covington, we found the riverbank was filled with onlookers, likely due to the River Roots festival and fireworks planned later in the evening. We had to work carefully to find clear spots on the sidewalk and choose our angles to minimize photobombers.

A lot of the backgrounds needed me to shoot from a distance so that we could make the faraway structures more prominent in the photo, so I was unable to micromanage, but by then, Julia was in full auto mode. I thought she was going to pose at the bottom of the street lamp, but she was halfway up before I knew what she was doing. I was shooting the photos from across the street, and despite my worries for her safety, I did have to admit that it made for a very striking image. I cropped the photo so she wouldn’t be tiny in the image, but there’s still quite a bit of lamp post below her before it hits the sidewalk.

Lest one try to fit her into a stereotype, she is leaning toward studying mechanical engineering. After this session, I’m pretty sure she can do just about anything she wants, so more power to her!