Michael’s Senior Portraits in Downtown Lebanon

His mother underestimated him.

She said Michael was shy, so it might be hard to get him to smile. I did appreciate the heads up and the implied permission to not push for the big smile for every pose, and just let Michael go with what he was comfortable with. But neither of us gave him enough credit.

Michael immediately figured out that the quickest way to get the photographer to move along was to just give her the smile and whatever she asked for right off the bat. And it worked. We sped from location to location very quickly because he was so cooperative, so he got to spend a lot of time walking instead of holding a pose forever. He remembered little details, like keeping his chin down and not letting his hands stick deep into his pockets. He didn’t complain about the cold (it was about 40 degrees Farenheit) and having to stand in his shirt sleeves because he looked so good against a particular shade of blue. The payoff was that we got a wide variety of locations and we were done right on time so he could go home and cross this off the list as a job well done.