model treatment
this past weekend, the family visited our neck of the woods for a change and it was a good feeling to have enough room with three additional bodies floating about.
we didn’t do anything extraordinary, but my parents are easy to please. anywhere away from home is vacation enough for them, so they were quite content eating some americana grub at the daily grill and watching 50 first dates on the usa network. i kept thinking i was being a poor hostess, but they insisted the worry was unnecessary.
the main reason for the trip was to photograph my sister for her senior photos. perhaps an unwritten tradition, which will end with her since there are only two of us, neither of us had traditional portraiture done at a neighboring photo studio. back in the day, my cousin dabbled in photography and offered to do my photos. at the time, i had no appreciation for unique settings and unusual backdrops, so us trespassing at a cemetary and then loitering in front of old buildings in “downtown” belleville seemed odd to my 17-year old self.
but knowing what i know now, i get it. and i intended to offer the same to my sister, with the additional bonuses of having a second photographer on hand (the boy) as well as the royal treatment of doing her hair and make-up and primping her clothing choices as necessary.
we started off at loyola, killing two birds with one stone as she wanted to see the campus. the $30k/year price tag scares her a bit, but didn’t stop her from wanting a tour, particularly since it sits right on the lake, quite the alluring perk for her. she has hopes of perhaps pursuing a degree in forensics, maybe.
we moved on to the ravenswood area later in the evening, standing her against red and gray walls and a rusty fence underneath the el tracks. out of 500 or so images between the two of us, 30 selects were really outstanding. and none of them contain an overly posed teen against a wagon wheel or rock or wooden fence. how pedestrian.
i think the fam will be pleased with the results when all the printing is said and done. and i’m happy to say, i still love photography. and i’m quite excited to embark upon our key west vacation next week. more photo to be had as well as some long-awaited scuba diving!