This is my most recent Senior Portrait session in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.  It was a fun morning with Chelsea and her family.  She changed outfits about four or five times and we got a lot of great shots in her different sports outfits as well as the letterman jacket and some cute dress shots and casual wear.  Working in a downtown city setting is perfect for getting a wide variety of backdrops without having to spend the time to travel from place to place.  Every kind of backdrop is available to you just by turning around.  Plus, as an added bonus, the light is beautiful open shade for a much longer time in the canyons of the city walls.  One can shoot well past the “sweet light” deadline in the morning and when things get too bright on one street, there is always another street around the corner with completely different lighting conditions.

Enjoy the slideshow from this senior portrait session below:

Here are a few of my favorite images from the senior portrait session.

There is nothing like an early morning in the city with no traffic, the sun’s indirect glow and beautiful open shade. I would prefer to shoot in the city any day of the week.

Simplicity of design in a photo is very important to me.

The dress is perfect for the color treatment on the photograph.

When Chelsea told me she plays tennis, I immediately saw this in my head. We found a court, paid for an hour and dumped practice balls all over the court. The key to the photo was the angle of attack though. The balls are very important to the image and needed to be grouped together, so I had to get comfortable on the ground. I lay down on the job an awful lot.

Downtown is always a great place for graffiti. I sometimes wonder when I will be contacted by the graffiti artist for copyright infringements. I imagine the artist will want to stay anonymous.

There aren’t any lakes in the city for wake boarding. So, we had to find ourselves a flat spot with lots of blue sky. We tried a spot in the fields south of town, but were kicked of by an awfully rude reservation officer, so we moved up the road a mile to the edge of the reservation and took our shot there. Same sky, and it turns out that the tribe doesn’t own the sky, so it was ok for us to photograph it. What a relief.

The family came along and everyone had a letterman’s jacket, so we took a shot. I thought it turned out great.

For more examples of senior portraits, go to www.plattphotography.com.