When I was on my shoot with the fabulous Darcy, her dad was kind enough to snap a bunch of shots of us. I never knew he was even taking pictures! But I think these photos are a great example of what a typical photo shoot with Amber Fox Photographer looks like and how I work closely with my client to bring the perfect outfits to create the best experience possible.

The photo shoot began long before I actually first saw Darcy. Before meeting up with me, she was at Salon Lujon getting all dolled up by the fabulous Miriam and Heather. Once she arrived she brought out a laundry basket filled with clothes and shoes. Before the shoot, we chit chatted over Facebook about the sort of look we were going for and what type of clothes would best work, so I had a good idea of what we had to work with. I was thrilled with the final selection of outfits!

We then moved all around the awesome locations of the rustic farm. This location was littered with really cool props and backdrops. We started on the old dilapidated tractor, which was awesome! As you can see in this shot of us, Darcy is wearing a brown sweater dress. We picked this particular outfit, because I felt the colors went really well with the rusty oranges and browns of the tractor.

We then headed over to the broken down Chevy truck. The truck was a teal blue, Darcy’s favorite color. So her blue dress, accented by a trendy fur jacket was the perfect compliment to the old truck.

One of the things my clients tell me time and time again is how I always seem to get myself into crazy positions. I have done yoga since I was a small child, so my yogi skills seem to show up while I photograph people. This particular pose, is nothing too hard, but it still illustrates how I am willing to get dirty.

We then headed over to where I had Darcy’s dad, Bob, park his vintage Thunderbird. The car is fancy, so I thought that her outfit should match. The silky dress was a perfect combo.

The fourth and final outfit change was into a gorgeous skirt and tank como accented by cowgirl boots. I wanted to spend the last part of our shoot with the horses and in the arena when the light was just about to disappear and would provide lots of yummy light to play with. But I knew there would be lots of mud involved, so I made sure my client wore boots and myself as well, so we would not slip and fall.

We ended the shoot just walking around the barn and getting lots of fun shots with the perfect backdrop of color. Her outfit was still perfect for the rustic location.

Darcy and I had a great time working together. I simply love this young woman. From the photos, I am sure you can tell how comfortable she is with me and I with her. Thanks Bob for documenting us having a blast! And for all the future clients reading this, I look forward to working with you and your closet.

Seniorologie is one of my favorite photo blogs on the web. It’s a blog for photographers to learn and ooh and ahh over the fabulous images taken by other senior portrait photographers. But more than that, it’s a blog to learn from other photographers. There are all sorts of great posts on marketing, business and great poses from some of the best in the biz. On TODAY’S feature, I explain my High School Rep program alongside featuring my beautiful shoot with Darcy. Head on over to Seniorologie and check it out.

I’m also featured TODAY on Inspire Me Baby, which is a blog that features all sorts of photographers who have shoots that are particularly fun and unique. One of my favorite images is from a Stylish Senior Shoot that I did with Chandra on a sailboat. This shoot was particularly epic, because it was on a moving vessel that I had to balance on, while working with crazy light and limited space. Despite the obstacles that stood before us, the photos came out incredible! So when Inspire Me Baby, asked me what my favorite image from 2012 was, I immediately thought of this image.

2012 is off to a good start! One of my goals is already met, but there are even more blogs that I want to get on. Bring it!

But one of the the things I am most thankful for, is to see my photography business blossom. I have the most wonderful clients, who I have loved getting to know. I love what I do, in that I get to make young teens feel beautiful and create lasting memories for families. I love having my clients over to the house and baking cookies for them and just loving on them. And I love seeing how they light up in front of my camera or how excited they get when I show them how awesome they look as their slideshow is revealed. Priceless!

I sorted the photos out in a few categories, starting off with my favorite subject matter, Stylish Seniors.

The above photo was included in the Inspire Me Baby Best of 2011 – inspiremebaby.com.

 And these following shots are models or friends of mine who are posing for the camera. Another one of my favorite things to photograph is Big Happy Families. Kids grow up so fast and I think it’s vital to capture them at all their life stages. 

And even after the kids have grown up, it’s also important to celebrate marriage. These are a couple favorites from my Sweet Love sessions.
I love to focus on seniors and families, but I just adored these couples and couldn’t say no. Being able to capture someone Tying the Knot, is such a privilege.

If you have been following my blog for awhile now, you know my husband and I love to travel. We have been to over 40 countries and this summer we took a bunch of high schoolers on a trip to China. It was pretty EPIC. And mixed into the year, was three trips to Paso Robles as well.
If you want to see more of my work, check out the portfolio tabs to the upper left or peruse the blog. Thanks for coming by on my photographic journey of 2011!

I have been wanting to blog this session for weeks now, because I really think it’s one of my all time favorite photo sessions. As you can tell, this young lady is stunningly gorgeous!  And she knows how to work the camera, so photographing her is a true joy. Our location was kind of epic too, with lots of fun backdrops and gorgeous light to work with. And Darcy and I had lots of discussions over Facebook about the perfect outfits, so the whole shoot really came together with gorgeous styling. We had so much fun working together.

Also, I am now offering all my clients the opportunity to get their hair and makeup done at Salon Lujon with my favorite ladies, Deanna, Miriam & Heather. As you can tell, Darcy looks especially gorgeous, so high fives all around. With an awesome team of beauty experts, all my lovely ladies will not look & feel like a million bucks! Just ask Darcy and she can tell you how she was pampered and all dolled up.

After some super fun tractor shots, we changed outfits and took some portraits alongside this super old car. I love when you put a beautiful girl in front of something old and rusty, it makes her just pop off the screen. Since we were on a farm, there were all sorts of rustic chicken coops that we are blast playing in.

I think I was most excited about this car! Darcy’s Dad inherited this car from his father and when we were planning the shoot, I knew we had to incorporate it somehow. And I am SO glad we did. About four o’clock, the light got particularly yummy, so we had a blast taking some gorgeous photos.
I tried to backlight the horse, but the reflector was freaking this big guy out. Darcy was such a trooper…the making of a perfect model!As we were finishing the shoot and walking out of the barn, this room filled with hay caught my eye. We ended our shoot with some of the best photos of the day.

Darcy you are truly gorgeous, both inside and out. I love your sweet spirit, gracefulness and how you do such a good job loving your dad. I am so honored to have photographed you twice now and document this special time in your life. Enjoy the slideshow of a lot more of my favorite pics. I seriously wanted to blog the entire shoot!

With two gallery wraps to hang on their walls of some of the most gorgeous images from their shoot, I wanted to also create a storyboard that showed off some of the other favorites. I LOVE how it turned out! And the fun sides is extra hip & cool.In addition to some sweet art for their walls, I also made this family some pretty sweet albums, one for mom and the other for Chandra. I wanted to introduce this super cool product to all my Seniors. I realize that you love your yearbook that you get in school, but one of the first things you do when you get that big book in your hands, is look for your pics. You get disappointed, because you look just ok in your senior pic and all the other pics of you suck, because they were taken by some random yearbook kid.  Well, look no further! A whole book of gorgeous images of you, all you, and plenty of room for all your friends to say how much they love you, is finally here. Look at all that space your friends can write about how much they love you! Bam!So the cover is a cool metallic photo of your gorgeous face and I even put your name and graduation year on the bind. This is one of the ways people will remember you! I know you want to be that cool!!!

I’m totally a life long learner and my favorite subject is photography! Why go to workshops, when I teach photography myself? There are so many aspects of photography, from composition to business and we can’t forget about the technical. And to run a successful business, you need all three. While in art school, I never learned how to use strobes and fancy lighting equipment, so with the desire to take my photography to a whole new level and to teach my photo students some cool lighting, a day with the Gray’s was essential!

Our first model was Keary Dee and she is actually a photographer herself down in San Diego. Isn’t she gorgeous?! And of course I love her jacket and those super cute shoes. She was a joy to photograph. But after using a strobe as I photograped her, I was giddy with excitement!And one of the other photographers, Shelli, brought her gorgeous daughter to model for us. Breanne was a trooper for sure! Having acted in a major high school play the night before, she drove all the way down with her mom from Bakersfield, to help us photogs out by modeling. And I am so glad she did, because she is stunning!!!One of the most magnificent things that I loved about working with artificial light is that you can make your model practically jump off the screen, as if they are 3D. So cool!And then we saw a rainbow. How cool is that?! Love it!And then we were graced with a rockin sunset and then BAM, got some pretty sweet shots!Ok, supermodel! Thanks so much for giving me your gorgeous eyes to photograph. And those cheekbones, ugh, I love! I hope you enjoy the rest of your senior year. Love every second of it!

A HUGE shout out to Zach & Jody Gray! You have been blessed with not only mad photo skills, but a special ability to teach super complicated stuff in the simplest of ways.  Thank you for opening a whole new world of lighting to me. I can now say, both figuratively and metaphorically…I have seen the light! Ha!

If you were one of those families, you can go HERE to download your photo for free. If you would like to have a whole Big Happy Family or Hip Senior Portrait session, where you are the center of attention for 2 hours and get lots more photos to choose from, then email me and we can set something up for you. And you can use that awesome $50 gift certificate I included in your little gift bag towards booking your session.

For everyone who had their picture taken, they were given a little gift bag that was filled with a yellow lollipop and a promotional card telling them where to find their photos and a $50 gift certificate if they were to book a session with me.  Every detail was considered, from having a custom stamp made of my Fox logo to a backdrop that incorporated my yellow branding color, but with an orange twist for Halloween.
I had a super fun time decorating my front porch with all sorts of pumpkins and scarecrows, getting into the Harvest spirit.
And for the parents who didn’t dress up, I included some fun props so they could feel like they were part of the fun. My friends Manpreet & Scott came by with their adorable son to trick-or-treat and get some more fun portraits.
And if you remember my husband’s awesome BP costume from last year, you should expect that he would get all into his costume this year.
And special thanks to my awesome helpers, Jen Disney & Ashley, who helped passing out candy and gift bags to the hundreds of families that came thru. I couldn’t have done it with out you. Also a shout out is deserved for the Coco Gallery crew for letting me borrow some equipment, Blackbird for helping me set up and Christine, Jeff, Manpreet, Scott and Stephanie who helped pass out candy. And of course, I dressed up. This is a super funny shot Jen took of me, when we were testing our off camera lighting. Gotta love it!

One of my favorite things about these super fun gallery wraps is that I get to personalize the sides with my Senior’s name and put some cute embellishments on it.

Make sure to check out my other fun modern photography products for my seniors and families. And if you want one of these bad boys on your wall, with your gorgeous face, hit me up and lets start a conversation.

We headed down to Long Beach and started off our session at the Hotel Maya before heading onto the boat and got some fun shots with this funky hat, which I just adored.

The Hotel Maya is ultra cool and had all these really funky outdoor cabana type areas that were super fun to take pictures in!When I took this picture, I literally squealed!And then when the light started to glow, we headed down to the marina and we set sail for a 2 hour cruise.

And then we just happened to pass the majestic Queen Mary.

Shooting on the ocean is crazy hard, because of the intense light, but for this shot it totally worked for me. This is probably my favorite image of the day.I think this photo, totally captures how silly Chandra can be with those awesome red Ray Bans. And I freaking LOVE your hair! You can see in the shoot I did of Chandra and her sister last year, that her hair was long. With your gorgeous face, you can pull of any hair cut girl!
I wanted to make sure Chandra wasn’t modeling the whole day, but that her momma and I got to see her get to work. I wanted to see what she learned this summer!
Chandra, you are an exceptional young lady of grace, humor and confidence. I am so honored to have had the opportunity to capture your beauty and talents. Lots of love, hugs and snuggles.

And you can see lots more pics of Chandra, including some fun Twaekwondo shots in the slideshow.