Embracing the Angst

This year I have a Junior, a Freshman, and a 5th Grader in school. SO the emotions are always high and just ready to create a challenge. Instead of fighting it, I’ve decided to just embrace the angst!

I had a crazy idea, well maybe it wasn’t THAT crazy. But, I wanted to shoot at a location that matched my kids’ style. Nineties fashion is back, so the grunge and the preppy are battling. The location had to be a little on the rough side. There’s an abandoned Sonic near us and it had some graffitti as well. I thought it would be perfect for what I had in mind.

One of the things I love about this age range is their ability to look so intense at a moment’s notice. My 5th grader is still sweet and wants to do the right thing and make everyone happy. SO it’s funny to not see her smiling.

My Freshman represents all the emotion in the house. She’s 14 and wants to be right about everything. SO this is quite challenging to even get her to the shooting location.

During the shoot, she actually pulled her phone out of her pocket and started checking her texts. BUt since the wind was also blowing her hair around like a Taylor Swift video, it became my favorite shot. Was it what I envisioned? Not entirely, but I’ve learned that I have to take what I can get my kids to agree to. And this was what she could give.

This guy has been driving for almost a year and has a job at HEB. SO he’s really too cool for photoshoots anymore. However, he was enjoying this location and we made plans to hopefully come back and shoot the graffiti on the other side of the building and bring his car.

Again, I didn’t ask them to smile. I did pose them and then asked them to look at the camera. This just documents the exact phase of life they’re in. So these are the faces that they make to me all day long.

I did one smiling photo and it’s really cute. This location had the right amount of grunge and I added in the roller skates for the girls since it was a Sonic and the end of summer. I tried to get Simon to bring his skateboard, but I lost that battle. The windblown hair really tops this one off. Thank you, for that blast of 100 degree blow dryer hot breeze. We only spent about 25 minutes at this location which included: Scouting the best spot, setting up my lighting (Flashpoint 600 Pro), setting up my camera and tripod (NIkon D780 + 35mm and 85mm), and arguing with my kids about where to stand.

Overall, I loved this location and what the kids did while we were there. I really miss being able to just pack them up and go document their adventures. Now, they’re old enough or getting old enough to live their own lives. So, I have to be really intentional about asking for their time and getting in little photoshoots like this one.