Senior pictures for my nephew

It's been awhile since I posted any of my photography, so I thought I'd share the senior pictures I took for my nephew. The lighting was terrible because

• I don't have professional lighting, 
• it was dark outside the only time I could get together with him, and 
• I only had chandelier light and my camera's built-in flash to work with. 

Even with all of those negative factors, I love how these pictures turned out!

Isn't he handsome? This is his choir suit and bowtie, and it just may end up being his senior picture for the yearbook.

When our Wal-Mart still carried fabric, I picked up the fabric for this backdrop out of their $1-2 fabrics of unknown fiber content. It looks like a shiny satin, but it's washable. It's also matte, almost like velvet, on the other side. I bought a few yards of it and then seamed two pieces together to get a nice-sized backdrop that's big enough to let an adult stand on it for full-body pictures.

This pose was my nephew's idea. I've learned to let people make up their own poses if they want to because it often captures their personality in ways I would have never thought of. This picture is the perfect example. (Of course, I always have pose ideas in mind because I don't meet very many people that are comfortable enough in front of a camera to make up their own.)

I used a plain white sheet as the backdrop for this picture.

Here's that black backdrop again. It looks just as nice with a casual shot as it does with a formal one.

Do you notice his hands? A lot of people try to tell the person they're photographing exactly how to place their hands in a photo like this. Some of my relatives tried to get him to change his hands so that you could see both of them (rather than having the right one tucked into his arm). I took a few pictures like that, but they didn't look natural at all. Then I told him put his hands the way that comes naturally to him, and he looked more relaxed and natural. Of course, if you have someone that looks like they don't know what to do with their hands, you just have to intervene. :)

Well, those are my favorites. I hope he likes them, too!