Featured Senior Portrait Session: Boho de printemps dans les rue de Paris avec Kendall
For those of you who can’t read french, the title says, “Springtime Boho shoot in the streets of Paris with Kendall.”
Photographing High School Senior Portraits in Paris has been a long time dream of mine that manifest this past June when I traveled with The Twelfth Year for their Parisian Road tour. I had the opportunity to work along some incredibly talented photographers and met some inspiring teens along the way. One of the graduating seniors that I had the pleasure of photographing was Kendall!
The first thing that I noticed about Kendall was her strong sense of style and radiant smile, as we walked around chatting, I learned that she is attending Sierra College to obtain her Real Estate License. We had a half hour to work together on the city streets outside of the Jardins du Luxembourg so time was of the essence.
It was early morning around 7am, the streets were super quiet. The only people around were the participants of a group Tai Chi class in the nearby park doing their silent flow. It was a perfect opportunity to capture some images without the usual hustle and bustle of people in the background. The other perk to shooting early in the am is that the sunrise hadn’t quite gotten over the large buildings and so it provided gorgeous diffused light in the streets free from harsh shadows. (My happy place)
We found the nearest stoop and I began playing with various angles and expressions. Kendall is a natural in front of the camera, which makes perfect sense as her mother is also a super talented photographer! You can check out her work as well at Lisa Williams Photography. She is located in Grass Valley, California and also provides a boutique senior portrait experience.
We found a gorgeous ornate green door nearby and since it matched so wonderfully with Kendall’s spring boho dress, we decided to stop in for a visit. What I love about photographing in the city is how synchronistic some of the places I can randomly find can be to the person I’m photographing. I mean you might think that this dress was picked just to be photographed in front of this door!
Though the color and vibrance of the green was spot on, I decided I wanted to try my hand at some black and white images as well. When we walked up to this door with the circular shape on it, I knew these would be my black and white images.
As we continued to walk down the streets, my eye was led to a variety of locations. These gorgeous flowers screamed out to me, and so we stopped for a few minutes to soak in their vibrance and bring the color back in the scene.
The ornate gates on all of the street windows also caught my attention, and when I looked into them, i noticed many of them were actually mirrored windows. Of course we had to play with those!
What I love about working with Kendall is that she’s up for trying anything even if it means crouching down in heels to get the perfect angle. While these images are super boho fashionista vibed, the behind the scenes reality of these shots are of me laying on the ground in the dirt as people walked by staring at me like I was cray and Kendall throwing on her comfy Birkenstocks as we walked between location changes. LOL Fashion is fashion, but function and comfort are the real deal, and I love that Kendall not only brought her a modeling game, but also her humble vibes to the scene. Her gorgeous dress was scored on Amazon.
We wrapped up the shoot in the street directly across from the Luxembourg Gardens where I found her mother Lisa on the ground going for some great angles too. I joined her on the ground and we ended with these spontaneous fun images.
Kendall was incredible to work with and I love that she has these images as a fond reminder of the summer she spent her senior year exploring Paris. What’s also amazing is that Kendall keeps a sweet blog, Kendall’s Korner where she discusses a multitude of things ranging from fashion, to self care and surviving college with organization and time management skills. A definite source of inspiration to check out for those of you who are preparing for college!