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Last year I had the pleasure of making some photographs of Jacqueline Abreu for an upcoming book she was writing. This year I received a text from her asking me to shoot her daughter's senior pictures. Her daughter was visiting her in Miami from Iowa for the weekend and she wanted to do some pictures at the beach and among some trees. I immediately accepted and we did some quick planning, arriving at Jupiter inlet as the prime location for the shoot. 

Before we get into the photos, let me say that this shoot went off very smoothly from beginning to end. The main reason for this was that Dasha was extremely well prepared. She had a very clear idea of what she wanted, the looks, the outfits, and the locations. That made the planning very efficient and we could work around the main themes she wanted and take little creative detours as the opportunities presented themselves.

The day of the shoot was an early morning at the beach. We met at Jupiter beach park at 6:30 am, about 15 minutes before sunrise. The parking lot was actually still closed so we had to go to the Jupiter inlet to park. We walked onto the beach and started warming up with some sunrise shots.

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After getting the sunrise, we moved to the lifeguard house. I had done a beach shoot a few months earlier where I missed the opportunity to shoot at the guard house and had kicked myself for it. I was not about to make the same mistake. We got there and started on the steps. We worked around it and got a good variety of shots for her to choose from.

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Now that we were fully warmed up and in a good groove, it was time to switch gears. No beach shoot is complete without a swimsuit right? So it was a quick change into her favorite bikini and we were off to the water's edge for some classic beach action. We did not get in the water since we had plans for other looks that would be ruined if she was all wet. So it was just simple walking at the water's edge.

DSC_1124-Edit DSC_1192-Edit Now it's time for another change. Dasha wanted to shoot among trees or some kind of foliage with a specific favorite dress. As we were walking towards the area where were would shoot, we passed in front of the Jupiter lighthouse and I said we had to get some shots including the lighthouse since it's so iconic for this location. I had planned to do this beforehand and brought my 2x teleconverter just for this reason. The plan was to put her up on the rocks and use the compression of 400mm of focal length to bring her and the lighthouse together. So I got my stuff ready and she changed in her car. As she got out of the car I noticed the sun shining through the long dress and that sparked the idea to shoot against the sun to get a silhouette of her legs. This is one of those creative detours I talked about earlier.

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OK, detour over, let's get on the rocks and use that lighthouse. I shot from really far away at f22 (for the photo nerds) to get the lighthouse in focus enough to be recognizable. With the bright sunny day, f22 was no problem at all.

DSC_1380-Edit After this, I took another little creative detour because the pool of water in front of the rocks would make a great little reflection shot. So I had her pull the dress up and just walk around in the water. This time I opened up the aperture to f5.6 (minimum with my teleconverter on) to blur out the background.

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Now we were ready for the shot she had wanted. We walked over to an area covered by Sea Grape, a very Florida location, and started working on her vision. She was very specific about what she wanted. It was a shot with the leaves to show the open back of the dress. We did that, then I brought in some light to get a more dramatic shot that I thought might look cool. Then we ended with a bright happy shot of her in nature. (Note the absolute mess of sweat and sand that I had become by that point!)

DSC_1539-Edit DSC_1559-Edit DSC_1563-Edit DSC_1581-Edit Dasha, like her mother, was an absolute delight to be around. She made the shoot fun, easy, and a complete success. I hope to get to photograph her again in the future.

Thanks to Jacqueline, her mother, for all the behind-the-scenes photographs.