Choosing a senior picture photographer – Part 3 – Senior Portraits Style

This is part 5 of a 5 part series on how to choose a senior photographer in Northwest Arkansas (NWA). This series is meant to provide you with questions to ask about senior photography before hiring someone. Your senior photographer will actually like being asked most of these questions before booking you for senior pictures. Asking questions shows your interest in the process. It also means your senior photography sessions will go more smoothly and your senior portraits will look better!

An example photo to show style in senior portraits. This photo is an example of lifestyle photography.

Once you know that a photographer produces quality work you should look more deeply at their style. This is not only the type of pictures they produce, but also the way they handle post-production. As you look at a photographers work you will see that their work often has a certain flavor to it. Find one that you like! This is important for senior portraits because this is something you will display for the world to see.

Fashion and Glamour

While fashion photography focuses on clothing and other fashion items the style of fashion photography is often what you see on the cover of magazines. These looks can be accomplished in the studio or on-location and will often rely on lighting other than natural light.

Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Elle.

This style of photography will display nicely for senior portraits. It’s a style with flair.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle photography focuses on you and your everyday life. With lifestyle photography, the photos tell the story of your hobbies, milestones, and interests in an artful way. It’s not candid, as in photojournalism. Lifestyle photography is more like a Concept Shoot: only the concept is you and your actual life, as opposed to a random theme. Lifestyle senior portraits might show you posed as if playing sports, driving your car, or sitting quietly listening to music.

Photojournalistic

A photojournalistic style emphasizes telling a story by capturing images spontaneously to emphasize moments. This style of photography could work really well if there is a specific event that you want documented during your senior year. The photojournalistic style would work best in an album. This way you could showcase senior portraits from throughout your year and really tell the story of your last year of high school.

Once you know the style you want it becomes a matter of finding a photographer who uses that style in most of their work. Of course the simple way of doing this is to find a photographer with a lot of pictures you like.