A Portrait Session Birthday Gift

A photoshoot makes an amazing gift for any age. This young lady, who I will refer to as Ms E, was celebrating her 15th birthday and her Mom chose to gift her a professional photoshoot to commemorate this special time in her life.  

Although originally planned as an individual portrait photography session with E, during the consultation we agreed it would be nice to include Mom in the photos, to celebrate the special bond between mother and daughter. By the end of the consultation, we agreed to have a few photos of everyone in the family, including the family’s dog. :)

I always try to incorporate my clients’ interests into their photos, so during the consultation, I asked E what she was passionate about. Her answer was dance, and in particular, ballet. So in addition to some beautiful and elegant individual portrait photos of E, we used silks to incorporate dance movements into her photoshoot and created some beautiful dance portraits, allowing E to express her personality through her chosen artform. 

After her individual portraits, we invited each member of E’s family, including the family dog to pose alongside her for some beautiful family portraits. During the session, the family chose to wear some of their own outfits and some items from our Oakville studio wardrobe to add some variety to their photos. 

With such a wide variety of photos to select from, from the dance portraits to family photos, the family chose a luxurious handmade leather folio box with 30 of their favourite portraits and a beautiful piece of wall art to proudly display in their home.

This is what E’s mom had to say about the portrait session afterwards:

"We had a wonderful experience with Elena. She made us feel at ease, brought in highly skilled hair and make-up artists and made the entire day truly special. Although the photo shoot was a gift to my daughter, Elena insisted on including the whole family (dog too!) for few photos so that we came away with some lovely group portraits as well. She was very accommodating, taking into account our preferences and providing us with sage advice on how to make the photos work best for us. The results were both captivating and highly professional. It was very difficult to narrow down our favorites as there were so many."