Ballet Photo Inspiration for the Enthusiastic Amateur Photographer of Sometimes Surly Teenaged Ballerinas

 

Railroad bridges make for terrific photo ops!

Why drag just one teenager out and about for an elaborate photo shoot session when you can drag TWO teenagers?!?

SO many reason why not, right? OMG SO MANY REASONS. The bickering, in stereo. The complaining, in stereo. The only break I get from them sniping at each other is when they join forces to snipe at ME.

But think of the cute sister photos I can take! Sister photos with one in a graduation gown and one in her ballet togs! 

And if the one sister is already there in her ballet togs, why not just go ahead and take some ballet photos?

I've dragged Syd out and about before to take ballet photos. Sometimes we're both really happy with them, and sometimes we end up with Syd mad that I got her pointe shoes dirty and me frustrated that I couldn't really think of cute photos to take and the ones I did think of didn't turn out cute. 

It's tough to be an amateur mommy photographer with severa myopia and an uncertain aesthetic!

This time round, I'm taking a lesson from my Senior photos shot list and making a similar shot list of ballet photos. I don't have as many specific locations in mind as I do for Will's photos, so hopefully I can assemble a large enough bank of inspiration photos that wherever we end up, I can flip through them and come up with something I want to try.

Here are some of my favorite inspo photos from my Ballet Photos Pinboard:

Teen Senior Pictures image via Treasure Layne Photography

I love this idea of using a bridge railing as a ballet barre:

Ballet Inspired Ames Senior Pictures via Amelia Renee Photography

Lexi Senior 18 Plano Senior via Clara Bella Photography

A Sunrise Ballerina Session in DC via Abby Grace

North Park Ballet Photos image via Jenna Hidinger Photography

I also got some pose ideas by scrolling through photos I've taken of Syd's various class observations and recitals over the years. It both gives me good ideas for poses in general and for poses that it would be cute to have Syd redo for comparison to her baby self:

I'm especially excited to have Syd recreate this one. Look at that teeny-tiny dancer!

Ballet photos are extra fun because you can also play around with clothing. I'm pretty sure my kid likes her emo garb and black Converse a ton better than she likes her burgundy leotard and pink tights! So I think some of the poses and locations I've got in mind will look even better with street clothing.

Just pray for me that I don't get her pointe shoes dirty again! She has literally NOT forgiven me for the last time that happened, even though I swear I just thought that since they were already filthy from dancing AND dead a little gravel wouldn't matter...

Trying to Figure Out Senior Photos for My Kid

First she wasn't interested in Senior photos, then she was.

May that live forever as one of my greatest accomplishments as a parent.

I mean, the kid definitely doesn't care. Tbh, if I'd never brought it up, I doubt the concept of Senior photos would have ever come to her attention. And if they had ever come to her attention, I doubt she would have ever entertained the notion of wanting any for herself.

But such is the nature of parenting. We want ridiculous things for our children that they do not want for themselves, and we convince them that they want them, too, so that we can have the joy of it. For me in this particular scenario, the convincing involved the lure of a shopping trip with her bestie and graduation announcements sent to her dad's family, who might just buy her something off her college dorm Amazon wishlist.

Tangent: you guys, kitting a kid out for a college dorm is NO JOKE!!! I may have to commit larceny to obtain the Woozoo fan that all the other prospective freshman parents are raving about. And a mattress topper AND mattress pad--

--because apparently you need both on top of your perfectly good dorm mattress?

And then, of course, instead of paying a professional to take beautiful photos of my child, I am insisting on doing it myself, because that's obviously half the fun of doing Senior portraits, and I will continue to think that until my Senior, who, by the way, hates posing for photos, pitches a fit posing for her first set of photos as she definitely will. 

I also super want to do some really homeschool-specific Senior photos. That sounds like a cute idea until you remember that homeschooling teenagers pretty much looks exactly the same as any other kind of schooling, except you do it on your couch or outside on a blanket or whatever. And a photo of a teenager on a couch is just... a photo of a teenager on a couch. And a photo of a teenager on a blanket? Um, that's just a picnic? How am I supposed to use photography to embody what it's like to sit on the floor and debate about political art with one teenager lying on my bed and one teenager sprawled across my deck chair? Or visually portray listening to Sean Astin narrate The Great Gatsby while we all sit on, yes, the couch and argue about which character we hate most? 

Most of homeschooling teenagers is literally just lounging on stuff and running your mouths. That doesn't photograph well.

Here are some cute ideas for things that DO photograph well that Pinterest found for me, part of my Senior Photos Pinboard:

Use Scrabble Tiles image from Fix the Photo

I also think it could be cute to photograph 2022 in Base Ten blocks, because you know how we are about our Base Ten blocks!

Senior Boy image via Sevyn Ezra Photography

I think this one would be cute either with her little clothes or with her Girl Scout vests:

Timeline from Fix the Photo

These are super cute poses for my bookish child, and it also got me thinking that it would also be super cute to have her do all the traditional Senior photo poses, but with a book in one hand. And that would keep us from fighting about how she's glaring at me instead of smiling in every photo!

Brunette Beauty image via Lisa McNiel

Kenzie via Catie Bartlett

Okay, we're not doing a traditional graduation (I mean, obviously), but Will DOES have her Slytherin robe that is actually a Josten's graduation gown with a Slytherin patch sewed on, and you can't even see the patch if she leaves the robe unzipped. And I found my old high school graduation cap, also from Josten's, that is VERY dusty and VERY red, and we've got Matt's old high school graduation tassel, also very dusty and very yellow. 

What I'm telling you is I think we could one hundred percent nail this photo:

In the Gown Near Campus from Fix the Photo

I'm also thinking we could do some cute photos based on Will's favorite childhood places, like the park near our old house, the drive-in, the public library, etc., and definitely some photos that have the chickens or the dog in them. Please let me know if you think of anymore cute homeschool-themed Senior photos, because I feel like the Base Ten blocks graduation year is a pretty deep cut and literally nobody is going to get it but me and my kids. So what I really need are some homeschool-themed photos that non-homeschoolers will understand.

AP Studio Art: Taking Reference Photos in the Cemetery

Syd needs several hundred reference photos to use in her AP studio art classes, so we've been taking lots of little field trips out and about lately, in search of interesting places with lots of interesting things to photograph there. 

While Syd roamed around a local cemetery the other day, taking photos of things she might want to reference in her art someday, I roamed around, too, stayed out of her way, and took my own photos:

One of my Girl Scouts told me recently about the multi-faceted artistic tool that is "portrait mode" on one's cell phone camera, so that's what I'm experimenting with. I think she's quite correct!

Found a Freemason:

Found a fellow photographer!

Limestone used to be a major local industry, so the older cemeteries have lots of examples of masterful and detailed carving:

Once upon a time, a sapling was planted in between the graves of two departed lovers...

I would rather my corpse be tossed into a ditch than interred in a cemetery, but I wouldn't say no to a limestone memorial to my love of reading!

Our town thinks it has an urban deer problem, so much so that every now and then the city council will pay some of our hard-earned tax money to hire either hunters to shoot them down or other hunters to shoot them with birth control. I think it's absurd, but to be fair, it was a little disconcerting to see a couple of deer wandering around the cemetery in broad daylight, as brazen as squirrels:

It's too bad that the camera on Syd's ipod touch isn't great, because I can see that a cell phone camera is obviously the ideal tool for taking reference photos. It's probably better for her overall artistic growth, though, to increase her familiarity with my DSLR.

I'll be very curious to see if Syd finds these reference photos useful during her AP studio art work. She doesn't think she will, but collecting them is a strong recommendation for the courses, so that's what she's doing. I guess we'll both just be happily surprised if they happen to come in handy!

My Kid Went to California, and All I Got Was This Complete Set of ABC Bakers Girl Scout Cookies

ABC Bakers puts their Thin Mints in FOIL SLEEVES!

After a couple of long pandemic years, last month Will was finally able to achieve her dream of going to a sleepaway camp in the Girl Scouts of Northern California council. It wasn't the summer camp with surfing, ocean kayaking, and sleeping out on the beach that she'd originally wanted, but a just-as-magical winter camp up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with Sierra redwoods, snowshoes, sleds, and comfy cabins.

Before and after, she hung out with her grandparents, who indulged her OTHER two biggest California dreams: to spend a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (a perennial dream, as she visits the Monterey Bay Aquarium almost every single time she visits California), and to buy the complete run of ABC Bakers Girl Scout cookies.

For those not involved in the Girl Scout Cookie War Machine, there are two different bakeries that make the Girl Scout cookies that the kids sell, and your local Girl Scout council works with one of those two bakeries. The bakeries are mostly the same--they both make a shortbread, a peanut butter and chocolate patty, a coconut and chocolate, a chocolate mint, a peanut butter sandwich, a lemon, and a caramel chocolate--but there are differences in the flavor and packaging even of those. And each bakery has a couple of different cookies, too. We're a Little Brownie Bakers council, and we have S'mores and Toffee Tastics. ABC Bakers has Toast Yays and Caramel Chocolate Chip.

Sell Girl Scout cookies for a couple of years, and you start to get curious about the other bakery's cookies, if for no other reason than customers--at least customers in a college town!--often come up to your cookie booth and ask the kids for cookies that are actually made by the other bakery. The kids learned early on to direct a customer asking for Caramel Delites to our Samoas, and a customer asking for Peanut Butter Patties got our Tagalongs. It's the same kind of skill set that a kid uses when a customer wants a cookie Girl Scouts stopped making a decade ago, or when a customer wants to know why cookies don't still cost a buck-forty like they used to when THEY were a kid. It expands a kid's worldview, and encourages them to contextualize their own experience in place and time.

So Will, who is currently selling Girl Scout cookies for her eighth (and final!) year, was STOKED to hit up a Girl Scout cookie booth in Monterey and bring me home a bunch of ABC Bakers cookies to try.

And because she is my child (and she's working on earning her Girl Scout Ambassador Photographer badge, which asks for a set of still life photos), we also took photos of them! 

Caramel Chocolate Chip is the ABC Bakers gluten-free cookie:

ABC Bakers Thin Mints have a pull-tab top!

They're also shaped differently, and the kids and I think that they're maybe a little crisper, more chocolatey, and slightly less minty:

Here are Toast-Yays!

They're meant to taste like French toast, and the cinnamon really comes through. The kids loved them, but I'm not a fan:

Lemonades resemble our Lemon-Ups, but the glaze is heavier:

Will LOVED the glaze and prefers these to Lemon-Ups. I thought the glaze had a weird aftertaste and I much prefer Lemon-Ups:

The Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies, are, other than the pull tab on the box, identical to Do-Si-Does:

Based on the serving size and number of cookies in the box, though, they must be a different size, but we couldn't see how:

We thought the Caramel DeLites looked a little different from Samoas, but they tasted the same:

Adventurefuls are the new cookie this year for both bakeries. Little Brownie Bakers is having major supply chain issues this year and couldn't stock us past our troop's initial order, so people in our council barely got a taste, and I'm impressed that Will was able to score this ABC Bakers box!

Again, they're slightly different from Little Brownie Bakers' Adventurefuls, and I slightly prefer these:

Peanut Butter Patties are indistinguishable from Tagalongs:

Comparing these cookies was such a fun project, and I'm glad it was one more dream that Will could realize before she graduates high school. Our last Girl Scout cookie season together is almost over--only 47 boxes left to reach her all-time biggest goal of 2,000 boxes sold! I've already got the photo I took of her first-ever Girl Scout cookie booth standing ready, so I can set it side-by-side with the photo I'll take this week of her last-ever Girl Scout cookie booth. 

If that second photo is blurry it's because YOU'RE crying, not me!