A Table Rock Lake Senior Portrait Experience. On-Location with My Daughter.

Some of the best portrait locations aren't the ones you plan around. They're the ones that already mean something. My daughter's senior portraits at her grandparents' lake house on Table Rock Lake in the Branson area of Missouri turned out to be exactly that kind of session. We were visiting family over summer break before her senior year, and it felt like the right time to pick up a camera and let the place do some of the work.

She wanted the session to feel patriotic, so she asked her Papa if he'd keep his flags and swags up on the deck for her. He was more than happy to oblige, and those details ended up being some of my favorite elements in the whole set. From there we found a few other spots naturally, the front porch and the boat dock, and what could have felt like afterthoughts ended up being genuinely beautiful. That's what happens when a location has character and your subject is completely comfortable in it.

We shot everything in natural light that day. It was overcast, which in the Ozarks in summer means soft, even light with no harsh shadows, and it set exactly the right mood for the session. I love working with off-camera flash, but sometimes the light is already doing everything you need and the best decision is to leave it alone.

These images will be part of her senior album, a 12x12 that we'll finish in the spring pulling from her whole senior year. There's something about printing work at that scale that makes it feel like what it actually is, a real record of a year that only happens once.

If you've been thinking about a destination session somewhere that matters to your family, whether it's a grandparent's property, a favorite place, or somewhere tied to your senior's story, that's exactly the kind of work I love to do.