Karla was looking for classy, natural portraits of herself to use for both business and social media. Living abroad in Paris clearly cultivated her sense of elegance and style, and I wanted to create portraits that evoked a sense of that sophistication.

One of the key components to creating a simple, elegant portrait was lighting Karla with natural light to give her skin a soft, flattering glow. In the outside photos, I chose north and west facing walls as backgrounds, since those directions provide the best light in the late morning. Of course directional window light works well at any time of day, so we did some shots indoors beside a window.

The backgrounds themselves were textured single-colored building walls in downtown Boulder. This ensured that the portrait would focus on Karla, and not a complicated composition.  The final and perhaps most important element of the portrait session was to capture her in relaxed and natural poses that are not over the top fashion, nor cutesy senior portrait. Karla made my job easy, and was able to drop into a relaxed and comfortable posture despite an onslaught of bad jokes thrown at her by the photographer.