Custom senior picture sessions are a big part of what we do here at Shipman Photography. Your experience should be custom and so should be the art we create for you.
Logan Wheeler is a great young man. We already knew the chances were good that he would be because we had worked with his older brother Garrett on his senior portraits last year and through that had met his parents Mindy and Rick who we discovered shared my love of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
So, we would’ve been shocked if Logan hadn’t been our kind of people, and sure enough he was awesome to work with. Logan has one of the best natural reaction smiles you’ll see on a senior guy, and the downtown session was a lot of fun, getting him to react to my dad jokes!
We started out in downtown Tulsa and followed a pretty similar path with Logan as we had the year before with Garrett, shooting up and down Boston Avenue before heading over to Centennial Park for some sunset shots.
Part two of our custom session work was on the tennis court at Bixby High School, where Logan has enjoyed a stellar tennis career – earning a scholarship to John Brown University. Shooting a combo of portrait and action shots (with Rick serving).
After that, I was fortunate enough to catch Logan in a live action tournament, getting some more action shots. This is something we always try to do when possible for our senior athletes.
The final project is a good story. For this final session Logan was supposed to come in to the studio to get a cool sports portrait done, and he showed up right on time – but without his tennis racket!
Well.. that’s a pretty important part of the shot, but I told him not to worry that we would drop it in in post. That would be a red flag most places, but not here at Shipman Photography. No sir.
Today, we saved the day with a plan B – having him hold a stand in racket in the form of a piece of one of my background frames.
Problem is, you see, Mr Wheeler has a very distinctive two tone blue Wilson tennis racket with yellow lettering inside the frame at the top and a particular signature “peace” of bling in the bottom of the webbing. Fortunately, going in a little closer on one of my action shots I was able to see enough of the racket to get some ideas.
No problem!
So in the final shot, we recreated his tennis racket using photo stock and some creative photoshop. We love the image and now it’s got a good story behind it! What a great way to put a cap on this custom senior portrait session.
Thanks again Logan and best of luck at the next level!