As we approach senior portrait season, we wanted to showcase a super fun session we did recently for a client’s daughter’s 13th birthday in Malibu! Because, as amazing and fun as it is to put together a senior portrait photo session to commemorate a transition in your child’s life from graduation High School or college, you truly can celebrate them at any time in their life or for any birthday for that matter! Believe it or not, this particular dreamy location is within 20 minutes of Ventura and makes for such a stunning Malibu-esque backdrop without having to drive too far.

This seemed like a perfect birthday to celebrate, because the time of “becoming a teenager” is such an exciting time to remember and reflect on. We know, not all of us adults look back fondly on the years of braces-filled-mouths and finding ourselves through the stangeness that is “growing up”, but it truly is a special time in your life of discovery, new paths, + finding who you are – and to us, that is definitely worth celebrating!

When planning for your senior portrait session or teenagers birthday photography session, feel free to chat with your son or daughter about what is important to them. How would they like to showcase themselves at this particular time in their life. We love incorporating their hobbies + passions in a way that captures who they truly are and what is important to them! It truly helps to kind of paint the story of who your kiddo was at this time in their life 🙂

Another fun piece of these senior portrait photos or individual photo sessions for your kids is – you can bring the whole family along! We are pretty laid back on our flow + shoot guidelines, so there’s no weird hidden fee for bringing some extra friends or family members along – the more the merrier as far as we’re concerned! It’s just another lovely addition to showcase the important people in your kid’s life as well. And this even goes visa versa of course too! If you want to primarily focus on a family photo session, we can also incorporate solos of each member of the family as well. So, the session is truly flexible towards what is important to be captured for you personally, and that absolutely means we can accomplish multiple groupings + varieties of shots throughout the entirety of our session. *We say this within reason of course – we probably would not suggest trying to photograph a 25 person family reunion with 4 different sub-families within a 30 minute session, but we’ll do our best! ;)*

Another point to mention when thinking about finding a photographer for senior portraits is being able to include outfit changes! We know that your child may wear many different hats + looks depending on what day of the week it is. So why not include all of those wonderful versions of them?! We always will encourage an outfit change if that’s something that you are considering! As long as we have enough time that is booked for the session to allow for properly capturing the best of both outfits or “looks” our answer is always – “heck yes!”. It’s totally important to us that we can capture the “pretty-side”, “goofy-side”, the “cozy-side”, maybe the “active or adventurous side” – however your child likes to express themselves, we would love to encapsulate that and freeze that memory in time for you! 🙂

This is a family that I’ve been photographing for years throughout Ventura County. We took their teenage birthday photo session to Malibu though because it seemed to perfectly fit the vibe for the vision that they were going for. And how dreamy did the shots come out, right?! Love that they found this fun ornate chair to rent for the evening and we even incorporated basketball since that’s one of this lady’s major passions! We think the images really reflect who she is in a wonderful way.

Let us know if we can help paint your vision into the most perfect senior portrait photography session or teenage (any age for that matter) birthday photo session and we would love to help design a photoshoot that is perfect for you! We’re all for keeping it close to home throughout any sentimental areas in Ventura / Ojai or taking it to a different place that feels right to you! Maybe you go on regular trips up to Santa Barbara botanical gardens as a family or maybe you first learned to swim at a beach in Malibu and are now on the swim team – whatever type of location resonates with you, we would love to help plan something meaningful with you 🙂

Hope you enjoy some of our favorites from this 13th birthday photo session in Malibu!