I had the pleasure of doing senior portrait sessions for Kyle’s brother and sister in previous years, and enjoyed working with Kyle as well. We captured his interest in filmography during the session.
Kyle - Cumberland Valley senior
Thank you to the Studio's dancers and families for your support during picture week. All photos are now uploaded to 
Kordell plays nose tackle, and while he wasn't interested in a photo in his three-point stance, he was willing to wear his jersey for one of his portraits. He was great to work with.
Philip is the third member of his family to have his senior portraits taken at Long Shots, and his session provided an opportunity to incorporate his baseball uniform and equipment. It's been a pleasure to work with his family over the years.
It dawned on me recently that Long Shots Pro Photo has been in business for over ten years! Many thanks to all of you who sought me out for your family and senior portraits over the years, as well as to the Studio parents and dancers who patiently endured lengthy dance picture days (and nights). It's been a pleasure to work with you all, and I hope you are still enjoying the resulting photos.The photo above is from my first high school portrait session in 2007. A few months later, Kelsi was my first senior portrait customer, and just last summer I took a few photos at her wedding!
After almost ten years of using a Canon DSLR for studio portraits, I switched to the Fujifilm X-series for my professional work. Most aspects of studio sessions are the same (lighting, etc.), but there are a few camera settings that need to be in place when you're working with studio lighting after you make the change. I provide them here to save other Fuji portrait photographers time after they make the switch.
I'm not the first to write about why I've switched from Canon's SLR system to Fujifilm's X-series cameras (see also 
Hi, Studio parents. While you're waiting for the performance to start or the intermission to end, feel free to browse the 
I recently tasked myself with creating dancer trading cards for The Studio's spring recitals. This involved producing 2.5" x 3.5" (baseball card-sized) cards of over 700 dance portraits.First I needed media. I ordered some 2.5" x 3.5" artist cards, but found that none of my printers could print on media that small (and those cards are not ideal for printing anyway). Then, with the assistance of math and the Googles, I realized that photo printer-friendly 5x7 paper would perfectly accommodate four trading cards. I ordered three different brands of glossy 5x7 paper that had received good ratings, and they all proved to be of good quality.Next I went about creating the design in Photoshop. Lightroom permits you to print a watermark on a given photo, but that watermark can be any collection of graphics. Mine included the Studio logo, the year, and the recital logo. I created it as a transparent png and pointed to it from Lightroom's print module. My test of superimposing it on a dance photo was successful, although I noticed a full-length portrait on a 2.5x3.5 card would result in a very small dancer.That meant I had a lot of cropping to do. Since Lightroom Mobile is quick when it comes to cropping, I synced the dance portrait collection to the Adobe cloud so it would be available on the iPad. Cropping 700+ portraits to fit the trading card format still wasn't fast, but took less time than it would have on the computer.With the cropped collection back in Lightroom, I worked in the print module to place four watermarked cards on a 5x7 sheet. That done, I printed the entire collection to jpg files. Then I imported those files into Lightroom as a new collection.Why print to files first instead of 5x7s? That's where the Canon Pro-100 became a factor. There are issues with that model of printer and Lightroom. (I can certainly attest to this after numerous frustrating failed attempts to print borderless 13x19s from Lightroom.) Thankfully, Canon produces a Lightroom plugin called 
During the past couple of years, folks have expressed to us how they missed having the candy bar keepsakes (with dancer photos on them) from the dance recitals. I spent some time thinking of something we could produce to replace them, and after putting together a workflow that allowed us to do so almost 800 times, we're ready to share the idea with you.The 2016 recitals will include the debut of Studio trading cards. They will be available in sheets of four; the photo printer-friendly size of 5" x 7" will exactly accommodate four baseball card-sized (2.5" x 3.5") trading cards.Each card includes the Studio logo, the year, and the recital logo. We wanted to keep them inexpensive, so for the weekend of the recital they will be $4 per page ($1 per trading card). After the recital weekend, the price will go up to the standard 5x7 print cost.Due to the size and orientation of the group shots, they are not available as trading cards, but almost all of the individual and friend photos we took on picture days will be represented (over 700 of them, which will be sorted into separate bins by age group). Each page contains four identical trading cards, so you'll have extras to share with friends and family, or to trade with fellow dancers. (You might want to bring a pair of scissors--provided you don't run with them-- to the recital to cut out the individual cards, and a marker to add an autograph.)In case the cards you are seeking sell out, a SmugMug gallery will have all of the cards available for order at the same special pricing (plus shipping and handling) during the recital weekend.The prints were produced using a dye sublimation printer on glossy photo paper. I think you'll be pleased with the quality and look forward to your feedback. We hope that Studio trading cards become a pleasant addition to your recital weekend tradition.