Women of a certain age..

I’m one of them too, a woman of a certain age.  Our kids are older, maybe even grown…and our faces show it.  But our photographs don’t have to show every line, do they?  Joe McNally, in his book The Moment it Clicks, tells his secret to photographing us, using as an example his photo session with Sophia Loren well after her movie career was over:

“When lighting, especially women of a certain age, … think soft.  Think of your light as a soft blanket that needs to wrap the face gently, open up the eyes, and eliminate shadows and lines….”

Ever since I read that, I realized that I, too, could photograph all women in a way that they can feel beautiful, minimizing lines but not erasing them.  After all, we enjoyed making those laugh lines, didn’t we?

I had the great pleasure to photograph my friend Sue.  We met 23 years ago, each of us pregnant with our first child, in LaMaze class.  Talk about the “moment it clicks!”  We clicked for sure, and even when my husband and I moved back closer to our parents, Sue and I have faithfully kept up our friendship, for long leisurely lunches, picking up where we left off.  Sue and her family will always cherish these photographs because they show the beautiful woman she is, inside and out.