Classes

How to Create a Photographic Experience That Helps Women Feel Confident, Visible, and Celebrated Through Portraits, Branding and Headshots

Women over 40 often arrive in front of the camera carrying years of ideas about how they photograph: “I’m not photogenic.” “I need to lose weight first.” “I hate having my picture taken.”

And posing a woman over 40 isn’t always the same as posing a high school senior. Bodies change, and flexibility, balance, mobility, and comfort vary from woman to woman. Having a broad posing vocabulary—and plenty of alternatives—allows you to adapt quickly, work with the woman in front of you, and create flattering, confident portraits without making her feel limited by what she can or can’t comfortably do.

In this live demonstration class, Kia Bondurant will share the approach she uses when photographing women for beauty portraits, personal branding, and headshots. You’ll watch how she directs, poses, lights, and communicates with her subject while creating different looks for different purposes.

Attendees will learn how to:
• Pose women in flattering, natural ways that work with their bodies rather than against them
• Adapt poses for differences in flexibility, balance, mobility, and comfort
• Use small adjustments in body position, hands, expression, and camera angle to create flattering shape and variety
• Direct women who tell you they aren’t comfortable in front of the camera
• Create expression and confidence through communication
• Adapt your approach for beauty portraits, branding images, and professional headshots
• Create variety while keeping the woman recognizable as herself
• Build a portrait experience that feels as good as the finished photographs look

This class isn’t about making women look younger. It’s about learning how to photograph the woman standing in front of you beautifully, confidently, comfortably, and intentionally.

We photograph children and babies. We photograph high school seniors. But somewhere around 5th grade, many of those clients disappear from our cameras until senior year.

That’s the missing middle—and it may be one of the most meaningful and overlooked portrait markets in your business.

Tweens and young teens are in a season of enormous change. They’re figuring out their style, their interests, their friendships, and who they want to be, all while becoming increasingly aware of how they look and how they compare to everyone around them. A portrait experience at this age can be about much more than creating pretty pictures.

In this live demonstration class, Kia Bondurant will show you how to photograph tweens and teens in a way that celebrates exactly who they are right now—not trying to make them look older, more polished, or like miniature high school seniors.

Attendees will learn how to:
• Pose and direct tweens and teens without making them feel awkward or overly posed
• Create age-appropriate styling with simple clothing, minimal makeup, and plenty of personality
• Embrace braces, changing bodies, awkward stages, and everything else that makes this age what it is
• Draw out personality and genuine expression from kids with different confidence levels
• Create sessions around interests, activities, style, and emerging identity
• Build an experience that appeals to both the tween or teen AND the parent investing in it
• Create physical products that reinforce the value of being photographed
• Turn the years between childhood and senior portraits into a new opportunity for your studio

You don’t have to wait until senior year to show a young person how you see them.

Learn how to create portrait experiences that help tweens and teens feel seen, included, and more confident—and give their parents a reason to put them back in front of your camera.

Senior photography keeps changing. Today’s seniors are coming into sessions with inspiration from TikTok, Pinterest, fashion, editorial photography, and the content they see every day. The challenge is creating portraits that feel current without building a business around trends that will disappear next year.

In this live demonstration class, Kia Bondurant will show you how she approaches senior portraits through styling, posing, lighting, movement, and content creation to create images that feel fresh, personal, and relevant to today’s senior client.

You’ll see how Kia takes inspiration from current trends and translates it into a complete senior portrait experience, while still creating the polished, timeless images parents want to purchase and display.

Attendees will learn how to:
• Identify trends worth incorporating into senior sessions
• Use wardrobe and styling to create stronger images
• Pose and direct seniors naturally and confidently
• Create variety through movement, expression, angles, and composition
• Balance trend-driven images with timeless portraits
• Think beyond the finished portrait to create social content seniors actually want to share
• Keep your senior photography evolving without completely reinventing your style every year

Come ready to rethink what a senior session can look like and leave with practical ideas you can use with your very next senior.