I meet Christina and her family one late afternoon down at the University of Arizona to shoot Christina’s senior portraits. We were just to about to get into the busy time of year – and Christina, a ballerina, was rehearsing almost non-stop getting ready for some holiday performances. Between dance and school, she is extremely busy and this was the only time that was available on the calendar.
Our plan for this late afternoon, was to shoot both traditional Sr. Portraits and some ballet photos. I knew that Christina was nursing a foot injury from dance and my goal was to make sure that when we got to the dance shots that I was shooting quickly so as not to make any injuries worse.
Despite the injury, Christina was nothing but smiles and grace. She is quiet but very easy to work with and she had that dancer’s ability to make almost any pose look good with very little direction from me.
As we moved from location to location we fell into a groove of working together that just felt very relaxed and easy. At one point, we found a very out-of-the-way courtyard we started shooting some of the ballet photos. Most of these shots are done with natural light but a few have some flash to supplement the available light between the buildings as it got later in the day.
As we finished our shoot we ended up back at the Old Main Building I was able to shoot a couple of last silhouettes to end the shoot and I was very happy with how the photos turned out.

Paul Davis
Paul Davis is a commercial and portrait photographer based out of Tucson, Arizona.