One of my favorite things about photographing seniors is that there are very few rules to follow. I mean, to be fair, we need a few smiling at the camera for mom but other than that, let’s go crazy.
I always tell seniors when we’re planning their photography sessions that the most important thing we can possibly do is to photograph who they are. The whole point of portraits during your senior year of high school is to grab a milestone of who you are right in that moment because you’ll never be there again. It really is very significant.
Katie is hard to pin down. You see, this girl is a brilliant (and champion) swimmer. She horseback rides. An amazing student. Loves the beach. And fly fishing. Wait, what did you say???
Since those of you who know me know we certainly weren’t going to be doing a horseback riding shoots (every horse I’ve ever met tried to eat me and if you have horses at your wedding I’ll probably be shooting with an extremely long lens and making my second photographer be the one getting cozy with the horse… ), one of the things I really got excited about that we talked about was her fly fishing.
Our goals were to find a “field of flowers” (every great one I could find was in the middle of the interstate and would have been a near death experience), do some fun “hanging out downtown” kind of images and document being a flyfisher woman because, how cool is that.
The flower field proved to be a little more difficult than we had hoped. One thing you should appreciate was that the flowering field images you see here were all made in 2-foot random flower spots. I wish I had taken a picture of the people walking by staring at us laying in a tiny little spot of wildflowers (me covered in mud) trying to figure out what exactly the thought process was…
My favorite part of her session was the fly fishing time, for sure. It was also the most dangerous part and I genuinely almost lost all of my camera equipment. I was standing there thinking through what exactly I would say when I called my insurance company and explained to them what happened…. How can I make this sound less reckless? I was standing in water on top of slippery rocks in a river with a MAJOR current and the camera didn’t make it out alive, could you possibly cover that? K…thanks. I have done some crazy things while holding a camera but this one was just plain risky!
Katie, it was such a joy almost falling into the river, laying in mud, eating hotdogs, drinking the best rootbeer of my life, laughing, and having coffee with you. You are a beautiful human, and I will adventure with you any time we get the chance! To see more of our senior photos have a look over here!