A Senior Year Worth Documenting: One Girl, Several Sessions.

My daughter's senior year was never going to be a single afternoon in a studio. She's a drum major, she loves her cats, she has a hometown she's proud of and places she's traveled that mean something to her. One session wasn't going to cover it, so we didn't try. Instead we planned a series of portraits throughout her senior year, starting in the summer before school even began and carrying all the way through spring.

The locations ended up spanning more ground than I expected. We started with a stormy evening on Navarre Beach in Florida and a summer morning on the square in Wimberley, her hometown. From there we added Missouri, Colorado, and several different seasons right here in Texas, including studio sessions, outdoor sessions, and a few that were built entirely around things she loves. We painted two of the early images, and watching those come to life was one of my favorite parts of the whole year.

There's something about documenting a senior year this way, unhurried and spread across real moments and real places, that produces work you actually want on your walls for the rest of your life. By the time we finished, we had enough to fill a 12x12 album that tells a complete story of who she was at seventeen and eighteen, not just what she looked like in front of a nice background.

We'll be sharing more from her sessions here as the year unfolds, including her marching band portraits, a pet session with her cats, and something special for homecoming and prom. Stay tuned.

If you have a senior and you're thinking about doing something like this, the earlier you start the better. There's so much more room to be creative and intentional when you're not scrambling to fit everything into a single spring afternoon.

These darling photographs taken in hometown, Wimberley TX, will be featured in her senior album (along with her paintings - plus her paintings will be printed, oil painted and framed specially to hang on the wall).