This session was awesome. I have known Emily since she was about five years old, but I was truly floored when she came to me and said that she wanted me to take her senior portraits. Knowing her family’s “usual” flavor for portraits, I wasn’t sure that accepting was a great idea. I didn’t want her to be disappointed when her photos weren’t of the cheesy-background-in-a-department-store-studio style. She insisted.

I haven’t slept in three nights in anticipation of this shoot. I had a ton of ideas, but still wasn’t sure that my client and I were on the same page. So we headed out to the beautiful ponderosa forest of Northern Arizona this afternoon and went in search of some decent places to take pictures. I wanted to avoid, at all costs, the typical senior portrait of my generation: letter jacket wearing senior leaning against or hugging skinny pine tree.

Let me tell you this girl did not disappoint. She climbed up rocks, mossy wet slopes, laid in rotted out tree stumps, and ventured down a dark and muddy wash, all for the sake of some great portraits.

As we hiked and talked, I asked her why she wanted me to shoot her portraits so badly. She said, “because I’m not an ordinary person. I don’t want my senior pictures to be ordinary.” Ahh, a girl after my own heart. Her reason for wanting me to shoot her photos were the exact reason I wanted to start shooting senior portraits. To take a step away from ordinary.