I don't say a lot of personal stuff on this blog, so this is a departure for me. My son is a high school senior, it seems unbelievable to say because how can he be 18 years old? But it's true. He does not like to have his picture taken, so I started early and he cooperated for some soccer headshots to use for potential recruiting.
But as fun as these are, they're obviously insufficient to commemorate the end of high school and all that entails. In August I was already making my case for more senior portraits. He was not interested. At all. Until I told him that there is no reason we need to be serious about these, we can have some fun instead. And he said... "Well, it would be nice to have pictures with two suns like Luke Skywalker." You bet it would. I started ordering supplies.
I think this is my favorite senior picture of him I've taken, period. (My mom does not agree.)
Our other best idea was to take "cool car" pictures, with his car, which is not cool. It's an old Acura that has been totaled, but it's a great student car (from a mom's perspective) and still drives fine as long as you fill up the power steering fluid from time to time. We upped the awesome factor by using a really small Three Wolves Moon shirt and some awesome glasses from the 1990s.
As fun as these were, I thought we should have pictures that we could, you know, put in a yearbook or use for more serious purposes. We have traveled a bit this year and I started making him take just a few pictures when we were somewhere cool. I get what I get in terms of clothes, and light, but that doesn't bother me.
Mount Rainier (amazing!)
California. These first couple were lit using iphone flashlights, I thought it was pretty cool that that worked.
And a few in Costa Rica - his enthusiasm for senior portraits by this point was at a low ebb but he would occasionally cooperate.