A spin on senior portraits

To the class of 2024: congratulations on all you have accomplished and please, keep challenging us!

Its graduation day here in my DC suburban paradise. Many of my friends will look on with immense pride tinged with grief as their baby walks the stage and receives a diploma.

Enter the amazing G….

I don’t identify as a senior portrait photographer but I genuinely enjoy the few graduates I get that are looking for something a little different and a bit more personal.

As for more common portraits of beautiful girls in sundresses or young boys on a football field or looking wistfully from the hood of their car – or even yearbook portraits in cap and gown – there are plenty of photogs out there that are going to do that much, much better than I can and for way less money.

I’m not your typical family photographer but maybe your graduating senior isn’t so typical either?

I begin with a survey to get a sense of what your senior does and does not like – everything from environments to moods to interests to clothing. G took it one step further and shared a Pinterest board to give me a sense of what she had in mind, I loved literally “seeing” into her style and ideas.

G – now a rising environmental science major – feels most free in the wild. She knew that being part integrated within nature was how she wanted to be seen in her portraits. Her mom was entirely hands off, preferring to be surprised by what we came up. (That’s a serious jedi mom trick right there! And she loved them.)

G and I met up on the trail before our shoot date to scout it out and make sure it was what she had envisioned. While we strolled I had the great pleasure of finding out more about her family, interests, fav TV shows and very interesting thoughts on 90’s visual storytelling vs. today. The process was fun before it even began.

There’s this thing that happened while we were shooting and I’m not sure if I played it right…

We were exploring a creek that backed up to private property and we began shooting. A man who had been mowing his lawn on the other side of the creek stopped what he was doing to come over and tell us what he thought ought to be in the background. He started with, “I’m not a photographer, but…”

Mind you, I did not stop him while he was mowing his lawn to tell him how he could be mowing his lawn better – I assumed that he was fully capable of the job he doing. I felt no need to stop my work to walk over and say, “I’m not a landscaper, but….” Because even if I had been…. wtf.

Where I think I went wrong was that I was polite. “Oh, thanks, I appreciate it” blah blah blah. I could see that we might set foot on his property in order to cross over the creek before the water got deep, so a practical part of me said “keep it friendly.”

But another part of me was in the safety default mode, programmed into me from birth: “be accommodating and polite and never make anyone, especially a man, feel uncomfortable.”

He assumed I was lesser. And I allowed him to insert himself, as though he was more, in order to maintain civility and – maybe – safety.

All throughout the spring, all over our country I’ve witnessed college graduates make people in powerful positions very, very uncomfortable. They have worn keffiyehs over their gowns, waved Palestinian flags while walking across stage and turned their backs on famous but insincere keynote speakers. They have spoken out about genocides far away while pointing to the hypocrisy deep within the institutions of higher learning issuing their degrees. I’m not talking about the students who alienated or harassed Jewish students – which did happen – let’s be clear: that’s not activism, that’s bullying. I’m talking about the students who peacefully asked for the grown ups to answer for the mess of a world they were handing over while delivering empty, “you can do anything!” speeches.

Because there are things you can’t do, apparently. Audiences clutched their pearls and media outlets pounced on the opportunity to lament our lost youth, all while blaming soft parenting.

I don’t think our youth are lost at all.

And we might have taught them better than we, ourselves, know how to do.

(OK, I know, a “hey, I do senior portraits!” post got complicated. But we go deeper around here. Not typical, remember?)

Anyway, these graduates are handling it. They handled their freshman year from home in a pandemic. They handled a racial reckoning that changed the Confederate names of their schools and, in at least 3 Virginia public schools, saw those names change back before they could even walk across a stage. They handled book bans and a whole childhood of active shooter drills.

They are not waiting on us to make things right.

Back to the creek, G and I just looked at each other as the lawn mower – not a photographer – walked away from us to return to yard work. She knew, as I know, that she will face this situation again – “nice” men who only want to “help” – especially in the sciences.

Unless we all start getting a lot less comfortable a whole lot faster. Including me.

So to G and the class of 2024, I really do think you’ve got this.

Keep questioning authority and never lose your humanity. You belong to yourself always.

Now go save the world. And I’m so, so sorry we put that on you. And you do make me so, so hopeful.