Megan is graduating: El Dorado High Senior Session

Megan is in her final year at El Dorado High, her two brothers, Ryan and Dylan, preceding her. Which leaves her the last to fly the coup from her lovely and emotional mom, Trisa, who has accompanied all her kids to their senior sessions with me.

Like her brothers and her mom, Megan has the most amazing, infectious smile. In fact, there was a moment when I asked Trisa to step into the picture, that I saw that their smiles are not only incredibly similar but that they crept up onto their faces in almost exactly the same manner.

Including mom in the pictures is something I love to do in these sessions because, while they are about the graduating student, they’re also about this milestone for the whole family and how that child leaving school and possibly home marks a change for everyone. Emotionally, it’s usually mom who feels and experiences this on the deepest level. Photographing the recognition of this transition happening through the photo session is always something that is magically bittersweet for me. The pride, the joy, the fear, the loss… all of it playing out in those moments as mom watches her baby all grown up in front of the camera. It’s never more bittersweet than when you’re photographing the youngest child and Trisa definitely had a hard time containing her emotions as the evening wore on.

Megan is a dancer and I loved capturing her in her tutu as the sun set, leaping across the rocks with her arms extended. Although I enjoy her big smiles, I also enjoyed the sense of contentment and peace that washed over her at times as she danced. Hopefully she will keep dancing even as she starts nursing school after she graduates this year.

Thank you to Megan for being so much fun to photograph and to Trisa for choosing me to photograph all her children as they head out into the world. What next for mom and dad now, I wonder? An empty nester session perhaps?